Double Betrayal: Understanding the Experiences of Victims of Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse

Overview: This exploratory mixed-methods study is the first of its kind to utilize publicly available social media posts from Reddit to collect, analyze, describe and better understand the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of victims of mother-daughter sexual abuse (MDSA). This presentation will share themes and recommendations for theory and practice.Proposal text: There is a paucity of research regarding Mother-daughter sexual abuse (MDSA). Significant social taboo surrounding female-perpetrated child sexual abuse exists, resulting in victims encountering more difficulty asking for and receiving help. “The effects of female abuse are particularly devastating. If you are abused by your father, you feel your mother has let you down, but when it’s your mother, it’s a double betrayal” (Hetherton, 1999, p. 166). Additionally, trained professionals, including police officers, psychologists, and social workers, often are not aware or do not believe females can perpetuate child sexual abuse (Hetherton & Beardsall, 1998; Denov, 2001; Turton, 2010). This dramatically decreases the ability of survivors to cope with the trauma they have endured.

This study explores the thoughts, feelings, and patterns of abuse that survivors of MDSA commonly experienced. This study utilizes data from publicly available social media posts on the website Reddit, which is an online social media platform that hosts a vast number of forums dedicated to a variety of topics (O’neill, 2018; Pilkington & Rominov, 2017). Data was gathered using a Google Script and Pushshift, an open-source data storage and analytics project that allows researchers to mine large amounts of data from Reddit. Dedoose, a qualitative analysis software, was used for the purpose of thematic analysis. Open and axial coding (Vollstedt & Rezat, 2019) were used to identify codes and themes. Memoing and peer debriefing helped with contextualizing and understanding the themes and sub-themes interact (Corbin & Strauss, 2014). This data was mined from Reddit following ethical guidelines from the Association of Internet Researchers (Markham & Buchanan, 2012) and was approved by the institution’s IRB.

Findings indicate survivors of MDSA describe feeling humiliated, disgust, and confused about the abuse their mothers perpetuated. Sexually abusive behaviors appeared to be more subtle; for example, non-consensual touching under the guise of “inspection” or “cleaning,” non-consensual vaginal penetration, body shaming, exposure to pornography at a young age, and grooming daughters for abuse by male partners or other men. Survivors mentioned their mothers had narcissistic qualities, resulting in significant emotional abuse and inappropriate enmeshment. Many survivors reported repressing memories of abuse and not realizing they had been sexually abused until adulthood. Many survivors indicated tenuous relationships with their mothers lasting into adulthood and struggle with maintaining proper emotional boundaries with their mothers. Survivors report a range of mental health difficulties from PTSD to chronic depression and anxiety that contribute to difficulties with personal relationships, romantic and non-romantic, particularly with women. Some survivors have sought assistance through therapy indicate either feeling scared to disclose to a therapist because they fear being misunderstood or they had disclosed to therapists in the past who were dismissive of their experiences.

Increased understanding of survivors’ experiences with MDSA will help inform clinical interventions and ensure counselors are better prepared to help survivors cope or overcome their traumatic experiences. This study fills a gap in the literature on MDSA and future studies need to examine how to better support survivors with interventions and resources more specifically.