I thought this conversation would come up. It is one that I have difficulty with, because I do not see a woman or man that perpetrates sexual abuse upon another human being especially a child, as being able to use the defense of "I was molested myself".
It is a defense strategy in my eyes. It is not supported by statistics that the reason these offenders offend is that they themselves were molested.
One source that I found states that:
38% of girls are sexually abused before the age of 18.
(link:
http://www.womenofsubstance.org/sexabuse.htm )
Then we have this statistic:
"More than a third of the women in state prisons and jails say they were physically or sexually abused as children, twice the rate of child abuse reported by women overall, the Justice Department said today..."
(link:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/12/u...in-jail-say-they-were-abused-as-children.html )
Someone else posted from wikipedia that the statistic of women that commit sexual crimes against female children is something like 6%.
I think it's important to seperate an explanation of possible causes of this type of crime with justification and acceptence of those causes.
From what I have seen the prior experience of having been sexually molested or assaulted as a child does is not supported statistically in predicting that those people will commit the same crime against another child, or that they will commit any crimes of any nature.
Purely subjective experience, has taught me that I have met more women than I can recall to count that were loving, law-abiding, productive and contributing citizens to society that experienced themselves this type of crime against them as children.
I think that experiencing sexual abuse as a child can be life altering and can
possibly lead to many psychological difficulties during adulthood but by no means is an indicator of potential crimes.
This may be a mitigating factor that will be presented to the courts during the course of her defense, but it by no means justifies or excuses the rape and murder of Sandra or any other child for that matter.
As always my heartfelt if very strongly worded opinion.