The fact that most perpetrators of organized abuse are men, and that their most intensive and sadistic abuses are visited upon girls and women, has gone largely unnoticed, as have the patterns of gendered inequity that characterize the families and institutional settings in which organized abuse takes place. Organized abuse survivors share a number of challenges in common with other survivors of abuse and trauma, including health and justice systems that have been slow to recognize and respond to violence against children and women. However, this connection is rarely made in the literature on organized abuse, with some authors hinting darkly at the nefarious influence of abusive groups. Fraser (1997: xiv) provides a note of caution here, explaining that whilst it is relatively easy to ‘comment on the naïveté of those grappling with this issue ... it is very difficult to actually face a new and urgent phenomenon and deal with it, but not fully understand it, while managing distressed and confused patients and their families’.

Organised Sexual Abuse