Research since has revealed Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy to be noticeably prevalent and it has been listed as a warning sign for the British police in connection with the physical abuse of children. Research has also revealed that such mothers have often had a difficult childhood themselves, usually they have lacked love and respect from their own mothers; many have been abused as children. Not all these mothers have been sexually abused in childhood, but many are, the rest being physically and emotionally abused. The point here is that some mothers who have been sexually abused in childhood do take it out on their children but commonly not in a sexual way.

True, the mother can sexually abuse a child; even if she has not been sexually abused herself in childhood. But cases where a mother who has not been sexually abused herself as a child but has sexually abused her own, or other, children are rare the world over. However, they do exist: young, single mothers (unmarried girls who chose not to get married after getting pregnant); a mother doing exactly to her daughter during the day that sado-masochism which daddy tries on her in the nights; mothers doing it to the child along with their husbands/second husbands/ boyfriends so as to keep the partner; mothers involved in bizarre religious rituals where the body of a child is used as a medium. Most of these children tend to be little girls.

The doctors, counsellors, children, adults, social workers, non-government organizations, homosexuals and lesbians spoken to all over India have not come across a single case of a mother sexually abusing her child if she had been sexually abused herself in childhood.

Should a case come to light of a mother sexually abusing her child even if she has not been abused herself in childhood, what would it suggest of Indian mothers? A closer inspection is very likely to reveal a significant proportion of such mothers colluding and contributing in the sexual abuse of children because they are under the influence of powerful, dominant and sexually, physically and emotionally abusive males.

A case has come to be known of one such mother who has ‘participated’ by facilitating the Child Sexual Abuse by her partners. In Jaipur, a mother in her mid-forties actively attracted a fifteen-year-old school-going girl into their home and even paid and fed her so that her husband could ‘play’ with her. The husband had told his wife he was tired of her and intended marrying again; to stop this, she brought a young body into the house.

There is also the mother in Bhopal, a young widow with a son, who encouraged her son to ‘drink milk’ from her well until he was into his mid-teens. ‘I realize that was her release,’ says the son, now thirty-five and working in Chandigarh. ‘Several mothers feel orgiastic when they breast-feed their newly-born, especially their sons. My mother had natural body urges which she dealt with very silently through this process she initiated.’ The son identifies as homosexual, he says he prefers it this way because he cannot ‘bring himself to touch another woman’s breasts’.