Monday, October 22, 2007

Lesbian Tennis Abuse, but what about the Mum

Clare Lyte, former junior tennis player, aged 29 and a tennis coach to children through the lawn tennis associations Academy has rightly been found guilty of abusing a 13 year old girl. Sentencing has been delayed, but the Judge has indicated that Clare will face prison time and will be on the sex offenders register.

As a byline on most of the reports, when mentioning how the victims mother found Clare performing oral sex, they also mention that the mother did not complain for 10 months, when her daughter was knocked out of a tournament.

Assuming that the newspaper reports are correct - big assumption I know, why is nobody raising the question of the suitability of the mother to parent her daughter? She knew her daughter had been abused, yet she continued to allow contact between her daughter and the abuser, for 10 months. her guilt is almost as great as the tennis coaches, her daughter must feel incredibly let down and betrayed by the one person she must have thought would protect her - her own mother.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The mother was placed in an incredibly difficult situation. Her daughter climbed to the roof of the family home and threatened to jump when told the police would be involved; she continued to make credible threats of suicide subsequently. The mother tried to prevent her from seeing the coach throughout, but was in fear of losing her daughter for good. The paedophile who abused her duty of care is the one to be blamed because she so thoroughly screwed up this girl that it will be difficult for her to have a normal loving relationship in the future. Before rushing to make moral judgements based on the seemingly conclusive facts of "the mother did not complain for 10 months", you should be asking yourself how you would cope if you were confronted with a daughter making credible threats of suicide should you take the right action.

Hilltothevalley said...

Whilst one should be careful about basing views on the snippets of reporting, usually biased from the press, I stand by my view, given that the mother continued to allow exposure to the abuser throughout the 10 months. BTW why be anonymous?