"Sexual abuse of natural children by their father is rather unusual. Generally it's a stepfather."
What you say may be true, (see below) natural parents sexually do abuse their children true, but what would cause a wife to kill her husband? Finding out about an adulterous affair? I doubt it. Wife abuse? Unless it's continuous over time. I doubt it. Sexual or physical abuse of a child? Most definitely.
This is from:http://www.fathersforlife.org/fv/child_abuse_roles_of_sexes.htm
Rates of Child Abuse in the U.K.
Child sexual abuse takes place within 4% of families (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children — NSPCC),
About 1% of children are abused by a parent (NSPCC),
About 3% of children are abused by other relatives, with brothers or stepbrothers by far the largest category (NSPCC),
About 13-14% of sexual abuse involves non-relatives - which is to say, people outside the family. (NSPCC),
Sexual abuse occurs mainly in families that have broken or reconstituted; marriage is actually the best protector for children. (NSPCC)
Children are 20 to 33 times safer when they live with their biological parents than when they live in any other type of household. (NSPCC)
Non-biological fathers were almost four times as likely as natural fathers to sexually abuse children in their care. (A 1989 study by the University of Iowa of 2,300 cases of sexual abuse)
Although mothers’ boyfriends contributed less than 2% of non-parental child care, they committed almost half of all the child abuse by non-parents. (Unidentified study)
The risk of children being killed by a stepparent was 50 to 100 times higher than at the hands of a biological parent. (American sociobiologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson)
Preschool age children not living with both parents were 40 times more likely to be sexually abused than those who were. "The presence of a stepparent is the best epidemiological predictor of child abuse yet discovered." (American sociobiologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson)
The natural two-parent family was in a significant minority in every category of child abuse. This was even more remarkable since the majority of children lived in such families. (in Britain in 1994 by Robert Whelan, of the Family Education Trust, drawing on research by the NSPCC and the Family Court Reporter, Whelan)
Children living with a lone mother were at more than three times the risk of abuse than children living with their two natural parents (Robert Whelan, 1994)
Children living with their natural mother and a father substitute were at more than eight times the risk. (Robert Whelan, 1994)
If both natural parents were cohabiting, the risk to the child was as much as 20 times greater than if the parents were married. (Robert Whelan, 1994)
Such details about the marital status of families are no longer available in official statistics. "It’s impossible now to find out about the relative risks of biological and non-biological parents because Whitehall no longer wants them to be collected. What’s needed is a proper research study which will give us the marital status of families involved in child abuse." (Robert Whelan, 1994)
Physical abuse is more common than sexual abuse in families, and it is mothers - not fathers - who are most likely to be violent to their children. The group defines such violence as being hit with a hard implement or a fist, kicked hard, shaken, thrown or knocked down, beaten up, choked, burnt or threatened with a knife or a gun. Some 11% of children studied had been the victims of such violence, with 49% of them saying that their attacker was their mother and 40% saying that the attacker was their father. (NSPCC)
American reports indicate that physical abuse is most likely to occur among lone mothers. In one such survey, unwed mothers reported a rate of "very severe violence" toward their children that was 71 times higher than the rate among mothers who lived with fathers. (Unidentified reports mentioned in the ZENIT article Traditional Families Protect Kids Best)
Mothers tend to spend more time than fathers with their children; and unwed mothers are under extra pressure because they have to rear children without assistance, and also because they are likely to be poor. (Richard Gelles, a leading American expert on family violence)
Child Maltreatment in the United Kingdom — A Study of the Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect, by NSPCC, Summary
>> "Sexual abuse of natural children by their father is rather unusual. Generally it's a stepfather." <<
I'm Catholic. Around these parts, sexual abuse by a Father... Aw, no nevermind... I better not.
I'm afraid I find some of those statistics hard to believe. I know many sexually abused women, and most of them were abused my natural fathers living at home. You wouldn't believe how many. I think something about my personality draws them to me, like I'm "safe" or something.
I'm not saying that I necessarily know a representative sample; I certainly wouldn't say most women who are abused are abused by natural fathers, even though that's what my anecdotal evidence suggests. But I simply know waaaaay to many abused by natural fathers to believe that there are 40 TIMES more who are abused by step-fathers.
On the other hand, NOT ONE of the women I know had a mother who became aware of it and intervened. So I wonder if what really is true is that biological fathers' closer ties to the rest ofthe families keeps such things in the dark.