Interview: Dana Fowley, Rape victim

IT IS the simplest word in the world, the most natural. Almost every language on earth has developed a word for mother that is closely linked to the first distinguishable sounds a human baby makes. Ma, mama, mae, ami. That's how instinctive we feel the concept of mother is. But Dana Fowley is struggling. The word will not form easily on her lips. It requires effort. "I hate saying the word mum," she says. "I hate it."

Betrayal is only possible by people of whom we have expectations. There are few more instinctive expectations than those a child has of its mother. Dana Fowley was just five when her stepfather, Billy King, first sexually abused her when they were alone together. The next day, she was relieved to see her mother, Caroline Dunsmore, at home when she arrived back from school. Her mother had never been very warm, but Dana noticed how strangely cold her eyes were that day. Dunsmore held her own child down while King raped her again.

Last year, the case of Vanessa George, the nursery worker convicted of abusing children in her care, brought the subject of female abusers to public attention. George's case was shocking because it seemed so unusual. In fact, Childline has recorded a 132 per cent increase in children reporting abuse by women in the last five years. In 2004, 993 children told the charity they had been abused by a woman. In 2009, that figure had risen to 2,142 and 445 of those cases were in Scotland. "The majority of sexual abuse is perpetrated by men," acknowledges Dr Lisa Bunting, a senior researcher with the NSPCC, "but you do no service whatsoever to victims if you don't acknowledge abuse by women. What do you do when those cases occur if you can't get your head round it?"