If a young teenage boy is seduced by an older women, he's considered by some to have got lucky. If a young girl is seduced by an older man, convention says she's been raped. Getting lucky with an older - not too old - woman is many young men's fantasy, so why ever make it a big deal?

So powerful is society's need to believe males are always in control that men are condemned to play perpetual perpetrator, just as women must monopolise the role of victim. Irish courts recently heard three cases of child sex abuse by women and, excepting a case which involved extradition to the UK of a convicted female sex offender, no custodial sentence was imposed.

In the Clare case, where a 14-yearold boy was seduced by an adult female, Dr Moosajee Bhamjee told the court the woman believed she was in love. Certain media coverage maximised titillation values: the boy got lucky, the woman found romance. No problem.

The get-lucky syndrome presents adult female/young teenage boy relationships as at most an issue of unlawful sex, rather than abuse. At any rate, it argues, how can a boy have nonconsensual sex with a woman? Surely, that's a physical impossibility. Women cannot be abusers in any real sense, if stereotypes are to be believed.

But women do sexually abuse, and at a rate that may be severely underestimated in Ireland.

Fixed at either end of the Madonna-Monster axis, perceptions of women militate against their being identified as child sex abusers, whether of infants, young children or adolescents.

The most recent Irish research was first published in 1988, before the overall problem of child sex abuse had reached present terrifying levels of disclosure. That study, by McKeown and Gilligan, indicated a level of abuse by women as low as 2 per cent, with a further 7 per cent abusing when coerced by a dominant male.

Jackie Saradjian, clinical psychologist working with women abusers, and author of the mould-breaking study Women Who Sexually Abuse Children, extrapolates a far higher figure based on her clinical experience in the UK. "I estimate the female offenders rate at 2025 per cent."

If Ms Saradjian is right, hundreds of Irish men may still be grieving their lost childhoods. Many children, girls and boys, may be in abusive relationships which are not being picked up by child-care professionals, simply because female sex abuse is considered the exception, rather than a small but significant part of the rule.

Ms Saradjian finds that abuse by women tends to fall into three categories: women who abuse very young children, usually their own, over a long period of time; adolescents targeted specifically by a woman, often at a time when the teenagers are specially vulnerable; women initially coerced by men, two-thirds of whom go on to develop their own cycle of offending. Her work builds on that of Kidscape, and other UK agencies, who began whistleblowing on women abusers within the last five years.

"Abuse of adolescents tends to be gender-specific, unlike other types," Ms Saradjian explains. "The woman perceives it as a love relationship, but it is very much about power, and having control over the adolescent. Other female abusers hide their offence, but some women abusers of teenage males talk about it as if they were realising a toy-boy fantasy. In reality, the woman is in control in a way she never is with adult men."

Adolescent boys are taught to say `yes' to sex in almost any circumstances. When enticed by an adult woman, young teenage boys are less likely to describe the event as abusive than would same-age girls, if the woman is not in already in a caring relationship with them. But even though tacit social approval can lessen the negative impact, that doesn't stop it being abusive.

"Adolescent boys, who are already socialised to be male, have deeply conflicting feelings in such situations," says Dr Imelda Ryan, consultant child and adult psychiatrist. "They become visibly aroused in spite of themselves, and experience themselves as out of control. They can worry that they do not enjoy it as they believe they are supposed."

A child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr Gerard Byrne, expands. "Whereas a girl can be seen to be utterly passive and under the control of a male, the boy's involuntary sexual reflexes seem to denote willing participation. This can cause great confusion.

"If penetration takes place, he seems to be an active participant. If he dislikes the experience, he may not admit to it for fear of seeming not `normal', and particularly for fear of being homosexual. Long-term, the boy may well have persistent problems maintaining intimate relationships."

The wider outing of female sex offences is considerably less titillating than the get-lucky syndrome. Female abuse is anything but a matter of gentle cuddling, or unaggressive if inappropriate fondling. In fact, women sexually abuse in the same way as men, often accompanied by varying degrees of physical and emotional abuse.

But because sexual abuse is defined in masculine terms, as Dr Ryan explains, female abusers can remain undetected, as must their victims' pain. Cultural conditioning adds to the problem, with many people unable to accept that women engage in such offences, unless as monstrous exceptions.

"Women are seen as nurturing and protective, and for as long as sexual abuse continues to be defined in terms of masculine traits, children abused by women may not be recognised," she believes.

"My experience suggests that the rate of female abusers acting alone is higher than 2 per cent. Boys' socialisation makes them less likely to tell of abuse, and the danger is that if they have been abused by women, the response may not be empathic. We need extensive research and discussion around the whole issue."

Boys are less likely to confide that they have been victimised, and the reluctance increases when the abuser is female. Girls, too, are abused by women: they may initially present their abuse as having been perpetrated by men. But UK research confirms that victims of female sex abuse may simply not be believed. That inevitably compounds their experience of guilt and personal chaos.

Why are they not believed? Because the culture is unable to see women as predatory. "As a society we view women as asexual except in response to men's sexual initiatives," explains Ms Saradjian. "Thus we can only understand female abusers by seeing them as psychiatrically disordered, as coerced by men or as monsters.

"Many women abusers are clearly at the severe end of disturbance, but they are not mentally ill. Women frequently abuse alone, and are incredibly invasive and penetrative in the abuses they perpetrate."

Not believing is a long-established response to child sex abuse. Freud ascribed patients' stories of abuse to erotic fantasies about their parents, or other adults encountered in childhood. Even in the hip 1960s, child-care professionals were taught that the incidence was as low as one per one million population in English-speaking countries.

When taboos began to shatter, men were targeted exclusively as abusers. Myra Hindley was the exception, but the widespread view was that she was coerced by her lover, and probably was a monster anyway.

Ireland followed the general trend. Until the 1980s, child-care professionals who suspected child abuse were frequently either not believed or tacitly ignored. The last 10 years have seen a lifting of the lid of child abuse in Ireland which has horrified many people.

Scandals like the Kilkenny incest case, the Brendan Smyth case, the Goldenbridge story and the recent Mayo case alerted an initially-incredulous society to the reality of child abuse and made earlier figures read like fairytales. Could a similar reluctance to credit sexual abuse by women blind Irish society to a new horror?

A senior social worker, Kieran McGrath, believes that while there are female abusers, "the figure is a small segment of the overall child abuse figures." For him, all abuse by women raises the question of why women should be given the role of carers and nurtures so exclusively. "If the burden of child care is left to women, they are more likely to abuse in some way."

In the absence of up-to-the-minute specialised research, figures are guesstimates at best. Cian O Tighearnaigh, chief executive of the ISPCC, reckons likely female sex offenders at approximately 10 per cent on the basis of his society's broad span of services, with direct reports to Childline averaging 5 per cent. But if boys don't tell, the figures may not reflect actual experience.

Female sex abuse has devastating consequences. "It is almost certainly a greater betrayal of trust. Men are socialised to be sexually powerful and sexually initiators. But for women to abuse, they need to take a much greater step away from their socialisation," Ms Saradjian concludes.

"If a man abuses, it's likely that the child will still have access to a protective, non-abusive mother, but if a woman abuses, in particular a mother, the father is either rarely around or is himself abusive." That means the child has no nurturing court of last appeal.