As a mom of a boy, I am always so genuinely annoyed with “boy mom” stereotypes. You know the ones. The mothers who idolize their boys so much, they simultaneously infantilize them their whole lives while pretending they are the leaders, protectors, and providers society believes they should be. These moms are the ones who wear white to his wedding and hate that their son could ever prioritize another woman. These are the fools that give us the bad reputation that we don’t deserve.
I would take 100 of them, however, over Aimee Louise Sword, a Michigan mom who gave her son up for adoption only to sexually abuse him years later, according to The Mirror.
In 2009, Sword was arrested after the alleged rape of a 14-year-old boy who was biologically her son.
The boy testified in court in 2010 that the mom, who gave her son up for adoption when he was an infant, tracked him down on Facebook in May of 2008 per the New Haven Register. He was living with his adoptive family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the time. They reportedly met up at a hotel and had sexual relations in Grand Rapids and later had sex at Sword’s brother’s home in Waterford.
She had been receiving yearly updates about her son and reached out when she didn’t get one.
The family agreed to let them meet at the hotel and spend time together in her family home.
“When she saw this boy, something touched off in her, it wasn’t a mother-son relationship, it was a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship,” CBS News reported Sword’s attorney, Mitchell Ribitwer, told The New York Daily News at the time of the court case. “Aimee’s searching for a reason why this happened. She can’t understand it. She’s going to get some counselling.”
The family learned of the incident after the boy reported it to a counselor. After her arrest, Dr. Gerald Shiener, chief of Consultation and Liaison Psychiatry at Sinai Grace Hospital in Detroit, told My Fox Detroit he was “repulsed” by the case.
“I don’t think I’ve heard of another case like this in my career,” he told the outlet at the time. “Our first reaction to hearing about something like this is that this is every man’s nightmare. It’s an abomination. I’m at a loss for words because it’s something that we consider to be so out of the normal, so prohibited in every culture that it unnerves every man just to think about it.”
On July 13, 2010, Sword, who is a mother of five other children, pleaded guilty to the sexual encounter.
“I am remorseful for everything that occurred … I don’t understand it,” The Daily Star reported she said in court, speaking to her sister and children.
Her other children were removed from her home, although no claims of sexual abuse were ever reported by them. Sword received a sentence of nine to 30 years in prison.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, the National Sexual Assault Hotline provides confidential 24/7 support. Call 800-656-HOPE (4673) or chat online at RAINN.
