[5] Rush observed the problem of childhood sexual abuse as a psychiatric social worker at the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children[6] and at a facility for delinquent female adolescents, although at the time—during the 1950s and 1960s—such therapists were instructed to avoid discussing incest with their young patients because of prevailing Freudian theories.
[7] Rush's NYRF Rape Conference presentation about incest and childhood sexual abuse reviewed psychiatric and psychoanalytical literature from Freud to that time that attributed such problems to children's seduction of adults or erotic fantasies.
She then linked these prevailing psychiatric theories about the child's instigation of or erotic fantasies about incest and sexual abuse to maintaining a climate for the political and psychological oppression of women.
As Rush concluded in her presentation the "sexual abuse of children..is an unspoken but prominent factor in socializing and preparing the female to accept a subordinate role: to feel guilty, ashamed, and to tolerate through fear, the power exercised over her by men.
[1] She was to conclude her feminist work between 2002 and 2005 as chair of New York City NOW's Older Women's Committee where she organized against Republican presidential and congressional efforts to reduce budget deficits by reining in Social Security and Medicare benefit costs.