Kitten getting beaten up

Ok, I'm at my wits end!!!

My kitten is 7 weeks now and still my 6 month old wants to beat the hell out of her.

He just attacks her and bites and holds her by the neck, whilst using his back legs to kick her.
She squeales so loud so I separated them.

How do I know if he is really hurting her or not?

At the moment I have been putting her in the cat carrier and letting him sniffing around it and he sticks his paws through the bars and she slaps his paws with her hands and tries to bite, and he just tries to bite through the bars.

What do I do??

I want her to be able to have access to the house but I can't do that unless I lock him up in a room and that doesn't seem fair to him either!!!

Help!

She is awfully young to be interacting with him. You need to keep her separate in another room until she can take care of herself- he is showing mating/dominance behavior is he neutered?

She is separate for 99% of the time.

He is neutered - About 2 weeks ago.

I want to let her explore the house - i.e. get used to stairs etc, but do I lock him in a room to give her a few hours outside of her room?

For now I would put the older cat in a room while you let the new kitten have sometime to explore your house.7 weeks is still young to interact with your older cat if he is picking on her.Shes to little to defend herself. Im sure in time if you take the introduction slowly they will get along fine.

What you describe with the back legs kicking, is play. He isn't purposely hurting her, but i agree that she's too young to interact with him at this point.
He's trying to engage her in play and it's obviously scaring her. You could try to play hard with him for about 30 mins, then introduce the kitten to him when he's worn out already. This may keep him from getting too wild with her.

If he was socialized properly as a kitten, he should learn fairly quickly what her limits are during rough housing. If he's a slow learning, you'll have to continue to seperate them.

Good luck!

Thanks guys!

I think he is well socialised - I mean, he doesn't stick the claws in when he is "fighting" with us or friends. And he rarely bites (sometimes he does, but only in play and never hard)

When he is kicking her, and biting the look on his face is especially intense and looks agressive. It looks like he wants to hurt her....Hmmm...Might ask the vet for some advice as well.

I will put him in the bedroom and let her wander round the house for a while so she can get her bearings and learn to negotiate stairs etc - This way she'll be better equiped when I introduce them when she's a bit bigger!

If he was just neutered two weeks ago, then he still has testosterone in his system - so it could also be very early mating behavior as well. As Kai has mentioned, the back leg kicks are probably based in play, but this kind of behavior is also used to subdue the "victim" (used in the wild to open the gut).