BBC - female sex offenders report

Thanks OP. I saw this today and felt similarly. Words just do mean what they used to mean and then doubts creep in and then nothing is clear any more.

All sexual abuse is horrific and heartbreaking but if we don't understand who the perpetrators are, where, how, why, when - then how can society begin to put a stop to it?

Very murky. Has this been picked up on Twitter?

I forget the exact figures but the ratio of "women sex offenders" held in the female estate to "women sex offenders" (self-identifying) held in the male estate is about 3:2, IIRC. And women (held in the female estate) comprise somewhere between 1 and 2% of the total of incarcerated sex offenders.

We know that women's sex offending is under-reported - partly because sometimes their victims are pre-verbal children, sometimes it's within the family with all the coerced secrecy that involves, sometimes (where it's an adult man or teen boy) because the victim is too embarrassed to come forward.

But - and this is a very important but - we also know that male sex offending is massively under-reported, largely because women know they won't be taken seriously unless they are the "perfect victim" (and probably not even then).

So there's no evidence to suggest that there's a higher percentage of undetected female (in the biological sense) sex offenders than there are undetected male sex offenders.

So while I think sex offending by women is an issue, an under-reported one, and is heinous, I'm a bit suspicious of sudden jumps in the number of women committing these offences.

Its quite unclear from the report if they are including men in those stats or not. They do use the word female rather than women so maybe it means only women? but who can be sure nowadays? The word female is very much next on the list for appropriation and you often see it used for and by men, so who can be sure with the super woke BBC (if only someone could have seen that problem coming eh).

But in general I think the article is disengenous. They are conflating two compleatly different things. Women teachers having relationships with students is utterly reprehensible and they should be punished, but the power dynamics and mental and physical harm is not the same of a man abusing a child.

The narative that women are privilaged oppressors is destroyed by the stastics on abuse, rape and murder, and some people will do anything to muddy those waters.

How do we know the sex - we don’t. As far as I can see - this is increased from previous stats - ONS figures show in 2015 only 1.34% of prisoners sentenced for child sexual abuse as the first main offence were women. The BBCs stats double this.

this is extra interesting because combining the 1.34/3.8 percentages from 2015 and 2019 with the absolute numbers in the BBC article, it looks like the absolute numbers of (reported) child sexual abuse cases are going down. Substantially.

Unless I've calculated it wrong (extremely possible ), the total numbers have gone down from 93K to 60K. Even if I have calculated it wrong you can see the trends by just eyeballing those numbers. Hmm. Exactly how is it possible for the number of female-perpetrated crimes to have gone up 84% when total reported crimes in that category have declined substantially?

I guess the thing that never happens is happening a LOT.

Ghislane Maxwell, has not been convicted and as far as I'm aware she is accused of grooming and not sex abuse. If you want to quote a female sex abuser, there are some around. Be accurate, we have enough crap on twitter

No one will know what it means if we don't capture data accurately. But there are female sex abusers for sure. Look at Ghislane Maxwell.

What a heartbreaking area to work in.

But you're right, OP, this is a mess. We just don't know what stats or words mean anymore. Researcher has written a report on female perpetrators of CSA, but we don't know if that is including males.

BBC uses 'female' in headline, but 'gender' further down. So the word becomes utterly meaningless.

'In 2018-19, 3.8% of all child sexual abusers were female, based on police reports, Office of National Statistics data shows'

We know that police record sex according to how the perpetrator identifies. And there are definitely cases of abusers who are male but identify as female - we've seen them reported in the news.

The majority of perpetrators of sexual abuse before the age of 16 years were males

'Around 9 in 10 adults (92%) experienced sexual abuse committed by males only. A further 4% experienced sexual abuse committed by both males and females, and 4% experienced sexual abuse by females only.'

Again, though, these are taken from police records, which are based on self identified 'gender', not sex, as I understand it.

It would be very useful to hear from the researcher how she deals with this issue.

ONS stats mentioned in the report: www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/childsexualabuseinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2019#what-do-we-know-about-perpetrators-of-sexual-abuse-before-the-age-of-16-years

I made the same immediate assumption OP. Seems I was wrong in this instance but recording and reporting male crimes as female crimes - merely on the say-so of the perpetrator - will result in false stats and a loss of trust. And yet the bandwagon roles on.

Between 2015 and 2019, the numbers of reported cases of female-perpetrated child sexual abuse to police in England and Wales rose from 1,249 to 2,297 - an increase of 84%.

I heard this report also and wondered too how much the increase might be down to recording gender identity rather than sex. This is the problem when statistics become unreliable (and yes loss of trust in the BBC doesn't help).

Certainly doesn't help with hooey like this:

www.glaad.org/publications/consistent-respect-reporting-transgender-crime-suspects