Wondering if anyone else heard/remembers a File on Four episode from Jan this year, which claimed that there had been more than an 80% increase in sexual abuse perpetrated by women over the past few years.
An absolutely staggering statistic, I think you'll agree. I was so shocked I wrote to File on Four, Feedback and Woman's Hour about it. No reply from Feedback or WH - and a very curt, bordering on hostile reply from File on Four not answering my Q and implying that I was transphobic for even asking the Q. Here is the email I sent them:
Dear File on Four Team,
I was extremely shocked by last night’s episode of File on Four in which it was claimed that sexual abuse perpetrated by women had risen by 80% over the past few years.
It does seem a sudden and unexpected trend development so I wanted to dig a little further and try to understand what is going on.
Please could you let me know whether or not your definition of women includes trans women and/or men who have self ID’d as women. If so - are you able to strip out those individuals and look at the statistics just for natal women?
I stress that I am not being transphobic, I just want to grasp what these statistics are telling us.
I think it is vital that statistics are accurate and do not mislead - so am very much hoping you can clear this up for me.
Kind regards,
Following the Nolan Investigates exposure of the Stonewall issue and today's interview with Prof. Kathleen Stock on WH, I've written to WH again to see if they'd like to dig into this.
Data are utterly meaningless if we don't understand what they show/say. Anyone else fancy joining me in urging WH to look at what is behind this statistic? Or indeed in pushing the makers of the original programme to explain their own data set? I'm hoping that there might be a chink of light post the Nolan podcast. Perhaps I'm deluded, but I"m not giving up....