Women Who Abuse - File on 4 - 19 January 8pm - BBC Radio 4.

[stumbledin]

Women Who Abuse
File on 4

Women are seen as the caring, nurturing sex, safe to be left in charge of children.

But stigma and stereotyping around female perpetrated abuse means it can be seen as a lesser crime, with many victims deeply reluctant to report their ordeal to the authorities.

Experts tell File on 4 that current case numbers are the ‘tip of the iceberg’, while the early indicators of abuse, like online grooming and social media befriending, can be brushed aside when the abuser is a woman.

File on 4 hears from adult survivors who describe decades of trauma and shame caused by their female abusers, as well as the difficulties they faced in reporting the crime.

Psychologists and campaigners say the criminal justice system urgently needs to better support victims to give evidence.

They describe how abusers are still able to take advantage of laws that leave children in informal settings, such as sports clubs and choirs, open to abuse, settings where female abusers can thrive.

And although societal perceptions of female child sexual abuse are changing, many deeply traumatised victims risk being left behind.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rcq5

See existing thread on BBC report rather than tonights programme www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4140339-BBC-female-sex-offenders-report

Should have said of course that the most fundamental error is to not check the definition of rape and therefore make a statement that cannot be true in a piece of journalism for File on Four. This is supposed to be BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs programme. If they're counting different offences under "rape" they should not be.

@PlanDeRaccordement

I think it’s more likely that the journalist is using inflammatory language and calling the 382 cases “rape” (even though that is legally not correct, they are assault by penetration) than it is for all of those 382 cases to be pre-op transwomen using their penis.

The figure is over 5 years and 35 police forces, so about 2+ cases per force per year, so not huge numbers. The description of the abuser is probably not as clear cut as 'pre-op transwoman' suggests as they just has to say they identify as a woman at that time and there could be many reasons for that.

The "true figures" with their 84% rise presented by the programme are not as well researched as you would expect and it doesn't help anyone, least of all the victims.

As I clarified on the other thread - the ONS crime survey appears to always group together "rape or assault by penetration".

HOWEVER, police statistics do not. THEY class "assault by penetration" as a subset of "sexual assault".

For the police, it is not clear that they could distinguish "assault by penetration" from other sexual assaults in stats. Whereas rape (with a penis) is a different category inherently recorded separately.

Reference here: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/877790/count-sexual-apr-2020.pdf

Excerpt example:

Where woman believes that they have been penetrated but is unsure with what, there is a presumption that it will be with a penis unless there is clear evidence that this is not the case.

4: A woman makes a complaint that she has been date raped. She believes that her vagina has been penetrated but she can not provide any further details surrounding the assault. / One crime (class 19C). / Following investigation into the offence it is established that a physical object was used and there was no penile penetration. / The FCR can reclassify the recorded rape to one crime (class 20A) (assault by penetration).

5: A woman is accosted at a party and pushed onto a bed by a suspect. Her trousers are removed and she feels her anus being penetrated. She pushes the suspect off her and discovers that the suspect is a female. / One crime (class 20A) (assault by penetration).

The tables in the ONS spreadsheet referring to police data clearly indicate that they're talking about 19A/19B/19C and 20A/20B. They'd have had to do some serious work to extract "assault by penetration" from "sexual assault" and regroup with "rape", but there's no notes suggesting they'd done that.

The "assault by penetration" note is needed for current sentencing guidelines - those have been revised to give that the same sentencing as rape, but the actual underlying laws have not, so the basic classification for the police has not been changed. (Presumably to not disrupt statistical history).

Really helpful posts Necessary thank you

Agree with all above. It just appeared to me that the journalist had not only used inflammatory language by calling assault by penetration “rape” but also when I read the BBC written report the live 4 broadcast is based on, they clearly used the ONS statistics and categories, not police force statistics. So that is another bit of journalistic mis-reporting as well.

Journalism is a shockingly undereducated profession in my opinion. You don’t need a degree to be a journalist, and even if you have a degree in journalism the degree courses are sorely lacking in basic research, statistics, scientific method and language skills.

I'm not sure that a lack of formal education is the problem, and I think in reality you'd be unlikely to get into journalism - at least mainstream journalism - now without a degree.
But I agree that something seems to be going very wrong. I'd have thought the main attributes you would need as a journalist would be curiosity and tenacity - a nose for a good story and a refusal to be fobbed off. And then you surely need to be meticulous about your facts, if only to avoid lawsuits. They all seem to be sadly lacking.

The team working on File on Four would have had plenty of time to analyse the figures, it's not a daily news programme. As journalists they must also be well aware of the current controversy around how data is recorded. To not even question whether recording gender identity rather than sex is skewing the figures in an area like this is dreadful journalism. As others have pointed out the numbers of women carrying out sex offences is so small comparatively that any inclusion of self identified females would distort the figures. Why would they not even raise this?

Just a quick response to the concept that not having a degree means you wont be a competent journalist / reporter.

The danger is in the fact those with a degree because they will have been "educated" at University that there is only gender (identity) and that sex isn't relevant.

It is exactly because of the queering of university education that we now have so must misreporting. There is a whole generation, if not two, who genuinely believe that biological sex is irrlelvant and that only gender is important.

They are the same generation who bought in the "house style" in news papers that says you cant use the word prostitute you have to say sex work.

And so on and so on.

And once the census is made fraudulent by allowing people to enter the sex they identify with, all statistics will be meaningless.

And crimes and discrimination against women because of the sex will no longer be recorded in a way that will make them reportable.

And without that women can campaign for their rights as there will be no evidence of discrimination or violence suffered because of our sex.

they clearly used the ONS statistics and categories

Just to be 100% clear - the ONS themselves produced the overall report that included both their own crime survey data and police data, and some other sources.

So some data in the ONS report was using police categories (grouping penetration with sexual assault). Other data was using ONS crime survey categories (grouping penetration with rape).

the main attributes you would need as a journalist would be curiosity and tenacity - a nose for a good story and a refusal to be fobbed off

I believe all those journalists have been fired for their refusal to be fobbed off and are now working from Substack.

I agree completely that you can be a competent journalist with no degree, but it is also true you can be an incompetent journalist with no degree because the journalism degree courses that I’ve seen are terrible. The education/training of journalists is shockingly bad.

They can’t understand basic statistics, so they don’t think to question whether gender is referring to gender id or actual sex. They take numbers of assaults by penetration or attempts from reports and then mis-label them as bona fide rapes. I can’t think of a single time over the past ten years that a news reporter has reported any scientific study correctly and accurately. They simply cannot read a scientific study and understand it much less report on it. Even when it comes to basic reporting of crimes, they don’t know the difference between a crime survey vs police reports vs actual cases of crimes. It is so frustrating!

*incompetent journalist with a degree. (Not sure why I put no degree in there the second time). Typing too fast.

If this journalist is who I think she is, then her training was old school - proper qualifications and rigorous experience. Which would make this even more puzzling.

That would be puzzling. If it’s not incompetence, then there must be an agenda or ulterior motive to it.

They can’t understand basic statistics, so they don’t think to question whether gender is referring to gender id or actual sex.

Perhaps they understand that in this case, which is based on victim reports, then self ID is irrelevent given that in some cases they won't even know who the suspect is so there won't be anyone to self ID themselves.

This report is based on figures which record the sex the victim identified their attacker as. Pretty shocking that so many people find this such a difficult concept to grasp.

Blimey, talk about tying yourself in knots. More straw clutching.

I would imagin 99.9% of rape victims have no difficulty whatsoever correctly sexing their attacker.

Or is this yet another of those instances where some people would have us believe that there are loads of transwomen out there who pass so well that a woman being forcibly held down and having a penis stuffed into her against her will thinks it might be a dildo or a strap-on?

Some people really do live in a complete fantasy world - a fantasy world which is deeply offensive to women, and rape victims in particular.

I would imagin 99.9% of rape victims have no difficulty whatsoever correctly sexing their attacker.

Dear me. Precisely, they reported their attackers as women and that's what the figures in this report reflect. If they had reported them as men they would show up in the data as men. The only possible way self ID could impact on this kind of statistics is of those convicted, because until someone has been convicted from a legal perspective no perpetrator has been identified so no perpetrator exists to self ID themselves. These figures are not based on convictions, they are based on assaults reported by the victim - that is people reported that they were attacked and that their attacker was a woman. I don't know how to spell this out in more simple terms.

This rapist was referred to as a woman during their recent rape trial. Presumably the victim was coerced by the judiciary into referring to them as a 'woman'?

www.cambstimes.co.uk/news/crime/transgender-rapist-jailed-6910204

@PlanDeRaccordement

I think it’s more likely that the journalist is using inflammatory language and calling the 382 cases “rape” (even though that is legally not correct, they are assault by penetration) than it is for all of those 382 cases to be pre-op transwomen using their penis.

Very unlikely if they’re looking at a table of statistics

Is there info on the numbers of women in women's prisons who've been convicted of csa including rape? Does the info get broken down like that?

I know there couple be a few TW in too but could comparing numbers offer an answer?

As in, look at women's prison figures and determine numbers from that approach?

(I have non idea about this stuff, just a thought as I know a lot of offending TW would be in male prisons, and we also have that data.)

@Longtalljosie
Very unlikely if they’re looking at a table of statistics

But they weren’t looking at a table of rape statistics at all. I did actually trace those reported 382 rapes from BBC 4 report which referenced the numbers came from a BBC written report, which I then went and read and that BBC report stated they got the 382 rapes figure from ONS, and I followed that link to them ONS CSEW crime survey and it showed that those surveyed reported 382 rapes and assaults by penetration or attempts by female perpetrators. So that number of 382 rapes that BBC reported, was not accurate because that number includes also assaults by penetration plus any attempted rape or assault by penetration.

@jj1968

They can’t understand basic statistics, so they don’t think to question whether gender is referring to gender id or actual sex.

Perhaps they understand that in this case, which is based on victim reports, then self ID is irrelevent given that in some cases they won't even know who the suspect is so there won't be anyone to self ID themselves.

This report is based on figures which record the sex the victim identified their attacker as. Pretty shocking that so many people find this such a difficult concept to grasp.

Pretty shocked that you don’t know of the cases where the attacker has “passed” as the opposite sex to their victims. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/12/gayle-newland-sentenced-eight-years-prison-duping-friend-having-sex