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

@TrashedWarrior

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?

Assault by penetration numbers from a crime survey versus convictions of women would get you completely different numbers.

Just think about how it is for the male equivalent crime against women which is rape:
Anonymous crime surveys show 1 in 10 women are raped in their life
But 80% never report their rape to the police. Police reports of rape therefore only reflect 20% of actual rapes. Then only 5% of police reports of rape actually result in a conviction of rape.

So to use some numbers to show you this..

1000 women report rape on a crime survey
200 will tell the police and file a report
10 rapists get convicted

So essentially, convictions only show you 1% of the true prevalence of rape.

There would also be attrition for assault by penetration done by women when following the crime statistics from anonymous crime survey to convictions. It would be completely different numbers, of course, but attrition would occur. That’s why you can’t use # convictions to say true prevalence of any crime.

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.

There are two sets of statistics here (and I think jj1968 knows this because he's working so hard to be selective - you can't avoid the truth with such precision without knowing what it is). I'd hope no-one else is trying to confuse this.

Some are based on the ONS crime survey figures which were reported by victims, and hence would be the victims' statement about sex, not self-ID, as jj1968 says.

Others, including the "382 rapes" mentioned a few times, are reported by police, so would be based on self-ID given what police have told us, and by "rape" the police do specifically mean "with a penis" anyway because "penetration" is filed under general "sexual assault" by them.

PlanDeRaccordment - can you point me to the source of the "382 rapes"? I've not found the primary thing, only discussion.

You said:

"ONS says that child sex abuse is recorded by police forces in 3 categories:
“Three types of sexual abuse are defined by the CSEW: non-contact sexual abuse, rape or assault by penetration (including attempts), and other contact sexual abuse.”

But those two statements do not tally - that's saying (accurately) how the ONS crime survey groups them. Police figures do not group rape and assault by penetration together - they treat assault by penetration as a type sexual assault.

So is the 382 from ONS CSEW figures (I can't see it in them), or police figures?

@NecessaryScene1

PlanDeRaccordment - can you point me to the source of the "382 rapes"? I've not found the primary thing, only discussion.

You said:

"ONS says that child sex abuse is recorded by police forces in 3 categories:
“Three types of sexual abuse are defined by the CSEW: non-contact sexual abuse, rape or assault by penetration (including attempts), and other contact sexual abuse.”

But those two statements do not tally - that's saying (accurately) how the ONS crime survey groups them. Police figures do not group rape and assault by penetration together - they treat assault by penetration as a type sexual assault.

So is the 382 from ONS CSEW figures (I can't see it in them), or police figures?

Hello Necessary. This may take a few posts because the BBC article is a mess.

Yes you are correct the two statements do not tally. In my initial post, I was repeating what I’d read from the BBC article
“In 2018-19, 3.8% of all child sexual abusers were female, based on police reports, Office of National Statistics data shows”
www.bbc.com/news/uk-55338745

But then I went to the ONS and realised, the 3.8% number is not based on police reports but the CSEW crime survey table 13. Hence my rant about journalists not knowing difference between police reports and crime surveys. See link and screen shot.
www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fcrimeandjustice%2fdatasets%2fchildsexualabuseappendixtables%2fyearendingmarch2019/childsexualabuseappendixtablescorrection.xlsx

Yeah, that's the table I found, and I assume it's their 3.8%. But actually it says that 3.8%+4.5%=8.3% had experienced an assault by 1 or more females, as there is that "4.5% both male and female" box. Either way, that's not the same as 3.8% or 8.3% being the percentage of abusers that are female.

Can't find source of the "382" anywhere in that sheet though - I infer it may have come from a separate set of queries to police?

Thanks for the explanation Plan

Sorry to disappear. My WiFi went down last night due to the storm.

Exactly, the 3.8% is percent of victims that had a female perpetrator.

Yes I couldn’t find the 382 rapes by women either i thought I had when just eyeballing, but today when I did the math manually it came out at 389 not 382.

I thought they’d gone to the police data table 35b and added the rape numbers for 19D, 19E,19G and 19H which gives you 4,524 child rapes over two years. But the reporter seemed to be saying “since 2016 382 child rapes by women” so I thought they’d multiplied that by 2, and then by 4.3% (from table 13, % of female only added male plus female under column 3 for rape, penetration by assault or attempts) = 389 victims with female or female and male perpetrators.

But again, it’s not rape so you can’t take police numbers for child rape which are 100% by male perpetrators and then apply a CSEW % linked to a completely different categorisation of crime and is a survey,....

But that is how I thought they’d come up with the number, maybe they did 382 isn’t far off 389. But who know what they did? Given they couldn’t report the 3.8% correctly they could have done any number of calculations that any one trained in statistics would know you cannot do.

Maybe they did get it from separate inquiry with police but I doubt It?
The other published numbers wouldn’t add up. For example they said that 3.1m people are victims of CSA, and 2% of these are victims of rape or penetration by assault or attempts, which is 62,000 victims and if from their own data only 4.3% of these people had a female perpetrator, then that is 2,666. But 2,666 is not an annual figure it’s every adult in the U.K. who experienced this in their childhood. So we’re talking people aged 18 to 100+. So that number spans at least eighty years. If it were 382 every year, that number would be more like 30,000 not 2,666. So I think real number is more like ~30/yr assault by penetration or attempt. That’s not even parsing out attempts! Too. To be properly accurate we’d have to discount attempts. But there is no data distinguishing between the two.

I know we know this is why female offenders are increasing but read this: https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/dundee/1900504/woman-had-child-abuse-material-on-mobile-phone/

If you google this sick pervert, they are referred to as a woman in every single news report. But they're not female, they're male.

I know that because I looked up the register of their birth to be 100% sure. Is this really what we have to do to prove that these are not our crimes?

I thought they’d multiplied that by 2, and then by 4.3%

I think you're reaching far too hard here. I really doubt we can expect journalists to do anything more than adding a couple of boxes together, at most. (And they didn't even do that for "female" and "male + female").

I saw a FOI request (to police?) mentioned by a PP, which is why I thought maybe it was from that.

I believe your 62,000 is far too low, and hence everything after is out. I don't know where your "2%" came from.

Table 1 has the population estimate figures (adults aged 18-74 who experienced abuse before 16). We see the 3.1m there in "any sexual abuse". And below that is 805,000 for "rape or assault by penetration (including attempts)". And it's 697k women, 112k men.

So redoing your maths attempts - we're looking at 805,000 people who suffered 1 or more (attempted) rape/abp. Age range was 18-74, so that's 57 cohort years, so 14,100 people per each year of birth. So with each person suffering 1 rape/abp at some point in their childhood, that would average to 14,100 per year.

So we've got a lower estimate of 14,100 acts or attempts by either sex annually (if 1 per victim), and this much other (annual?) number of 382 convictions(?) of "women".

So I think the numbers are actually consistent, we just don't really know the proper details of the 382.

The 2% came from a CSEW which said that 2% of the victims of CSA are victims of rape or assault by penetration or attempts. The CSEW also said that (extrapolated from the survey) 3.1m U.K. adults were victims of CSA.

Yeah I agree I am probably reaching too far by thinking they’d add four boxes and do a few multiplications. I’m agree with you, can’t figure out where they got the 382 number from.

So we've got a lower estimate of 14,100 acts or attempts by either sex annually (if 1 per victim), and this much other (annual?) number of 382 convictions(?) of "women"

Ah 57 cohort years, missed that. So if we suppose the 382 could br convictions? But that makes no sense also because convictions for rape usually run around 1% of the number of rapes reported in the CSEW.

I’m starting to think it’s a made up number.

The 2% came from a CSEW which said that 2% of the victims of CSA are victims of rape or assault by penetration or attempts.

Ah, I see where that came from now. No, that 2% was percentage of the population.

In the year ending March 2019, the CSEW estimated that 3% of adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced non-contact sexual abuse before the age of 16 years. Around twice as many experienced contact sexual abuse (6%). Within this category, rape or assault by penetration, including attempts, was less common than other contact sexual abuse (2% compared with 6%).

Data presented in table 2.

But that makes no sense also because convictions for rape usually run around 1% of the number of rapes reported in the CSEW.

Well, it's 3%. It's vaguely possible, but it does seem high compared to that, especially if it's supposed to be the female conviction figure. The male convictions would have to hit like >30% which feels implausible.

On the other hand the ~1% figure is about adult rape, no? That has problems about identifying the attacker and/or proving non-consensuality. Those wouldn't apply to CSA. So maybe CSA conviction rates could be higher. But yes, surely not that high.

Have just seen this

Fact check: Are more women really sexually abusing children?
fairplayforwomen.com/sex_data_wrong/

Thank you Necessary, I did mean it was % population by saying it was extrapolated from the same % in the survey. Sorry to not be clear.

Exactly, feels too high to be plausible.