There has been an 80% increase in sexual abuse by women over the past few years. Apparently.

[Bellaisoneluckywoman]

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....

Is it this one?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rcq5

Do keep escalating it OP. I've heard of some success but you have to keep going. You can also complain to OFCOM but I'm not sure how that works, I imagine you have to keep going with the BBC complaints system until you reach a dead end.

Interested to hear how you get on.

How about More or Less? www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/40zRcKypd3lHBNWl0xWJYMF/contact-us They always dig into statistics.

It was in the papers 2 or 3 years back as well.

Header women sex offenders on massive increase.

What I find really shit is that the stats can't tell us-

Whether it's to do with gender and so not as presented. And so on the news it just gives ammo to MRAs.

Or

If it's female offenders in which case it's also important to know. As clearly that would be a big change and looking into who/ circs etc to try and understand and hopefully reduce is really important.

The lack of interest in why. Tells me that the media know why really.

Yes, EmbarassingHadrosaurus, that's the one.

Well done OP, I remember discussing this with my OH at the time.

Worth persisting with.

Well done OP

Don't bother with More or Less. Even though I'm a fan of the programme it's clear they're going to avoid this like the plague until the majority of the BBC has started to re-engage with proper journalism.

Fair play for Women looked into the claim that there has been a dramatic increase in women sexually abusing children over the last couple of years.

The fact is that we can’t know whats happening, as the recorded statistics are not clear about sex. It may just reflect the increase in male child abusers and rapists claiming to be female.

fairplayforwomen.com/sex_data_wrong/

NiceGerbil - exactly!!!! It matters either way. If this increase really does reflect a dramatic change in female behaviour (suspect unlikely, but let's keep an open mind) then we urgently need to understand what's behind it to try to address the root of the problem.

As you say - suspect we all know what's behind it.

The crime stats are just nonsense now. It makes me apoplectic with rage - but also utterly bewildered by how we have ended up here.

Don't get me started on how on earth one is supposed to vote......

The refusal to collect decent stats- sex and gender- on anything at all is a big sign that none of this is about actually helping trans people.

As it removes the ability to analyse any data by trans status and understand better about where live, how old, what issues etc etc etc

I think I might approach More or Less too - even though I suspect they won't go near it. Bottom line: if people are just silent about the issue then the assumption will be that everyone is fine with it. If anyone else has the energy (and I know it's hard to muster sometimes) then I'd encourage you to join me so they are inundated. Will be harder for them to ignore indefinitely, and it may just be that Nolan is nudging the oil tanker.

@nauticant

Don't bother with More or Less. Even though I'm a fan of the programme it's clear they're going to avoid this like the plague until the majority of the BBC has started to re-engage with proper journalism.

I only listen occasionally so am not sure of the backgound. Are you saying that because they've not done anything so far or because they have actively refused to in the past? The BBC does seem to be more willing to look at these issues recently and it would be perfect for their very objective format,

I just wish women would stop raping other women with their penis'...

Full fact have also not gone near this topic so far as I know. They tend to look at news, so maybe not current enough, but you could ask?

As someone whose mother handed her out to be raped by her many boyfriends, it really makes me angry that they’d fuck up stats like this.

There are different issues that go with being victimised by a woman. If these is dramatically increasing we need to know and we need specific support in place for that. Because there’s very little outside of survivors first hand accounts to help.

If this is male ‘women’ doing this then how ducking dare they disregard my trauma this way.

The ‘women do this to’ stings so much from the POV of the a victim of this very rare reality.

@BloodinGutters you make an important point. I'm sorry to hear what you went through

[quote Mumteedum]@BloodinGutters you make an important point. I'm sorry to hear what you went through[/quote]
Ty.

Wish I hadn’t had the typos there!

It’s a real problem from a safeguarding POV from so many reasons.

But as someone who grew up terrorised by what seemed to me an all powerful mother, who fucked with my head in so many ways not just this one, my fear of her still remains completely. Yet I’m not the least bit scared by other women in single sex spaces. But I am by men.

I’m well aware women very very rarely do this and that men do and that they have a very different physical strength to women.

It’s not at all the same thing from a safeguarding perspective, even for someone whose been victim of a female predator.

@PaleBlueMoonlight

Full fact have also not gone near this topic so far as I know. They tend to look at news, so maybe not current enough, but you could ask?

Their sole fact check was 3.5 years ago. Full Fact has body swerved the topic ever since.

fullfact.org/health/young-trans-people/

I would try More or Less. There is a sea change going on at the BBC, even if the tide isn't fully in yet. They could talk to Professor Alice Sullivan from UCL who was involved in the fight to get the ONS to collect data on sex in the census earlier this year, not just gender. She was very vocal and articulate on why accuracy on this kind of data matters.

This is the kind of query people take to More or Less and it's a very important statistic to understand.

Either there is a significant and worrying change in female behaviour in perpertrating sexual harm against children, or male born people are being included in the category if women and skewing the data. Either option needs to be fully understood as part of the fight against this type of crime. How can resources, prevention, detection etc all be properly targeted if we have no grasp of what's actually going on?

FWIW, I found their investigation into the numbers of periods women have fascinating!

MBM Policy have just published this report about data collecting in Scotland. Click through to download the full report.
murrayblackburnmackenzie.org/2021/11/04/diminishing-the-value-of-public-sector-data-how-the-chief-statisticians-guidance-lost-sight-of-biological-sex/

In it, their FOI requests show the Equality and Human Rights Commission tried to prevent people questioning whether a rise in the number of female sex offenders could be down to recording perpetrators by self identified genderrsther than sex.

In one draft of guidence data processors were advised that if there were surprising results in data, for example an increase of women on boards, or as sex offenders, then the researchers should look into why this is, and consider the possibility that it was a result of self id data collection.

The EHRC annotated the draft saying this was an offensive example that suggested trans women were sex offenders.

Why are they so thick and dishonest? It simply suggests that male ppl are more likely to be sex offenders. Which is true. They would rather have misleading data on sex offences.

In one draft of guidence data processors were advised that if there were surprising results in data, for example an increase of women on boards, or as sex offenders, then the researchers should look into why this is, and consider the possibility that it was a result of self id data collection.

The EHRC annotated the draft saying this was an offensive example that suggested trans women were sex offenders.

Bari Weiss' resignation letter has many phrases that would apply here. To borrow them:

If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Twitter is not on the masthead of [The EHRC]. But Twitter has become its ultimate [arbiter]. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the [EHRC], the [EHRC], itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories [and causes] are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.

nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back.

www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

I wonder how many of those women have penises.

Surely there is data that shows how many women committed sex crimes by year, and data that shows how many people identified as trans women by year?

I strongly suspect that there would be a clear correlation between increased number of women committing sex crimes and the numbers of extra trans women.

I believe that it is entirely reasonable - as a starting point - to assume -

(1) That being trans does not make someone less likely to commit a sex offence than others of their sex. In fact is is probably reasonable to assume that they are more likely given the links between porn and sexual offending and porn and trans.
and
(2) therefore that a massive increase in women sex offenders at the same time as a massive increase in numbers of trans women is highly likely to be a direct result of men calling themselves women int he numbers.

That is the assumption, do we have evidence to confirm what we reasonably believe to be true, or do we research further and find our reasonable assumptions were wrong?

eg - illustrative numbers (all made up!!!)

1 in 100 men are sex offenders.
1 in 10,000 women are sex offenders.

1m women means 100 women's sex offences.
But then 8,000 men decide to claim to identify as trans women
This means 80 new women's sex offences.
180 total = 80% increase.

I would be entirely unsurprised if the numbers looked something like that. I would also be unsurprised if they were the same as above apart from -

1m women means 100 women's sex offences.
But then 4,000 men decide to claim to identify as trans women
This should means 40 new women's sex offences, but it turns out trans women offend at double the rate of other men, so there are actually 80 new offences
180 total = 80% increase.