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Octopus in the Bathtub: The Slippery Nature of Female Sex Offending  


Author:  Abby  Stein, Ph.D..


Source: Volume 07, Number 06, October/November 2006 , pp.81-84(4)




Sex Offender Law Report

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Abstract: 

Available data on the gender of offenders in sexual abuse convictions indicate that women comprise between 2% and 5% of the offender population (U.S. Dept of Justice, Women Offenders, NCJ 175688 (Bur. of Justice Statistics 1999)), only an infinitesimal climb from figures in previous decades. Low report and conviction rates may be due to widely held cultural beliefs regarding female caretaker roles, narrow legal definitions of sexual violation, and the reluctance—or downright inability—of victims to report molestations. If my own encounters with adult male sex offenders are any indication, their early experiences of victimization at the hands of women have often been psychologically reconceptualized as consensual encounters: “I did her,” such a man might say, “when I was six,” making both the quantification and qualification of data quite difficult. (Abby Stein, Prologue to Violence: Child Abuse, Dissociation, and Crime (2006).) Researchers who rely on official criminal justice statistics to tabulate the prevalence, incidence, and nature of female perpetrated sexual abuse have likely excluded the more subtle forms of female offending.

Keywords: 

Affiliations:  1: John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

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