APPENDIX 3.2
FEMALE SEX OFFENDERS AND FEMALE PEDOPHILES
There is a very large sex difference in sexual offending, with females accounting for fewer than 5% of adult sex offenders (for reviews, see Atkinson, 1995; Grayston & De Luca, 1999; see also Greenfeld, 1996; Motiuk & Vuong, 2002) and fewer than 10% of adolescent sex offenders (Hornick, Bolitho, & LeClaire, 1994). The proportions of female sex offenders may be higher, however, among those who have offended against children compared with those who have offended against peers or adults. A reporting or prosecution bias does not fully account for this sex difference in sexual offending (see Finkelhor & Russell, 1984). Consistent with Trivers’s (1972) parental investment theory, men are more likely to be motivated by a desire for novel sexual partners, more interested in youthfulness in potential sexual partners, and more likely to use coercion to obtain sex than are women (see Buss & Schmidt, 1993;
chap. 1
, this volume; Lalumière, Harris, Quinsey, & Rice, 2005; Symons, 1979).
The literature on female sex offenders consists mostly of small descriptive studies and case reports (e.g., Faller, 1995). It was initially thought that many female sex offenders were accomplices of male offenders such as their husband or boyfriend and participated as a result of pressure by their partner (for a review, see Atkinson, 1995). In fact, the data suggest that the majority of women who commit sexual offenses do so on their own. These studies also indicate that the majority offend against young children, especially those who are in their care. Oral–genital or digital–genital contact is the most common form of sexual contact. Girl victims are more common than boy victims, and girl victims tend to be younger than boy victims, as they are for male offenders against children (Lewis & Stanley, 2000).
Wiegel, Abel, and Jordan (2003) analyzed questionnaire data from a U.S. nationwide sample of 242 women who admitted to committing a sexual offense. The majority (70%) had sexually offended against a child (age unspecified); the rest had engaged in obscene telephone calls or acts of bestiality, exhibitionism, or voyeurism. Just over one half of the respondents acknowledged having a single victim, although a small minority (10%) of the women admitted to sexual offenses against five or more children. The average age of onset of their sexual offending was 19 years. Approximately one fifth (17%) of the women who admitted sexually offending against a child had victimized their own child, and 35% had offended against a niece or nephew. Only 4% of the women had sexually offended against a stranger. These victim characteristics are comparable to those reported for male pedophilic sex offenders. Finally, approximately one third of the women reported being sexually aroused by male or female children, with slightly more admitting to an interest in boys than in girls; a larger proportion of the respondents were aroused by male or female adolescents and were therefore unlikely to be pedophiles.
Some female sex offenders clearly meet the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia. Fedoroff, Fishell, and Fedoroff (1999) described several women who reported having sexual fantasies about children or reported feeling sexually aroused while engaging in nonsexual acts with children. For example, one woman admitted feeling sexually aroused while play wrestling with her 8-year-old nephew. Another woman reported herself to child protective services after she fellated her 1- and 3-year-old sons, and she admitted that she had sexually fantasized about the boys. Several other women were identified by Fedoroff et al. as potentially pedophilic, but the brief case descriptions are not convincing.
Chow and Choy (2002) described a woman who offended against two girls she was babysitting, both age 4, when she was 18 and 23 years old. This woman met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(4th ed., text revision; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) criteria for pedophilia: She admitted to having had sexual fantasies about girls who were ages 3 or 4 since she was a child herself (as well as sexual fantasies about adult women and men) and admitted feeling sexually aroused while bathing the girls she was babysitting. She denied any sexual interest, however, in her two young sons. In both incidents, she performed oral sex on the girls, and in the second incident, she masturbated to orgasm while thinking about the sexual acts she had committed. At the time of the assessment, the woman reported having sexual fantasies or feeling sexually aroused by children 12 times a month. Chow and Choy concluded, “In many ways, her history resembled that of men with pedophilia” (p. 213).
A. J. Cooper, Swaminath, Baxter, and Poulin (1990) described the psychophysiological assessment of a female sex offender with child victims. She did not discriminate between sexual stimuli depicting children or adults, using a measure of genital sexual arousal in women (vaginal photoplethysmography, or vaginometry, based on relative vasocongestion of the vaginal wall, just as phallometry measures vasocongestion of the penis). It is interesting that this woman also did not distinguish between depictions of coercive and consensual sex. It is possible that female sex offenders against children will not show age preferences in their genital responses, as male sex offenders against children do, given the results of research by Chivers and her colleagues demonstrating that lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women show nonspecificity in their genital arousal to depictions of males or females, despite self-reported sexual arousal that corresponds to their stated sexual orientation (Chivers, 2003; Chivers & Bailey, 2005; Chivers, Rieger, Latty, & Bailey, 2004).
A few case studies outside of clinical or correctional settings were reported in a special issue of the journal Paidika
(Sax & Deckwilz, 1992), which focused on female adults who had sex with or fantasized about sex with minors (e.g., Sandfort, 1992). “Judith” was 31 and met a 13-year-old girl at a party she catered; they began a relationship that lasted for approximately 18 months. Conversely, “Heidi” described a passionate relationship that she had with an adult teacher when she was 13. The editors suggested that these women–girl relationships were less genitally focused and less orgasm focused and were in fact more passionate than explicitly sexual (e.g., involving caresses, kisses, and other erotic touching). The ages of the children involved suggest these adult women were not pedophiles.
Fromuth and Conn (1997) conducted a survey of 546 female college students regarding their lifetime sexual experiences with children at least 5 years younger than they were. Of those surveyed, 4% acknowledged having at least one such experience: Most (92%) of these experiences involved physical contact, usually touching and kissing. The average age of the respondent at the time of the sexual contact with a younger child was 12, and the average age of the child was 6. Some of the women (13%) claimed they did not initiate the sexual contact. Contrary to the data available for women who were charged or convicted for sexual offenses, the majority of the children these women reported contacting were boys (70%). None of these incidents were detected by the police or other authorities. Women who had sexual contact with a child were more likely to report any sexual attraction or sexual fantasies about children compared with women who denied any such contact with a child (18% vs. 5%).
An apparent paradox in the female sex offender literature is the proportion of women who are charged with or convicted for having sexual contact with young boys compared with the proportion of adult male sex offenders who report experiencing childhood sexual abuse by a female perpetrator (for a review, see Denov, 2003). This contradiction might be explained by an ascertainment bias such that many female perpetrators are not detected because their male victims do not report the sexual offenses or by a self-report bias on the part of male offenders. More research is needed to determine the extent of sexual offenses against children by women and the role of sexual abuse by a female perpetrator in the etiology of sexual offending.
