Tonight the @BBCRadio4 documentary 'File On Four' made the claim that growing numbers of women are sexually abusing children. The data cannot be used to show this because police no longer record a perpetrator sex. They now record self-identified gender /1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rcq5
The vast majority of child sexual abuse is committed by the male sex. The Crime Survey for England and Wales revealed 96% of adults asked about their experiences of child sexual abuse said it involved a male perpetrator. It is unusual for a lone perpetrator to be female /3
A similar trend is seen in police crime reports. In the year up to March 2019 there were 73260 reports of child sexual abuse. The BBC says over same time period there were 2297 reports of CSA in which the perpetrator was recorded as female; representing just 3% of all reports /4
Are more women really committing child sexual abuse?
The answer is we simply don’t know. It’s impossible to make this claim from the data available /5
For starters, we don’t know if there has been a general increase in reporting of CSA or if this is an increase specific to females only. ONS notes that “police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics” and “comparisons should not be made between years" /6
The National Police Chiefs' Council says this won't make any difference to the stats. They are wrong /8
There are only 125 sex offenders recorded as female. This means the ratio of women to transwomen in prison for sexual offences is around 3:2. That’s 38% of the ‘women’ in prison for sex offending actually being transwomen /10
If this same ratio applies to police reports of child sexual abuse then 900 of the 2297 recorded as perpetrated by ‘females’ may in fact be males who identify as women. This would be enough to account for almost all of the reported increase since 2015. /11
You can follow @fairplaywomen.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled:

By continuing to use the site, you are consenting to the use of cookies as explained in our Cookie Policy to improve your experience.