Mon, Oct 05, 2009 page6

• Many child-sex offenders are women

  ‘HIGHLY POSSIBLE’ Research shows that as many as 20 percent of suspected pedophiles in the UK are women, who also tend to be younger than male offenders

  • THE OBSERVER
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  Child sex abuse by women is significantly more widespread than previously realized, with experts estimating that there could be up to 64,000 female offenders in Britain.

  Researchers from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation (LFF), a child protection charity that deals with British female sex offenders, said its studies confirmed that a “fair proportion” of child abusers were women. Donald Findlater, director of research and development, said results indicated that up to 20 percent of a conservative estimate of 320,000 suspected UK pedophiles were women.

  The release of the figures comes days after a nursery school worker in the south coast city of Plymouth, Vanessa George — together with Angela Allen from Nottingham and Colin Blanchard from Rochdale — pleaded guilty to sexually abusing young children.

  “There was some suggestion it was only blokes that sexually abused children. Over time those arguments have fallen aside and people have had to wake up to the fact that actually, sadly, there is a fair proportion of women abusing as well,” Findlater said.

  There are 32,000 names on the sex offenders register. But LFF researchers say the real number could be 10 times that. Provisional studies suggest between 5 percent and 20 percent are women.

  The calculations put the number of female child-sex offenders in the UK at between 48,000 and 64,000, a figure Findlater describes as “highly possible.”

  “The problem is far bigger than conviction rates and, if you look at survivor studies, you end up with a very different story about the scale of the problem of female sexual abuse,” he said.

  Detectives at Scotland Yard’s pedophile unit, meanwhile, disclosed that they had detected an “increased prevalence” of female offenders. London Metropolitan police sources said quantifying the number of pedophiles was problematic, but there were likely to be hundreds of thousands.

  Steve Lowe, director of Phoenix Forensic Consultants, which treats and assesses child sex abusers, said the true number of female pedophiles has remained hidden for too long.

  “As a society, we find women sex offenders difficult to acknowledge. But those of us who work with pedophiles have seen evidence that women are capable of terrible crimes against children — just as bad as men,” Lowe said.

  He said some female abusers remained hidden because they appeared before the family courts, where their cases were not publicized because of reporting restrictions.

  The latest government figures, published six months ago, showed that 56 female child sex abusers were in custody, with 49 sentenced and seven on remand. Another 84 were under supervision in the community. Officially, fewer than 2 percent of people on the sex offenders register are women, although experts say they expect to see the proportion increase as public awareness of female pedophiles grows.

  Officials at the government’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) said ­under-reporting of incidents involving female abusers was a concern and warned that “copycat” abusers could attempt to replicate the abuse that took place at Plymouth’s Little Ted’s nursery, where George worked. Despite appeals from the police and anxious parents, the married mother-of-two has yet to reveal victims’ names.

  George, Allen and Blanchard, all 39, met through the networking site Facebook. Officials at the CEOP and at Scotland Yard believe that the Internet is driving an increase in the number of sex abusers of children. However, police say that they have detected no changes in the levels or types of abuse that are carried out by pedophiles, whether men or women.

  Research from the University of Kent indicates that the average age of women offenders is considerably lower than among men — 26.1 years compared with 35.8 for men.
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