How Many Wemon Are Registered Sex Offenders

The media are reporting more women sexually abusing children. Is this true? We know that the vast majority of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is committed past the male sex. The annual Offense Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) published Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2019 revealed 96% of adults asked almost their experiences of child sexual abuse said it involved a male perpetrator. It is unusual for a lone perpetrator to be female.

A similar tendency is seen in the almanac police offense reports. In the twelvemonth up to March 2019 there were 73260 reports of child sexual abuse, with 19481 reported equally rape. New figures obtained by the BBC plan 'File on Four' under Freedom of Data laws over the same time flow say there were 2297 reports of child sexual abuse in which the perpetrator was recorded equally female; representing but 3% of all CSA reports.

Still, the BBC also makes the dramatic merits that the number of reported cases of child sexual abuse perpetrated past women has doubled in recent years:

"Between 2015 and 2019, the numbers of reported cases of female-perpetrated child sexual corruption to police in England and Wales rose from 1,249 to two,297 – an increase of 84%."

Are more than women actually sexually abusing children?

The answer is nosotros simply don't know. Information technology's impossible to make this claim from the data available.

For starters, we don't know if there has been a general increase in reporting of CSA or if this is an increment specific to female person-perpetrated CSA only. Either way however, the ONS notes in its Crime Survey dataset (Table 32) that "police recorded law-breaking data are not designated as National Statistics" and "comparisons should not be made between years.

Also, a 84% increase may audio high simply the real-term increase in the reported figure for female-perpetrated CSA is small in number. If the total number of reported CSA has remained abiding over the last few years so the observed increase from 1249 to 2297 reports of female-perpetrated CSA represents a shift from around i.5% to 3% of all CSA committed by females. This pocket-sized change is unlikely to be statistically significant.

Most significantly of all, we likewise know that the 'sexual activity' disaggregated information held by the law doesn't actually tape what most people recollect it does. Police forces at present tape crimes based on cocky-declared gender and non birth sex activity. In 2019 Fair Play For Women submitted a serial of Freedom of Information requests to find out how the law record the sex of a suspect when a criminal offense is reported.

We constitute police commonly tape cocky-declared gender identity instead of nativity sexual practice; fifty-fifty when the criminal offense is rape.
This means suspected and convicted rapists are recorded in official statistics as female if they no longer wish to identify with their male nativity sex.
While some police forces said they record the fact if someone identifies as transgender, this data does non appear on government crime figures, which provides only male or female person options. Transgender status is stated only if the person is a victim of transgender hate law-breaking.

Our work was featured in this article by the Sunday Times. You can read our full study here.

At the time the National Police Chiefs' Council said:

"There is no prove to advise that recording a person's gender based on the data that they provide will have an impact on an investigation or on national crime statistics, considering of the low numbers involved."

They are wrong to be complacent

When offending by women is rare it means small errors in data collection can have a large impact.

Co-ordinate to official MOJ figures, in 2019 there were 13359 people in prison convicted of sexual offences. 125 of these are recorded as female person and another 76 are known to exist males who identify equally women. This means at that place are around 200 sex offenders in prison who either is a woman or self-identifies as woman. The ratio of women to transwomen in prison house for sexual offences is around iii:2. In other words, in that location are 2 transwomen for every three women in prison house convicted of sex offending. That's 38% of the 'women' in prison for sexual activity offending actually being transwomen.

If this same ratio applies to police reports of child sexual abuse information technology is reasonable to assume that up to 38% of the 2297 recorded as perpetrated by 'females' may also in fact be male person's who place as women. That's almost 900 males recorded equally female. This would be plenty to business relationship for almost all of the reported increase since 2015.

Collecting data on sex matters.

Collecting data based on gender identity instead of sexual practice ways we lose the ability to monitor changes based on sex.

UPDATE: BBC claims that in 2019 there were 66 females in prison for England and Wales convicted of sexual offences confronting a child. FOI information obtained past us confirms at that place were as well at least 23 male person-born trans prisoners in for sexual activity with a child (not counting child grooming or attempting to incite a daughter anile xiii-fifteen into penetrative sexual activity). More FOIs have been submitted today to become the total number. Based on what nosotros already know its articulate that for child sexual abuse at that place is *at least* 1 male person-born transgender offender for every 3 female offenders. Any claims that the numbers are too low to impact crime statistics is demonstrably wrong.