Date
8-12-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Human Services: Emphasis in Trauma, Resilience, & Self-Care Strategies
Department
Human Services
Abstract
This paper explored female sexual offenders and described how their crimes are underrecognized, underreported, and underresearched. Women commit part of all sexual crimes against children, although prevalence rates are hotly debated. Research demonstrates that female offenders are often their victims' mothers, caregivers, or other relatives. This societal role leads to difficulty in recognizing that this type of abuse exists. Media portrayals often cast female offenders in the role of victims themselves or cast the abuse in a positive light. Females are often the producers of online child sex abuse material, and more research is needed on this understudied topic as well.
Female offenders engage in grooming behaviors that make their behaviors harder to discern. Females are less likely to be arrested and prosecuted, and they often receive lighter sentences. Victims of female sexual offenders experience negative effects that are far-reaching and generate feelings of betrayal and shame. The writer explored the characteristics of female sexual offenders, the barriers to identifying this type of abuse, and the characteristics of the victims that facilitate this type of abuse. The grooming behaviors employed by female offenders, their portrayal in the media, as well as barriers to implementing treatment were also discussed. Future areas of research were discussed, including the need for more empirical research on female sexual offenders, the lack of gender-specific risk assessment tools, and implications for female sexual offender treatment.