Michael Bourke, Ph.D., Chief, Behavioral Analysis Unit, United States Marshals Service.

Female offenders are more prevalent than people think – some studies estimate that more than 20 per cent of sexual abuse occurs at the hands of women. While there are some differences in how women go about gaining access to victims and the grooming techniques they use, males and females can have identical motivational pathways. Women can be paedophilic, sadistic, cognitively slow, or have personality disorders that may influence their decision to abuse children.

However, as a society we have a hard time believing that females offend because we tend to see them as maternal, nurturing, and protective. As a result, women fall out of the system at every step.  Women are less likely to be detected, less likely to be arrested, less likely to be charged in court and less likely to be convicted of a crime against a child.

This is also the reason behind the old and discounted belief that female offenders are always induced by men. They are not. We have worked on a number of cases where women are acting on their own – writing stories, producing and uploading sexually explicit material, and sexually abusing children. Female offenders open up doors for much needed research.

Jim Cole, Special Agent and Section Chief, Victim Identification, Homeland Security Investigations, Cyber Crimes Center, Child Exploitation Investigations Unit, USA.

The number of female offenders are increasing in the investigations that we deal with. We are seeing more cases where females actively take part in the abuse, and we have also seen some cases with female offenders acting on their own. However, female offenders make out a very small percentage of the cases. Offenders are overwhelmingly male. Most commonly there is also a male counterpart involved in the cases, in some circumstances driving the abuse.

It is too early to say whether the increase is an issue of more visibility and awareness, or whether the number of female offenders is actually increasing. Or indeed if women are starting to act more on their own. This is something that we are looking into, but there is still much that we don’t know.

Kevin worked with internet crimes against children for nearly twenty years, eleven of those online undercover and has worked on some big cases with female offenders

There is very little data on female sex offenders, and many people just don’t see women as potential offenders. I have worked on several high profile cases involving women, and there are a number of female offenders out there, but I don’t think that there are many and I don’t think that it is increasing. I think if it was, we would come across it more often, and the truth is we rarely do. However, whenever there is a case, it always makes big headlines.

Females are not always induced by a male, but in the vast majority of cases they are. However, that they are rare does not mean that we should not look for them. It is important to look for the unusual and not just discount the woman because it is hard to imagine a woman being involved.