Are Female Sex Offenders Treated Differently?

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The project that I’ll be focusing on is female sex offenders, which is a growing occurrence alarming all of society. Traditionally, it has been assumed that all sex crimes are committed by males. Males clearly aren’t the only ones committing the sex crime, but because of this double standard female predators are difficult to be identified. There are two prominent questions that will be studied and evaluated regarding female-perpetrated abuse.

First one is, do female sexual offenders get less jail time than males? Moreover, are female sexual offenders perceived and treated differently in society than males? This topic is an area of interest because society tends to view women as the weaker sex. The general perception of women is caring, nurturing, and non-threatening, which peaks my interest because it’s contradictory to what society believes women to be.

The benefits of doing this project on female sex offenders are that it can help me in my professional career. It can give me a knowledge base to help me treat female perpetrators of sex crimes. I could get a better understanding of why there are misguided preconceptions associated with gender stereotyping and societal treatment discrepancy on the topic of female perpetrated sexual abuse.

Learning why there is a sense of denial of the possibility of women as potentially harmful sexual aggressors according to the general population. Is denial the reason for double standards and gender stereotyping? The disadvantage could be the limitation of research on the double standard between female and male sex offenders. Due to female sex offending has been a little rare until recent years, research experts may still be conjuring up answers to the questions I’m inquiring about.

Based on the surveys of the Justice Department, the current data display that “sex offenses are still very much a man’s crime. Female sex offenders are very rare: 96 percent of the sex assaults reported in 1999 involved male perpetrators” (Female offenders, 2010, para. 2). Due to this reason, the forensic experts failed to provide a portrait of a conventional female sex offender.

Nonetheless, female sexual abuse is an issue that does not receive enough attention because of lack of alertness and attention of the public. Moreover, more than 85% of cases of female sexual abuse remain unattended, as the victims of female sexual offenders are not considered to be telling the truth:

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 “fair proportion” of child abusers were women. Donald Findlater, director of research and development, said results indicated that up to 20% of a conservative estimate of 320,000 suspected UK pedophiles were women. (Female sexual offenders, 2013, para. 6)

The cases of female sex offenders are not unknown to the society; for example, a high school or college teacher that was accused of student’s sex abuse and confronts the criminal justice system. However, is it fair that a woman that is 39 nine years old received a punishment of only 30 days in custody at a community center for being involved in a wrongdoing about six years ago? Would the sentence be more severe if the offender was a 40-year-old, man and the victim was a girl student of a college?

“In a case that involves charges of abuse from two male students, Oregon teacher Denise Keesee has acknowledged multiple sexual encounters in 2008 with a then 16-year-old student, and currently faces a $5.1 million lawsuit from another male student.

According to Oregon Live, court documents show that Keesee told detectives she kissed [the other student] several times in 2012 when they were alone in her classroom. She also reportedly admitted to sending him photos of herself, including one of her naked” (Williams, 2014, para. 2) The victim, a student of a college, had turned 18 and reached legal adulthood; therefore, no illegal allegations took place.

Nevertheless, the criminal justice system is full of examples, where the male sex offenders receive light penalty; moreover, it is crucial to remember that each case of sex abuse has an unprecedented and different story almost every time.

On the contrary, in this particular case of Denise Keesee, where the sex offender received only a month of correctional work for abusing a minor student, a male teacher also from Oregon received three years in prison as a sentence for sexually abusing his underage student in college. At the same time, the state of Idaho condemned an educator to imprisonment from 5 to 20 years for attempts to inappropriate sexual relations with his two adolescent students.

When talking about sex abuse, traditional thought is about a grown man abusing a girl or a woman, and it is confirmed by a statistics that men more often serve as sex offenders than victims of sex abuse. Nonetheless, not everybody thinks that women also are capable of being a sex offender.

Julia Hislop expressed her opinion in New York Times: “A number of factors conspire to keep these women from being detected and prosecuted … It is important that investigators recognize that females can and do commit serious sex crimes” (Williams, 2014, para. 4).

Moreover, the subject of female sex abuse remained withdrawn for a long time: Charlotte Philby observed that “female sex abuse is a taboo, and there is hardly any official information available pertaining specifically to the area of women who sexually abuse children and barely any research being carried out, either” (Williams, 2014, para. 5).

Nevertheless, we can confidently say that the situation revolving around female sex abuse is evolving. In winter of 2013 a trial took place in a state of California: a woman of 28 years revealed a record of a conversation with Jamie Carrillo, a teacher who had been abusing a woman for 16 years. Jamie Carrillo was arrested and registered as a female sex offender after a while.

Sexual abuse is still a crime, as well as taking advantage of the relations between a grown person and an adolescent student. Therefore, sentences for sexual offenders should correspond to the severity of a crime, not to a sex of the offenders and victims.

There are lots of studies that “explored the attitudes of prison officers, forensic staff and members of the public towards and male and female sex offenders” (Higgins & Ireland, 2009, p. 14) not only in the United States of America: the phenomenon of mistreating female sex offenders can be observed in most of the developed countries throughout the world.

For example, members of a research held by Caitriona Higgins and Carol Ireland in The British Journal of Forensic Practice (2009) “were provided with a vignette depicting a particular sexual offence committed against either an adult or a child, by either a male or a female perpetrator, and were then asked to complete a scale assessing attitudes to sex offenders based on the offender depicted in the vignette” (p. 15).

As a result, the forensic experts appeared to have the most positive approach towards female sex offenders, as they are thought to have more chances at rehabilitation. The prison staff admitted having negative feelings towards female sex offenders, as they are still criminals regardless of their gender.

Based on the results of the research mentioned above, it could be said that “overall, females emerged as viewing sex offenders in more favourable terms, whereas males were more supportive of harsh attitudes to sex offenders” (Higgins & Ireland, 2009, p. 18). Moreover, the participants of the study depicted more adverse approach towards male sex offenders than females, thus illustrating an overall picture of attitudes towards female sex offenders.

Despite the fact that there are studies regarding “etiological models of male sexual offending, no theory is available to guide research or practice with female sexual offenders” (Gannon, Rose, & Ward, 2008, p. 352). According to the researches, there are different reasons for women to commit sexual crimes. Cases that involve females in position of power over their victims, such as college teachers and educators, tend to commit sexual crimes on the basis of experiments; thus leading to a more light sentence. Nonetheless, this reason is not able to justify the crime committed by any gender, and female sex offenders should not be treated any different than male offenders.

References

Female offenders driven by more than sex. (2010). Web.

Female sexual offenders. (2013). Web.

Gannon, T., Rose, M., & Ward, T. (2008). A descriptive model of the offense process for female sexual offenders. A Journal of Research and Treatment, 20(1), 352-374.

Higgins, C., & Ireland, C. (2009). Attitudes towards male and female sex offenders: a comparison of forensic staff, prison officers and the general public in Northern Ireland. The British Journal of Forensic Practice, 11(1), 14-19.

Williams, M. (2014). Are female sex offenders treated differently? Salon. Web.

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Are Female Sex Offenders Treated Differently?

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