Female Offenders Driven by More Than Sex

Oct. 15 -- What would drive a woman to sexually abuse a child? Experts say it's not just sex.

According to the Justice Department's most recent statistics, 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.

Women were most commonly involved in sex abuse cases involving victims under age 6, making up 12 percent of those offenders. Women were involved in 3 percent of the sex cases involving victims age 6 through 12, and 3 percent for victims ages 13 through 17.

Because they are so rare, experts are not able to draw an accurate profile of a typical female sex offender. However, some say loneliness drives female offenders more than sex.

"They don't seem to be pedophiles like men," said Hollida Wakefield, who has studied and treated sex offenders for more than 20 years at the Institute of Psychological Therapies in Minnesota.

"There are some cases where some people are in bad relationships or marriages and are just really lonely, and they find themselves in a relationship with these children," she said. "It isn't so much that women are sexually aroused. Keep in mind that the definition of a pedophile is someone infatuated with the idea of being sexually aroused by someone who has not come of age.

"And I would think it would be really difficult for a woman to become aroused by a boy — a 6-, 7-, 8-year-old — just beginning to be a young man," she said.

"Not all pedophiles are sexual offenders and not all sexual offenders are pedophiles," Wakefield continued. "A female being aroused by a 6-year-old, that's got to be pretty rare — it's rare in males generally, but it's even more rare in females."

Teenage female offenders, Wakefield said, typically commit their crimes when they are experimenting or discovering their sexuality. Many cases tend to involve women who are in a position of power over children, such as teachers.

In Utah, a female gymnastics coach awaits trial for allegedly raping and sodomizing a 12-year-old male student. A 24-year-old New York teacher is charged with having a sexual relationship two 16-year-old male students at the high school where she worked. And this past August, a former Bentonville, Ark., special education teacher pleaded guilty to first-degree violation of a minor for having sex with one of her 16-year-old students.