LogFAQs > #975207841

adjl posted...

I will also add to this and say that I'm not trying to claim that the gender distribution is actually 50/50 or that there definitively isn't a disproportionately high risk that any randomly selected man is sexually abusive.

adjl posted...

If there is reason to believe that data is inconclusive, be very, very careful about drawing conclusions from it, and in fact try to avoid doing so unless you genuinely have no other choice.

I mostly agree in that, from what I have seen, the data is simply too thin and too unreliable to draw precise numerical conclusions. That said, I don't think that's the same thing as saying the data is truly "inconclusive" - i.e. that no conclusions can be drawn from it at all. Based on the materials I've reviewed (years ago now, so I apologize for not having sources on hand), there seems to be an overall consensus that:

1) There is a significant dearth of research on female abusers.
2) The number of female abusers is wildly undercounted, and they are much less likely to be reported, charged, or convicted than men.
3) Even accounting for that, it seems that men are overall more likely to sexually abuse children.

On those points, at least, criminologists have fairly high confidence.

As mentioned earlier, the most common number I saw put forward was around 40% of sexual abusers of children could be women, but that's not a number I would hang my hat on - even the researchers who wrote some of the reports I reviewed stated that such numbers were an estimate at best and there was significant potential for error. That the number of female abusers are being significantly undercounted is a common finding and has high confidence behind it; exactly how much they are being undercounted by is much more of an open question.

As both of us have mentioned, however, this is something of an academic point, since your screening process for childcare should be more involved than "Do you have a penis?". Carefully vetting your babysitters and teaching your children about sexual abuse, how to recognize it. and ensuring they feel safe to tell you about it if they are experiencing it will do far more to protect them than any sort of sweeping generalizations on which demographics make the best babysitters.