UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 17 MAY 2017
A new academic study will explore the experiences of women who have committed sexual abuse against children in an effort to understand what leads them to commit the acts.
Cristiana Cardoso, a PhD researcher at Birmingham City University, will undertake a detailed project to assess the life circumstances in which some women start to carry out acts of child sexual abuse.
The study will also attempt to highlight ‘protective factors’, which prevent people from committing inappropriate acts, may have been missing from their lives to help develop interventions which can be specifically targeted at cutting female abuse.
The research will include interviews with female offenders in prisons and those in the community, in a bid to fill gaps in knowledge about what can be done to prevent women from perpetrating the offences.
Cardoso drew up the plans after finding that very little research had been conducted into female child sexual abusers, with all detailed studies focuses on male offenders.
She believes that by understanding perpetrators, authorities and charities will stand a better chance of reducing the crimes, enhancing risk assessments, cutting re-offence rates and rehabilitating offenders.
Cristiana Cardoso said: “This is an area which up until now has been under-researched and the only way that we are going to be able to address these issues is by carrying out the work which allows us to better understand them.
“We need to be careful not to assume that the circumstances of these crimes will be exactly the same for women as they are for men and at the moment almost all of the research in this area looks at male offenders.
Cardoso found almost all studies into child sexual offences focussed on male perpetrators, and while reports suggest men are usually motivated by sexual attraction, the limited research available suggests this is not the same for women who are more likely to be coerced or influenced into it.
Research also demonstrates that women are more likely to be found guilty of the crimes as part of co-offending relationships, highlighting the differences in reasons for their behaviours.
During 2015-16, three per cent of arrests made for sexual offences were for women, however figures in an NSPCC report have highlighted that up to 17 per cent of calls made to ChildLine were in relation to female offenders.
It is also hoped the study will play a role in removing funding barriers to projects which could reduce re-offense rates and enhance the responses available.
Cardosois one of 50 STEAM Scholars at Birmingham City University whose research is funded as part of the University’s £3 million initiative to create new subject knowledge and to power cultural, societal and economic improvements in the West Midlands.