Spotlight on UK sex offenders

Child sex abuse by women is more widespread than realised, say experts, who believe there could be 64,000 female offenders in Britain. Photo / Getty Images

Child sex abuse by women is more widespread than realised, say experts, who believe there could be 64,000 female offenders in Britain.

Researchers from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child protection charity that deals with British female sex offenders, said its studies confirmed that a fair proportion of child abusers were women.

Donald Findlater, director of research and development, said results indicated that up to 20 per cent of a conservative estimate of 320,000 suspected UK paedophiles were women.

The figures come days after a daycare worker in Plymouth, Vanessa George, together with Angela Allen from Nottingham and Colin Blanchard from Rochdale, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing young children.

Findlater said: "There was some suggestion it was only blokes that sexually abused children. Over time those arguments have fallen aside and people have had to wake up to the fact that actually, sadly, there is a fair proportion of women abusing as well."

About 32,000 names are on the sex offenders register. But researchers at the foundation suggest the real number is 10 times this figure.

Provisional studies, which mirror work done in the United States, suggest 5 per cent to 20 per cent are women.

The calculations put the number of female child-sex offenders in the UK at between 48,000 and 64,000, a figure Findlater describes as "highly possible".

He said: "The problem is far bigger than conviction rates and, if you look at survivor studies, you end up with a very different story about the scale of the problem of female sexual abuse."

Detectives at Scotland Yard's paedophile unit, meanwhile, disclosed that they had detected an "increased prevalence" of female offenders.

London Metropolitan police sources said quantifying the number of paedophiles was problematic but there were likely to be hundreds of thousands.

Steve Lowe, director of Phoenix Forensic Consultants, which treats and assesses child sex abusers, said the true number of female paedophiles had remained hidden for too long.

"As a society, we find women sex offenders difficult to acknowledge. But those of us who work with paedophiles have seen evidence that women are capable of terrible crimes against children - just as bad as men."

He said some female abusers remained hidden because they appeared before the family courts, where their cases were not publicised because of reporting restrictions.

The latest British Government figures, published six months ago, showed that 56 female child sex abusers were in custody, with 49 sentenced and seven on remand.

Another 84 were under supervision in the community.

Officially, fewer than 2 per cent of people on the sex offenders register are women, although experts say they expect to see the proportion increase as public awareness of female paedophiles grows.

Officials at the government's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre said under-reporting of incidents involving female abusers was a concern and warned that "copycat" abusers may attempt to replicate the abuse that took place at Plymouth's Little Ted's nursery, where George worked.

Despite appeals from the police and anxious parents, the married mother-of-two has yet to reveal victims' names.

George, Allen and Blanchard, all 39, met through the networking site Facebook. Officials at the protection centre and at Scotland Yard believe that the internet is driving an increase in the number of sex abusers of children.

However, police say that they have detected no changes in the levels or types of abuse.

- OBSERVER