of the dynamics of identities. In Chapter One, we explored issues relating to race and ethnicity, and how the over-representation of BME people in criminal justice systems can lead to a racialised version of ‘sex crime’; here, we address gender and age.
Thinking about gender in relation to understanding sex crime requires critical reflection on the wider social context. Feminist theories originate from structuralist accounts of social divisions and highlight patriarchal practices as supportive of sexual coercion and harm (eg Brownmiller, 1975; Kelly, 1988; Donat and D’Emilio, 1992; Gavey, 2005). While not homogeneous, feminist theories have made an important epistemological and political contribution to both understanding sex crimes and informing a social response to them. According to feminist activists, the laws surrounding sexuality and sexual behaviours favour the interests of the heterosexual man; this is largely achieved by using narrow definitions of sex crimes and stringent evidential requirements (Howe, 2008). A key theme in feminist writing is that sexually harmful behaviours are commonplace, but not all of them are identified in law. Gavey (2005), for example, refers to the ‘cultural scaffolds’ of rape, located in commonplace social attitudes, values and behaviours. Sanday’s (1979, 2003, 2007) social-anthropological work, spanning three decades, draws attention to the characteristics of ‘rape-free’ and ‘rape-prone’ societies and communities, including rape-prone university campuses in the US. In all ‘rape-prone’ contexts, she found ‘an ideology of male dominance enforced through the control and subordination of women’ (Sanday, 2003, p 337). Feminist theories view male values and behaviours as underpinning and perpetuating sex crimes, and point out that social policy, not individual therapies, is the way to reduce sex crimes.
The critique of ordinary male behaviours prompted a range of studies of non-convicted male populations, particularly looking at the ‘proclivity’ to rape. Studies, mostly undertaken with male student populations, asked men to indicate their likelihood of raping if there would be no negative consequences for themselves (eg criminal prosecution). A consistent finding of between 25% and 30% of respondents indicates that they would rape (Stermac et al, 1990). More recently, two British studies of young people found significant support (particularly from male respondents) for attitudes that endorsed both rape and partner violence (Burton et al, 1998; Burman and Cartmel, 2006). Alleyne et al (2014) found that 66% of a sample of ‘community males’ did not emphatically reject an interest in ‘multiple perpetrator rape’. A symposium at the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) annual conference in 2015 considered studies exploring attitudes to rape in unconvicted male populations (ATSA, 2015). The issue of ‘proclivity to rape’ remains an international political concern; Bruenig (2015) describes the Obama administration’s campaign against sexual assault (‘It’s On Us’1), which challenges social attitudes dynamically and endeavours to make sexual assault socially unacceptable in all sections of society. There are similar campaigns internationally, for example, the White Ribbon Campaign exists in many countries, including the UK.2 These initiatives seek to challenge sexual violence as a social phenomenon, and not (only) as individual acts defined by the processes of the criminal justice system.
In feminist analyses of sex crimes, located in a wider analysis of women’s oppression in which women are construed as victims of male society, recognising women as sex offenders becomes problematic (Harris, 2010). It is generally accepted that female sex offenders are an under-researched phenomenon, with large gaps in knowledge about why women offend, whom they offend against and how often they do this (Williams and Bierie, 2015). The dominant image (both lay and professional) is that such offending is uncommon, and that when it does happen, it is less serious than offending by men (Mellor and Deering, 2010). Indeed, in his book Physical and Sexual Abuse of Children: Causes and Treatment, Walters (1978) felt able to categorically deny that women were capable of sexually offending against children, and asserted that the problem did not exist. Perceptions have changed, but slowly. There have been reports in the press of adult women school teachers sexually abusing their young male students where this has been presented almost as a ‘rite of passage’ of masculine socialisation through ‘seduction’, rather than abuse through breach of trust. This narrative makes it very difficult for victims to recognise that they have been abused.
Sexual coercion by women appears to be subject to processes of social denial and minimisation. Essentialist explanations of women’s violence have tended to start with the premise that women are non-violent (except in extreme circumstances, where they are using self-defence against their abusive male partners), and that women who perpetrate aggression outside the stereotype are either ‘mad’, ‘bad’, ‘evil’ or ‘victimised’; all of which deny and minimise personal agency and culpability (Allen, 1998). In short, both traditionalists and some feminists take the view that the violent behaviour of women deviates from expected ‘normal’ gender characteristics, whereas non-essentialised, postmodern feminist explanations stress that violence is neither inherently masculine nor feminine; it exists in a context of politics, economics, power relations and gender dynamics of the specific act of violence (Renzetti, 1999).
We now consider the issue of age in relation to sex offending, in particular, those crimes committed by young people, defined by the UK Ministry of Justice as people under 18. More refined definitional issues related to this population are addressed later in the chapter when we consider the offenders themselves. In England and Wales in 2013–15, there were 1,653 sexual offences for which a young person was convicted; this was 2% of all youth offences (Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board, 2015). In relation to the sentenced prison population of young offenders, sex offenders made up approximately 5% of the under-18 population from 2009 to 2014 (Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board, 2015). As with the adult sex offender population, this group has a low reconviction rate, with young sex offenders having a ‘re-offending rate of 15.0 per cent, compared with those with robbery offences which have a 41.5 per cent re-offending rate’ (Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board, 2015, p 57). It is noteworthy that in these statistics relating to the overall young offender population, BME groups are over-represented in relation to the proportion of their ethnic group in the overall national population (Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board, 2015, p 28).
In the US, using data from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Finkelhor et al (2009, pp 1–2) found that:
• Juveniles account for more than one third (35.6%) of those known to the police to have committed sex offences against minors.
• Juveniles who commit sex offences against other children are more likely than adult sex offenders to offend in groups and at schools and to have more male victims and younger victims.
• The number of youth coming to the attention of police for sex offences increases sharply at age 12 and plateaus after age 14. Early adolescence is the peak age for offences against younger children. Offences against teenagers surge during mid to late adolescence, while offences against victims under 12 decline.
• A small number of juvenile offenders – 1 out of 8 – are younger than 12.
• Females constitute 7 per cent of juveniles who commit sex offences.
• Females are found more frequently among young youth than older youth who commit sex offences. This group’s offences involve multiple-victim and multi-perpetrator episodes, and they are more likely to have victims who are family members or males.
In seeking to understand, sociologically, the phenomenon of sex offending by young people, the work of James Messerschmidt (1993, 2000, 2011, 2012) is of central importance. Messerschmidt’s work is based on a series of 30 life history interviews conducted with ‘thirty 15–18 year old White working class boys and girls: 20 violent (10 assaultive and 10 sexual offenders, each equally divided by sex) and 10 nonviolent (likewise equally divided by sex)’ (Messerschmidt, 2011, p 207). The methodology here is important; he spent time listening to young people talk about their lives. The data was
