How deviant babysitters abusing toddlers and twisted paedo ‘mistresses’ are fuelling the rise of female sex offenders
As an 18-year-old girl is jailed for being Britain's youngest female paedophile and record numbers of women are convicted for sex attacks, Sun Online investigates
At just 18, Sophie Elms has been confirmed this week as Britain’s youngest named female paedophile.
Yesterday the teenager was sentenced to seven years and ten months in prison for a heinous list of sexual offences against two children aged just two and three - but shockingly, she is far from alone.
For while her conviction sent shock waves through the country, her name is just the latest in a sickening and growing list of female sex offenders.
Last year, a new report from the Ministry of Justice revealed that record numbers of women are being convicted of sex offences.
In 2016 – the latest year for which figures are available - 142 women and girls were found guilty of attacks including rape, sexual assault, and sex with a minor.
It is double the figure of those convicted two years earlier, and more than triple the number at the start of the decade.
They are discomforting statistics, behind which lies one central question: is female sexual offending really on the rise?
In recent years there have certainly been any number of horrific cases in which women have played the part of paedophile and abuser.
Among the most high profile was that of Vanessa George - like Sophie Elms a nursery nurse, although police have emphasised that her offences did not take place at the childcare facility - viewed by the parents of the children in her care as an "angel".
Yet the now 48-year-old was also one of the country’s worst paedophiles, and in 2009 she was jailed indefinitely after admitting a catalogue of abuses on the children in her care.
Then, in 2015, 34-year-old Marie Black was jailed for life at Norwich court for her part as the "mistress" of a depraved gang which used children as their sexual playthings.
The presiding judge said it was ";the most harrowing case" he had ever seen.
Two years earlier it emerged that a female fan of Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins – who was jailed for a string of horrific child sex offences - had abused a child during a webcam chat with the star.
Paedo teachers preying on schoolkids
Another glut of headlines, meanwhile, have focused on female teachers preying on pupils.
Earlier today, a female teacher who had a nine-month sexual relationship was a 15-year-old schoolgirl was jailed for more than two years.
In 2015, Charlotte Parker, a 32-year-old teaching assistant, was barred from teaching after admitting sending thousands of lewd messages to a 14-year-old pupil at her Essex school, with whom she began a sexual affair when he was 15.
A year later Lauren Cox, a 27-year-old geography teacher was jailed for a year after an affair with a 16 year old pupil she met when he was just 13.
Then there was teacher Yvonne Preston, a married 49-year-old who was banned from the profession for sending a pupil inappropriately-worded cards.
'More victims are coming forward'
According to Dr Kieran McCartan, associate professor of criminology at the University of the West of England in Bristol and a specialist in sexual offences, these figures aren't down to an "epidemic" but are the result of cultural changes.
"I think there has been a shift in society which has enabled victims to feel more confident coming forward," he says.
"There is greater trust in the police taking sex offences seriously, their investigations are more attuned and in turn more cases are being referred to courts."
It’s a sentiment echoed by clinical and forensic psychologist Dr Katie Seidler, who says that the past couple of decades have led to greater recognition of the capacity for women to engage in sexual offences.
"Women are also being held more accountable – in the past there has been an element of their behaviour being minimised or excused, that they are somehow not capable of this behaviour. But as society has changed those old-fashioned views have changed," she says.
This is something that's been reflected on TV: Emmerdale has recently featured a story-line about twisted teacher Maya Stepney’s grooming of young teenager Jacob Gallagher.
Only a tiny amount are convicted
On average, data taken from both conviction rates and victimisation studies from a variety of countries suggest that approximately four to five per cent of all adult sexual offenders are female: a figure that has remained unchanged for years.
Yet as both McCartan and Seidler point out, pinning down the actual individual statistics is much harder: in 2015, Ministry of Justice research estimated that the amount of sexual abuse taking place in England and Wales each year is between 480,000 to half a million, while the number resulting in a criminal sentence is 5,000.
"It’s a huge differential," says Dr McCartan. "It means that there is a small percentage (about one per cent) resulting in a conviction. If you translate that into the number of female perpetrators, it means the number out there are far bigger than the headlines.
"So the reality is that we don’t really know the actual prevalence."
'It goes against what it means to be feminine'
Dr McCartan acknowledges, however, that society has long had a problem with the notion of a female sex offender.
"We get very uncomfortable with the idea of female offenders in general, never mind sexual offenders as they are going against a deep-seated notion of what it means to be feminine, to be a mother, a nurturing figure and all those societal norms and stereotypes," he says.
"We also talk about them in very different ways: we refer to male offenders as evil and sadistic, but we often see female offenders as being vulnerable or mentally unstable."
That difference in language extends to victims too. "We say victims of male grooming are damaged, but reverse it and there is still this idea that if a female teacher seduces a pupil they 'got lucky.' It allows us to think about them in a very different way."
It is a view echoed by forensic psychologist Nina Burrows, who says that as a society we have historically preferred not to confront the notion of female abusers.
“We find it abhorrent because it challenges our ideas of women and motherhood,” she explains.
“We also find it frightening because we like to live with the idea that men are dangerous and women are safe, so when you see children talking to a male stranger in the park it’s dangerous but if they’re talking to a woman it isn’t."
'Some work in a partnership and some are just evil'
Steve Lowe, director of Phoenix Forensic Consulting, an organisation which treats and assesses child sex abusers, believes we are "more prepared as a society to accept that women can be sexual predators".
Experts now believe there are differences between the profile of male and female offenders, and there is a general consensus among psychologists that female sex offenders fall into three broad types.
"We see a number of cases where the female works in partnership with a male," explains Kate Seilder.
"The male is the dominant abuser while the female is complicit. Often the victims of those women will be their children. This is probably the most common demographic."
The second type, the "teacher-lover" dynamic, involves a "woman with poor self-esteem seeking out inappropriate relationships with teenage boys as a way of feeling good about herself".
Kate adds: "This is one that has been brought to our attention more in recent years and I am seeing more of it in my clinical practice.
"I think in the past teenage boys have not necessarily been able to see what is happening as abuse but societal changes have meant other people have started to recognise these dynamics for what they are and are raising the alarm.
"The third is what I would call clinically deviant – a category that is much more akin in profile to male offenders in terms of sexual interest."
A notable example of this came to prominence in the UK in 2015 when 25-year-old Gayle Newland was jailed for eight years after she fooled her friend into having sex by pretending to be a man and wearing a fake penis.
Is porn to blame?
Kate Seidler points out that the relatively small numbers of female sex offenders make it difficult to carry out research, but that question remains about the role of the internet and pornography in terms of influencing deviant sexuality in women as well as men.
"We know that you can create a deviant sexual pathway from exposure to material online, whether it is through chat-rooms or image-sharing forums - we just don’t know to what extent that is happening," she says.
Nonetheless, Kate points out that however hidden some of the real numbers of female sexual offenders may be, they undoubtedly remain smaller than for their male counterparts.
"In 21 years of practice I’ve worked with perhaps ten thousand sex offenders and maybe ten of those have been female. So even if you ignore under-reporting the numbers are still chalk and cheese," says Dr Seidler. "The evidence for that is in my practice alone."
Most read in News
Dr McCarten agrees that even if they appear to be on the increase, the number of female offenders will remain - relatively speaking at least - small.
"It may be that this report is the tip of the iceberg as so much sexual abuse remains hidden and unreported," he says.
"For all that, I don’t think we will ever see the numbers approach the sort of numbers we see with men."