ABSTRACT

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a British child protection charity that deals with female sex offenders, estimates that as many as twenty per cent of Britain’s 320,000 suspected paedophiles are women. Women suspected of committing sexual offences have traditionally been treated differently by the criminal justice system, often being referred on to social services or welfare agencies for treatment. The myth that women are not involved in child sexual abuse is being challenged with the explosion of internet child pornography and the high number of women users involved. While male paedophiles tend to be viewed as predators, female paedophiles have been regarded as mentally ill. For Vanessa George, her sexual contact with young children may have been not only her way of loving them but of tying them to her emotionally, so that they would be in her thrall through their own fear and excitement.