ABSTRACT
Female sex offenders are often overlooked. One myth about sex offenders is that they are all male (Center for Sex Offender Management, 2000). One of the goals of this chapter is to dispel this myth by examining the number and characteristics of women who have committed sex crimes. Although male offenders commit the majority of sex crimes, female offenders commit a sizeable portion of them. This chapter presents data on the number of women who have been arrested for rape and other sexual offenses, along with the trend over a recent ten-year period. The characteristics of female sex offenders, including a comparison with male sex offenders, are also discussed.
