By Sandy . . . His email was long, disjointed, confusing. I could tell he was angry with NARSOL (National Assoc. for Rational Sexual Offense Laws), but I couldn’t tell why. I emailed back asking if I could call him. “Yes,” and the phone number was the reply.

He was an elderly gentleman—we’ll call him William–and almost as agitated on the telephone as he had been in the email. He told me his story, which left me as bewildered as before. When I asked pointblank why he was displeased with NARSOL, he said, “It’s always men. You always make it about the men.”

I still wasn’t getting it. I explained that NARSOL’s focus wasn’t on who committed the offenses or what anyone’s offenses had been but on fighting unconstitutional laws and practices and legislation that was not grounded in solid evidence.

I must have been as confusing to him as he was to me. When I finished, he repeated that we “always make it about the men, but women do it too.”

Now we were getting somewhere. Parts of his story were starting to fit.

William had been sexually abused as a toddler and young child by a stepmother. He had vague memories that left him feeling confused and anxious, memories that still haunt him today over 80 years later. Just before she died, William’s older sister verified that the abuse had indeed occurred. Additionally, as an adult, William was a victim of an inappropriate physical assault by a woman in his church.

He was disturbed with NARSOL because we had not done anything to acknowledge that women commit sexual offenses. When I told him I could write a blog post about that, his reply was simple but powerful: “That’s all I want.”

Officially, the percentage of women identified as sex offenders is statistically insignificant. AI reports that women’s presence on sex offender registries ranges from 1% to 5%. The U.S. Sentencing Commission in its “Quick Facts” for 2024 reports that 93.5% of those sentenced for sexual crimes were men, leaving 6.5% women. However, research consistently shows women to be only a little over 1% of all who were incarcerated for a sexual offense.  The National Library of Medicine agrees with that figure. (The medical world tends to see much sexual offending as a health issue rather than a criminal one; NARSOL tends to agree with this position; health issues can often be prevented and treated.)

William and my commitment to write about this subject drove me to continue my research. And other things at the back of my consciousness were floating to the top. Things like Lauren Book, a child advocate and past Florida legislator who, as a child, was sexually abused for six years by her nanny. Things like “Joe” who is telling his story in serial form in the NARSOL Digest. In the first installment, “I am . . . , ” he lists all of the things he is and writes, “I’m the brother of a sister and a brother, both of whom were sexual abusers; I’m the child of an untreated, closeted, incestuous family with a taboo upbringing.”

A research study published in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law has this in its abstract: “Although reports have shown that female sex offenders make up two percent of the whole sex offender population, the true rate is remarkably higher because the caretaking behavior of women masks their sexual offenses.”

Every year more and more is known about the ubiquity of sexual offenses committed by women. Evidence suggests that female sex offenders are significantly undercounted and underreported. Even though they constitute roughly 1%–5% of official sex crime records, surveys that have been completed by victims indicate the actual percentage is most likely higher, with some estimates suggesting up to 12%.

More and more literature is emerging on the subject. The title of this 2025 research paper encapsulates everything that William was trying to get me to understand: Female Sexual Offenders: An Underrecognized, Underreported, and Under-researched Population.

If anything ever cried out for prevention, it is sexual abuse of young children.

Options are available today that were not when William was a child. Information is so much more available. The taboo of speaking about being a victim has lessened—although not so much for male victims. Some good child sexual abuse prevention programs are:

The Moore Child Sex Abuse Prevention Center

Erin’s Law

Darkness to Light

Addendum: I have heard from the head of one of NARSOL’s state affiliates after he read this. He feels that the crime of a portion of women who are registered as sexual offenders was the passive one of not taking effective intervention. One of his members was a victim of her father, who was convicted. Her mother was also convicted of enabling child sexual abuse and registered for life. This is certainly a scenario where education about prevention would be extremely beneficial, and the prevention programs listed above, as well as many others, would address the situation.

The post Something you thought you knew about child sexual offense–but probably don’t first appeared on NARSOL.

By Sandy . . . As communications director of NARSOL, I receive many calls from reporters and journalists working on stories about persons in the community who are on a sex offender registry. Occasionally the presence of the registrant is being protested by the neighborhood. More often, the reporter has already decided on an “angle” and wants a comment from NARSOL.

I am always hopeful that the piece they write will open up the much needed, genuine discussion on the topics of those who are sexually harmed and those who have committed the harm. I am almost always disappointed.

I remember my first and most poignant disappointment.

The soft-spoken young reporter seemed genuinely sympathetic that a registrant was being harassed by neighbors who had put up signs on their properties with hateful words and arrows pointing to his house and/or his address.

I spoke to her at some length about the harassment and danger that persons on the registry suffered from vigilantes. I asked her if he or his family had been harmed. I asked her if law enforcement could help, and she said no, the people were exercising freedom of speech and using publicly available information.

She sounded as though she cared, and I couldn’t control a sense of personal betrayal when I read her published piece. The word choice and tone placed her clearly in the camp of the protesters. She reduced my carefully chosen words to a few “sound bites” that sounded as though I were excusing the behavior of the registrant and thought he shouldn’t have been held accountable for his crime.

What a disappointment. What a missed opportunity to do an actual community service.

The piece is certainly not the worst I have read, as these pieces go, pieces designed to do nothing of any actual value but only to agitate and raise the collective community’s level of fear, apprehension, and even hatred.

I know now that I asked the wrong question.

I should have asked her how the actions of the protesting neighbors would help make communities safer.

I should have told her that between roughly 95% and 98% of sexual crime against children is committed by persons who are in what is called the “circle of trust” of the family. This translates to the family members, peers, and authority figures of the victims. With this information, it’s an entirely different ballgame. Actions intended to “out” a registrant to the community or even drive hm from their midst will not arm families with protection when the risk, if it comes, is almost sure to come from within.

Clearly a focus on persons with a sexual offense conviction will meet with little to no success increasing public safety

I should have told her that over 95% of new sexual offenses are committed by persons with no previous conviction for a sexual offense. This figure jibes well with the fact that roughly 5% of people with sexual offense convictions reoffend. This is borne out by a huge number of reoffense studies, both federal and state. Random registrants with one conviction are statistically unlikely to reoffend; concentrating on them will have no discernable impact on public safety.

Focusing on one-time convicted registrants in hopes of making a difference in public safety is futile; it yields nothing but wasted taxpayer money and law-enforcement hours, not increased public safely.

Research shows that the safest communities are created when former offenders are given the opportunity to re-assimilate and show their ability to be law-abiding, productive community members. Public safety increases when vigilante activities are discouraged through peer pressure or law enforcement intervention. Behaviors and policies that isolate and ostracize former offenders only exacerbate conditions that lead to lessened community safety rather than greater.

Good prevention programs are shown effective in reducing the rate of sexual harm against children, community-wide initiatives and other evidence-informed programs. Indeed, prevention programs and targeted treatment  have a higher proven impact on reducing crime and making communities safer than do resources squandered on sex offender registries and lengthy incarcerations.

I now ask journalists who contact me this important question: What can you write about child sexual offending that will give parents legitimate information and useful tools with which to help protect their children?

In addition to links in the article, links to studies for much of the factual information and statistics are found here.

The post Public safety: What it is and what it isn’t first appeared on NARSOL.