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.