Female Sex Offenders

When the topic of sexual assault arises, most people automatically assume that the offender is a male. While it is true that majority of the cases involve male perpetrators, there are cases where the offender is female. According to ABC News (1999), about four percent of sexual assault cases involved a female perpetrator. Due to the fact that female sex offenders do not occur often, there has not been a lot of studies or research done looking at these individuals. Part of this is because women are seen as caretakers, nonviolent, weak, non-dominant, plus many others. There are the basic gender stereotypes and based on those, females would rarely be seen as a sexual offender or even criminal. It is crucial that psychologists do not go along

In order to understand generally why females commit sexual assault certain things need to be looked at, including mental illness, previous crime history, family history and past relationships. ABC News (1999), states that is often found that women commit these crimes not because of sexual pleasure, but because they are lonely or are having a difficult time in their relationship/marriage. According to Johnson and Love (2009), many offenders have a history of psychiatric problems that includes anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Another article states that many of these individuals experienced abuse as a child or have family discord (Elliot, Eldridge & Ashfield, 2010). In general, many of the female sexual offenders do have a history of mental illness, previous abuse and even serious vulnerability serious, which can lead to committing sexual

The first thing that needs to happen with psychologists is that they throw any type of general belief about sexual assault out of the window and realize that these crimes can be committed by both males and females. When getting ready to assess, treat or even just meet with a female sex offender, psychologists should not act the same way as they would if it was a man. These offenders tend to be vulnerable and so to be extremely harsh or trying to show dominance, will not only make them uncomfortable, but will also lead to unwillingness by the offender to open up. The psychologist has to make him/herself be approachable and trustworthy before starting to work with the client. There also should not be any stereotypes in the psychologist’s mind before working with the client because each client is different and no action is the same. If it will impossible for the psychologist to treat the offender as a human and without negative impressions, then that psychologist should not be able to work with the client. These individuals do not want to be treated as criminals, but want someone to understand them because it is likely they feel no one has really ever understood them. Before any therapy treatment is completed, the psychologists should either assess the offender or make sure that they have gone over the assessments. Before trying to get to why the offender committed the act, the