Female sexual abuse and criminal justice intervention: a comparison of child protective service and criminal justice samples.

OBJECTIVE: The current study compared a sample of female perpetrators reported to Child Protective Services (CPS) to a sample of women from the criminal justice system. Instead of examining a clinical or criminal justice sample in isolation, this comparison allows a more accurate description of female sexual offending. METHODS: Cases were drawn from a Midwestern state's child abuse registry, law enforcement records, and sex offender registry. The CPS sample consisted of 179 women, and the criminal justice system sample consisted of 57 women. All cases were reported to the agencies between 1994 and 2004. RESULTS: Victims ranged in age from 1 to 18 years old (M=9.98, SD=4.37). As hypothesized, there were statistically significant differences between the CPS and criminal justice samples. Specifically, the CPS sample had a majority of victims under age 12 (74.9%), while the criminal justice sample had a majority of victims between ages 13 and 19 (73.8%). The CPS sample had predominantly intrafamilial victims (97.8%), while the criminal justice sample had a majority of extrafamilial victims (63.3%). The CPS sample also showed significantly more female victims (63.7%), while the criminal justice sample had mostly male victims (62.1%). CONCLUSIONS: There were significant differences in the victim's age, the victim's gender and the perpetrator-victim relationship between cases managed in the CPS and the criminal justice system. The results highlight the need for further research into child welfare and law enforcement collaboration.

Exhibitionism: findings from a Midwestern police contact sample.

This study used a police sample to examine offense characteristics, recidivism rates, and other types of sexual offending among individuals suspected of exhibitionism. The sample consisted of 202 incidents of indecent exposure perpetrated by 106 identified individuals. Demographic information showed that one quarter of the sample had symptoms of a mental illness and one quarter had a history of substance abuse. More than 84% of the sample had other nonsexual criminal charges. Approximately 30% of the perpetrators were charged for more than one exposure incident. Masturbating during the offense, exposing to child victims, and speaking to the victim did not show any relationship to the occurrence of more sexually aggressive behaviors. However, individuals who had subsequent rape or molestation charges (16.9%) were more likely than those who did not to have had multiple exposure incidents and a history of physical assault charges.