For the purposes of this thread, I’d like to define child molestation as sexual activities between an adult and a prepubescent child; sexual activities between an adult and a sexually mature minor should be a separate matter.
The question:
Compared to men, how often are women accused of (or formally charged with) child molestation? Surely it’s not 50-50, but is it as lopsided as 1 woman accused for every 100 men accused?
I don’t know the answer.
But I would observe - in connection with any stats that might be put forth - that for the most part women have a lot more access to children than men do, which would skew the stats somewhat. IOW, whatever the ratio is, it would probably be tilted even further to the male side were it not for this fact.
I just looked at the current prison population for my state (NY), which would be anyone serving a sentence of 1 year or more. Overall, 95 percent of the ~55,000 inmates are male.
When I narrow it to sex crimes (sexual abuse, sexual conduct with a child, criminal sexual act, rape, and child porn, etc.) it is 99.2 percent men.
Here’s a pretty old (1991) analysis of research: IPT - Female Child Sexual Abusers: A Critical Review of the Literature
While it doesn’t directly answer the OP (it seems to conclude “small but unknown”), it does discuss another study which showed that, of kids sexually abused at day care, 40% of those perpetrators were female. So, that does show the different kind of access women have to kids.
It seems to me, based on what I’ve read in news reports, etc. that men who abuse boys or girls put them into the “female” role - fondling, penetration…
I have trouble imagining a woman being able to put a younger boy into the male sexual role to any satisfaction. (of course, in the world of sexual perversion I suppose anything can happen).
Also, a woman who wants to satisfy her sexual urges can far more easily get laid with an adult male, however less satisfactory that may be, than can a male with the same problem.
From the few (sensational) cases I recall from the news, most adults with a relationship with a pubescent or adolescent underage partner in an otherwise consensual relationship seem to be the type that like the dominant role in the relationship, being in charge and not being challenged; they like their partner submissive, compliant and doing what they are told.
A number of the adult females, too, seem to be trying to undo their adolescent failures - they were not even close to being “popular girls” in high school, now these 14-year-old boys all falling all over themselves to fall all over her, she’s more popular than ever she was in high school. It may not be a sexual perversion so much as a self-esteem issue.
OTOH, there’s the comment I read in some magazine when Roman Polanski skipped the country 30 years ago about the long standing double standard - someone said that when Roman Polanski rapes a 13-year-old girl, everyone is all upset; but if their 13-year-old by came home and said he got to bang Raquel Welch, they’d pat him on the head and say “good boy, lucky you”.
Maybe a lot more goes on that we don’t hear about because we don’t want to believe, thanks to preconceived notions; but I don’t see in the news a parade of boys (or girls) making the same claims about women to the extent that we see women or former altar boys complaining about their childhood abuse by men. I can see where men would be reluctant to talk about childhood abuse by adult men, but I don’t see any such strong stigma about admitting childhood molestation by a woman.