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

Abstract

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.