Our thanks to Jeff for this. We were anticipating yet another suspended sentence, instead she received a 8-year prison sentence. We hope many more men and boys are emboldened to come forward and start cases against their former abusers, no matter how long ago those abuses took place.
Prosecutions of women for sex offences are rare, and the rarity is surely accounted for in large part by the lack of interest that the police and criminal justice system take in women’s sexual abuse of men and children. In our general election manifesto (pp.31-37) we calculated that (from what is known about rates of heterosexual male and female sex offending), the ratio of men to women charged with sexual offences should be a little under 3:1. In the UK in 2013, the ratio was 146:1.
