A decade-long study reveals concerning trend of young women committing online sexual offences

There are many social issues enabled by social media, including sexting, the creation of and access to child sexual abuse material and cyber bullying.

Concerningly, research has found more than one-third of young Australian women (aged 14–17 years) have sent, or have asked or been asked to show or share nude (or nearly nude) images or videos.

What the public might not realise is that young people who take or share videos or images of themselves are unknowingly possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material.

Analysing a decade of data

In our just-published study, we analysed close to 38,000 sexual offences reported to police in one jurisdiction in Australia (Queensland).

Our large dataset involved all recorded sexual assault and related offences over an almost ten-year period. We wanted to explore the prevalence and type of sexual offence cases, along with the characteristics of the perpetrators, including their age and gender.

Consistent with previous research, we found adult males were responsible for the majority of reported sexual offences in our sample. Women accounted for 12.2% of all reported sexual offences across this period.

What was most unexpected was young women (10–17 years) making up the majority of all women-perpetrated sexual offences (84.1%; 3,874 offences), rather than adult women.

In contrast, young males (10–17 years) made up the minority of all male-perpetrated sexual offences (26.2%; 8,703 offences).

We then grouped the offences into four categories:

• offline child sexual abuse offences (offences against a child victim)

• offline sexual assault offences (offences against an adult or unspecified age of victim)

• online assaultive child sexual abuse material offences (included involving a child in making sexual abuse material)

• online non-assaultive child sexual abuse material offences (included using the internet to procure a child or expose a child to an indecent act).

Our most alarming finding was the high prevalence of young women involved in assaultive child sexual abuse material offences, which was the primary reason this group came to the attention of police.

In fact, when we looked at the likelihood of perpetrating an assaultive child sexual abuse material offence, young women were 20 times more likely than both adult women and adult males, and nearly eight times more likely than young males.

Our finding appears to have uncovered a large concentration of young women engaging in harmful online sexual behaviours and coming to the attention of the criminal justice system.

What we also discovered

We also explored the relationship between perpetrator age, gender, offence type, and the likelihood of police action.

Offences by young women were less likely to result in arrest or going to court compared with any other group (adult women, young males and adult males). Rather, police diversion (such as the person being dealt with by another agency, a restorative justice referral, or given a caution) was the most common outcome.

While these differences may indicate discrepancies in police action for perpetrator gender and age, they are likely due to the circumstances of the case.

So, it may have been that many of these cases involving young women in our study could have involved self-generated material, with these young women taking, and sending, nude pictures of themselves.

In other instances, they may have been sharing explicit images of their peers.

Exploring these interactions was beyond the scope of our study. Further research is urgently needed to investigate why these young women are involved in such a high concentration of these types of offences.

What might curb this behaviour?

We are still learning about young peoples’ online interactions, including those that might come to the attention of police.

Education in the family home is essential. This involves open and honest discussions about online safety.

Online resources are available to help guide parents and caregivers with (sometimes tricky) conversations with young people about online safety. These include materials prepared by the eSafety Commissioner and the National Office for Child Safety.

We also need to continue to focus our efforts on other early intervention strategies.

All young people need to be exposed to education-based programs that help them understand risks and better navigate their social and sexual interactions.

However, it could be argued that education tailored to different behaviour patterns might be helpful to intervene with young people.

For example, educative programs for young women might predominantly focus on the prevention of online harmful sexual behaviours. Whereas, education programs for young males could perhaps centre on harmful sexual behaviours that occur in-person. (Our study found young males mostly perpetrated offline offences.)

But again, we need to first learn more about these young people.

Police are committed in their efforts to help curb this issue, with the use of educative and prevention approaches in cases involving similar-aged young people. Exploring other ways to support police in responding to this issue, while still promoting accountability, may reduce contact with the criminal justice system.

Before we jump to any major conclusions, it is clear further research is needed to understand how our young people interact online and navigate their digital environments.

We need to listen to this population.

What this means is ensuring young people’s voices, experiences and views are at the front and centre of future research.

Doing so will allow us to co-create solutions, reduce these statistics and improve wellbeing and outcomes of young people in Australia.