Not Only Men Are Molesters

There are 351 men in California locked up in a state mental hospital as sexually violent predators, prone to attack again and again.

Then there is Charlotte Mae Thrailkill.

The 43-year-old mother of two is California's only female violent sex offender, confined to a maximum-security state mental hospital after experts decided she was too dangerous for release.

Only a handful of women, including Thrailkill, have ever been confined to mental institutions under state laws that allow for civil commitments of sex criminals after they have served their prison terms.

Women are less likely than men to commit sex offenses, but they also are less likely to be reported and prosecuted. Many experts contend that women commit sex offenses far more often than is generally believed.

"It happens a lot more than gets reported, and I think part of that is due to our culture," said Steven B. Blum, a consulting psychologist to a sex offender program in Nebraska. "There are a lot of women who have sexual contact with teenage boys, and they don't get reported."

In the state's regular prison system, only 103 of the 9,746 women behind bars--1.06%--are there for sex offenses, including statutory rape and lewd acts with children. That compares with about 12,500 men, 8% of the total male prison population.

Paul Federoff, a forensic psychiatrist in Ottawa, Canada, said one of the female sex offenders he counsels is an exhibitionist. She opens her living room curtains and strips off her clothes when people pass by.

He told her that unless she stopped this illegal activity, she would be arrested.

" 'Doctor, if someone calls up and says he saw me disrobing in the window, who do you think they are going arrest? Me or him?' " Federoff said she replied.

"And she is absolutely right."

It was widely assumed until recently that women just didn't sexually abuse children, Federoff said.

But during the past two decades, as parents and others have encouraged children to disclose improper sexual behavior, kids have been confiding about abuse by women as well as men.

"Now we are discovering that there are a lot of women who do sexually abuse children, but they get away with it," Federoff said. "There is a growth industry of treatment programs, particularly for adolescent female sex offenders who commit a lot of the crimes while they are baby-sitting."