Jennifer Manlove, a sociologist and senior research associate at Child Trends, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that studies adolescent sexual activity, said that although cases involving women and preteen boys are quite rare, "when [they] turn up, they make news a little more, because they are so extreme."
The high-profile 1990s case of Mary Kay Letourneau, the former Seattle schoolteacher who was jailed for having sex with a 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, helped focus attention on boys as sexual victims.
But the fact that the pair had two children together and married after the 43-year-old Letourneau's release from prison, underscored that Fualaau, now 22, was a willing participant, sociologists said. And as a result, the revulsion and objection that was originally directed at Letourneau may have dissipated.
Matthew Felling, media director at the Center for Media and Public Affairs, said the news media is partly responsible for generating the fascination of female sex offenders among the general public because it has failed to adopt a code of gender neutrality in pedophile coverage.
Reports about male sex offenders include words like "predator" or "monster," Felling said, while in stories involving female offenders words like "bombshell" and "romp" are common.
"There is a huge dichotomy in coverage. Men are demonized, while women are diagnosed," said Felling, whose group conducts content analysis of the news media.
The entertainment industry has also heightened the allure of older women having sex with much younger males, through films and television shows like "Desperate Housewives," sociologists said.
Although the law dictates equal punishment for men and women who commit sex crimes against children, legal experts said that a double standard often applies when dealing with female offenders, who are often treated more leniently.
Former Tampa schoolteacher Debra Lafave, who admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old student, recently avoided prison as part of a plea agreement. Lafave, 25, will instead serve three years of house arrest and seven years' probation.
And last November, Sacramento high school teaching intern Margaret De Barraicua, the 31-year-old mother of a 2-year-old boy, was sentenced to a year in jail for having sex with a special education student 15 years her junior.
