Perspectives on Female Sex Offending: A Culture of Denial (Book Review‪)‬

PERSPECTIVES ON FEMALE SEX OFFENDING: A CULTURE OF DENIAL. Myriam S. Denov. (2004). Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited. 225 pp. ISBN: 0754635651. In their magisterial and encyclopedic books on male and female sexual behaviour, Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues provided little information on the topic of female sex offenders (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953). Fifty years on, one has the feeling that there is still a dearth of information on this subject. In 1990, Vernon Quinsey, a leading Canadian expert on sexual violence, wrote: "Female perpetrators of sexual violence are not discussed here because there are so few reported instances involving female aggressors and little information concerning them" (Quinsey, 1990, p. 563). This opinion was echoed by Mervin Glasser, Consultant Psychiatrist at the Portman Clinic in London, U.K., who claimed: "Though adult female sexual involvement with children has long been reported, information about such women is very limited and they rarely present at psychiatric clinics: for example, out of 288 patients seen for assessment at the Portman Clinic in 1976, two women were noted as having carried out paedophilic acts" (Glasser, 1990, p. 741). A different perspective is provided by Fedoroff, Fishell, & Fedoroff (1999) whose case series report on 14 women "who sought treatment for presumed paraphilic sexual disorders" provides valuable clinical information that will be referred to later in this review.