• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Fair Play For Women

Fair Play For Women

  • Prison
  • Sport
  • GRA
  • Language
  • Changing rooms
  • Resources ▼
    • Take action! Here’s how
    • Key facts
    • UK law
    • Science
    • Sex vs gender
    • Consultation submissions
    • Materials
  • About Us ▼
    • Review of 2022
    • Our aim
    • Our beliefs
    • Our spokeswoman
    • Our history and achievements
    • Our supporters
    • News
      • Newspapers
      • TV Interviews
      • Radio interviews
    • Contact
    • Donate
You are here: Home / Language / “Female” sex offenders and “women” committing sex crimes: why can’t the media get it right?

“Female” sex offenders and “women” committing sex crimes: why can’t the media get it right?

30th May 2021 by FPFW

female sex offenders

Have you read about the rise in “female” sex offenders? It’s probably not so. When the news reports a “woman” with indecent images of children, or a “woman” using pornography in her hospital bed, or a “woman” caught exposing herself in public, it’s almost always a trans-identifying male. These crimes are overwhelmingly committed by men (over 98% of those in UK prisons for sex crimes are male, as shown in the offence analysis on p 52 of the government report on women and the criminal justice system). Given how tough prisons are, especially men’s prisons (95% of the UK prison population is male, and around 50% of male prisoners are in for violent or sexual offences), it’s not surprising that some males might wish to access the female estate. This was anticipated by a group of professional prison psychologists who gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee in 2015, before the transgender prisoner policy was developed. (Very occasionally there are women who do these things. As it is so rare, it’s big news when it does happen – we’ve all heard of Beverly Allitt and Vanessa George.)

So why do the media say these offenders are women? Why don’t they report these crimes accurately? Fair Play For Women has been challenging this for the past few years, because we believe it is distorting the truth. Our concern is that ultimately it will undermine public understanding of why female-only spaces exist and why female-only policies are important. 

The problem isn’t just the media. There are four separate stages in this mis-reporting. 

Female sex offenders: it starts with the police

In 2018 Fair Play For Women discovered through Freedom of Information requests to all 43 separate police forces in England and Wales that many were recording perpetrators by their self-declared gender identity, and not by their sex. This was the case whether or not they had a Gender Recognition Certificate.

The Crown Prosecution Service also expects its prosecutors to refer to defendants by their self-identified gender instead of birth or legal sex, whether or not they have a GRC. So the charges may refer to a woman, even if that person is legally male. Its guidance on transgender issues appears to have been developed in consultation with numerous trans activist groups but no women’s groups.

The problem of the Equal Treatment Bench Book

When a case comes to court, judges and magistrates are directed to use preferred pronouns for anyone in the dock – even a rapist can be called “she”, even though in UK law rape is a crime which requires possession of a penis. A victim can be directed to use preferred pronouns too, as happened to Maria MacLachlan who was assaulted by a transwoman, Tara Wolf. This is because of the Equal Treatment Bench Book, the reference manual for judges and magistrates on how to deal with those before them in the courts. It’s produced and updated by the Judicial College, which has refused to say why or how this policy was adopted, or who was consulted. There’s a good review of the problems with the ETBB here.

IPSO guidance rests on the Equal Treatment Bench Book

When the media reports on these matters, they typically use statements made by the police and the CPS, and of course court proceedings. So they report what’s been said in court by the judge, or by the police or CPS. Even in obvious cases where the photo accompanying the news item clearly shows a male, their position is that they report what was said in court. This they call “accuracy”. Our complaints to the media regulator, IPSO, have been rejected on that basis. Sometimes a reporter writes what they see, or what they know, but mostly they follow the lead of the court, which comes from the Equal Treatment Bench Book. Their approach is described in the Editors’ Code of Practice, used by those newspapers under IPSO regulation. We pointed out the problems with the Editors’ Code when it was reviewed a year ago, but there was no meaningful change. 

Is this a privacy matter?

People worry that naming the birth sex of a trans person is a breach of their privacy or of the Gender Recognition Act. It’s almost certainly not. If you have been told in an official capacity that someone has a GRC, it is a criminal offence to disclose that. But the rest of us are not guilty of any offence if we say what we see (provided of course that we do not engage in harassment). Reporters sitting in court, or looking at a photo, will not know if someone has a GRC so they may report that person’s birth sex without fear of committing an offence – even if the person does have a GRC. We have pointed this out in a recent submission to IMPRESS, the other media regulator, when they invited input to their consultation on reporting transgender issues.

How do we solve this?

Police and Crime Commissioners have the power to direct their police force to record the sex of perpetrators accurately. Some may do so, but many police forces drag their heels on answering FOI requests so we can’t always know. 

The CPS seems unlikely to change their approach, for now. They remain Stonewall Diversity Champions as of May 2021, we believe.

The Equal Treatment Bench Book is a mystery. The Judicial College claims it is not subject to FOI powers so we haven’t been able to find out how the current guidance was developed.

The news media are not a homogenous group, but all those regulated by IPSO follow their guidance, using the ETBB as their get out of jail card. It’s their excuse for appeasing perpetrators by reporting their gender identity as if it were their sex, rather than reporting honestly.

Fair Play For Women is working on all these areas, as are other groups. We hope to have progress in at least one of these areas soon. 

Want to get involved? Write to the Police and Crime Commissioner for your local police force asking for police to record by birth sex. When confronted by anyone accused of a typically male crime like violent or sexual offences, they should use their common sense and judgement. A person may claim to be a woman, but the police don’t believe half of what offenders tell them; why would they believe that?

Filed Under: Language, Male violence

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Biological sex
  • Children
  • Gender Identity
  • Male violence
  • Scottish GRA reforms
  • Silencing women
  • Policy guidance

Our materials

  • Our factsheets
  • Our short films and animations
  • Our memes
  • Our research

Our latest articles

  • World Athletics announcement is a game-changer
  • Our response to IPSO’s draft guidance on the reporting of sex and gender identity.
  • Transgender inclusion in sport is not ‘fair’ when all champions will be young adult males
  • Female-only sport: what does the law say?
  • A speech to the Spanish Senate on fairness in women’s sport

Archives

Footer

Prisons, crime and protecting women

  • The facts about transgender prisoners
  • Prisons timeline – how did we get here?
  • Karen White & prison review
  • Sex attacks in female prisons
  • Refuge shelters deeply worried
  • How do women in prison feel about sharing with transgender prisoners?
  • Can you believe what you read about sexual and violent crimes?
  • The judicial review of prisons policy
  • Factsheets

Sport and the human body

  • A progress report on the fight to restore fairness in female sport
  • Sport timeline: how did we get here?
  • Biological sex differences
  • Chromosomes, sex and gender
  • The science and statistics behind the transgender debate
  • Testosterone suppression in “elite athletes” – what do we know?
  • Safeguarding in sport still matters
  • Male inclusion leads to female exclusion
  • What you can do

Making policy and the law

  • Scottish government is forcing sex self-ID on whole of UK.
  • The Equality Act 2010 and women’s rights
  • GRA reform
  • Advice and guidance for policy makers
  • Changing room policy advice
  • What can I do now?
  • Take Action: Say NO to letting Sex Self-ID in through the back door.
  • Public opinion on the tension between women’s rights and trans demands

© 2023 · Fair Play For Women

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt out if you wish. Read More

Accept Decline Cookie Settings
I consent to the use of following cookies:
Cookie Declaration About Cookies
Necessary (2) Marketing (1) Analytics (4) Preferences (0) Unclassified (4)
Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
wpl_user_preference fairplayforwomen.com WP GDPR Cookie Consent Preferences 1 year HTTP
YSC youtube.com YouTube session cookie. 52 years HTTP
Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE youtube.com YouTube cookie. 6 months HTTP
Analytics cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
_ga fairplayforwomen.com Google Universal Analytics long-time unique user tracking identifier. 2 years HTTP
_gid fairplayforwomen.com Google Universal Analytics short-time unique user tracking identifier. 1 days HTTP
vuid vimeo.com Vimeo tracking cookie 2 years HTTP
IDE doubleclick.net Google advertising cookie used for user tracking and ad targeting purposes. 2 years HTTP
Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.
We do not use cookies of this type.
Unclassified cookies are cookies that we are in the process of classifying, together with the providers of individual cookies.
Name Domain Purpose Expiry Type
_gat_UA-109881507-1 fairplayforwomen.com --- Session ---
GASessionCookie fairplayforwomen.com --- Session ---
rtc linkedin.com --- Session ---
_wpfuuid fairplayforwomen.com --- 11 years ---
Cookies are small text files that can be used by websites to make a user's experience more efficient. The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are strictly necessary for the operation of this site. For all other types of cookies we need your permission. This site uses different types of cookies. Some cookies are placed by third party services that appear on our pages.
Cookie Settings