‘Women can be paedophiles just as easily as men’

WOMEN can be paedophiles just as easily as men and society must accept this, according to research being presented in Killarney today.

Sharon Lambert from University College Cork is part of a team presenting its work to Psychological Society of Ireland’s annual four-day conference.

She said women often offended in similar ways to men but their crimes were treated differently and society’s attitudes stopped them from coming to the attention of the authorities.

“The extent of the problem has not been recognised in the past and we are seeing an increase in the types of sexual behaviour women are involved in,” she said.

The research looked at the sexual indiscretions of women and found many had sourced child pornography to satisfy certain desires.

Ms Lambert said while many of the women who look at child pornography may not go on to commit an offence, by accessing the material they were feeding the child-sex industry.

The research said the same thought process worked for men as well as women, and people working in child protection needed to be trained to identify female offenders.

This is despite only a small portion of these women going on to physically abuse a child.

However, Ms Lambert said this should not influence approaches taken by gardaí, who should tackle paedophiles regardless of the gender of the offender.

This work is part of more than 200 papers and talks which will be presented to members of the society at the Malton Hotel in Killarney this week.

It will include work on the falling age profile of children getting involved in Dublin’s gang culture and the stigma of homosexuality.

The conference has been broken up into four sections to cover aspects of business, sex abusers, health and social affairs.

In addition, Professor Ray Fuller of Trinity College will question if Irish society is ready for a change in drink driving legislation.