Michelle Green

A horrible but extremely important study here. I have said for years that we don’t place enough focus on just how many sex offenders are in our society, which increases victim prejudice and victim blaming. We always hear ‘1 in 4 girls will be abused’ or ‘1 in 3 women will be raped’ - but we never hear ‘1 in X men are rapists’. This study of 1900 Australian men follows the similar studies in USA and UK. Key findings here: 1 in 10 men admitted to sexually abusing a child 1 in 6 men reported being sexually attracted to children 1 in 15 men said they would have sexual contact with a child under 14 if they wouldn’t get caught The men who offended against children were more likely to be professionals, married, earn higher incomes and work with children. Whilst we might not like this stats and results, we cannot continue in our sector without accurate estimates of how many people are abusive and dangerous. All of our stats are based on victims, but no one wants to talk about the sheer amount of abusers - millions of them in our societies. Work like this is vital, in my opinion, to end victim blaming. If there are millions of these offenders, how can any person or agency blame the victim? How can they claim they should have seen it coming? Or should have known? Or should have protected themselves more? THIS is the real reason why sexual violence and child abuse is so common - not because victims have ‘vulnerabilities’, but because there are millions of perpetrators in every corner of our lives.