Civil lawsuits
In the United States growing awareness of child sexual abuse has sparked an increasing number of civil lawsuits for monetary damages stemming from such incidents. Increased awareness of child sexual abuse has encouraged more victims to come forward, whereas in the past victims often kept their abuse secret. Some states have enacted specific laws lengthening the applicable statutes of limitations so as to allow victims of child sexual abuse to file suit sometimes years after they have reached the age of majority. Such lawsuits can be brought where a person or entity, such as a school, church or youth organization, or daycare was charged with supervising the child but failed to do so with child sexual abuse resulting, making the individual or institution liable. In the Catholic sex abuse cases the various Roman Catholic Diocese in the United States have paid out approximately $1 billion settling hundreds of such lawsuits since the early 1990s. There have also been lawsuits involving the American religious right. Crimes have allegedly gone unreported and victims were pressured into silence. As lawsuits can involve demanding procedures there is a concern that children or adults who file suit will be re-victimized by defendants through the legal process, much as rape victims can be re-victimized by the accused in criminal rape trials.
Maletzky (1993) found that, of his sample of 4,402 convicted child sex offenders, 0.4% were female.According to research conducted in Australia by Kelly Richards on child sexual abuse, 35.1% of female victims were abused by another male relative and 16.4% of male victims were abused by another male relatives. Male relatives were found to be the most relevant predators in the case of both gender.In U.S. schools, educators who offend range in age from "21 to 75 years old, with an average age of 28".According to C.E. Dettmeijer-Vermeulen, Dutch national spokeswoman on human traffic and sexual violence against children, in the Netherlands, 3% of the convicted perpetrators are women, 14.58% of the victims are boys and "most victims were abused by a family member, friend or acquaintance." One in six perpetrators are underage. Typology
Early research in the 1970s and 1980s began to classify offenders based on their motivations and traits. Groth and Birnbaum (1978) categorized child sexual offenders into two groups, "fixated" and "regressed". Fixated were described as having a primary attraction to children, whereas regressed had largely maintained relationships with other adults, and were even married. This study also showed that adult sexual orientation was not related to the sex of the victim targeted, e.g. men who molested boys often had adult relationships with women.Later work (Holmes and Holmes, 2002) expanded on the types of offenders and their psychological profiles. They are divided as follows:
Situational – does not prefer children, but offend under certain conditions.