There are many myths and stereotypes about sexual predators who prey on children. These myths and stereotypes are not harmless. Making people worried about the wrong groups of people—for example, queer families and drag queens—not only wastes energy, resources, and time. It also can lead to violence against the wrongly-targeted groups.
If you care about protecting children from abuse, it is necessary that you understand who the actual child sexual predators are. While marginalized people and groups are capable of and have engaged in child sexual abuse, they simply are not the most common abusers. They are not the ones who traditionally use their positions of authority and power to take advantage of the most vulnerable group of people: children.
So who is the average child sexual predator? What is their profile? Put simply, predators resemble the average American male in outward characteristics. As the Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute says, “We know that child molesters are as equally married, educated, employed, and religious as any other Americans.”
Let’s explore this profile more in-depth:
1. Child sexual predators are more likely to be married or formerly married (77%) compared to the average U.S. male population (73%), according to the Abel and Harlow Child Molestation Prevention Study. So, the stereotype of a creepy loner in a white cargo van offering candy to children is just that: a stereotype. It does not reflect the reality of who is targeting children most frequently.
2. The overwhelming majority of child sexual predators are male (94%) and the majority are white (58%). This is according to the United States Sentencing Commission in 2021.
3. In their day-to-day lives, child sexual predators are more likely to identify as heterosexual (at least 90%, according to the American Civil Liberties Union). (I say “identify” because many child molesters aren’t actually attracted to a particular gender; they are attracted to children. Others are situational generalists: abusers who abuse whoever they have access to.) Even among child sexual predators who prey on children of the same sex, homosexuality is not common. The Child Advocacy Center reports that, “Only about 4 percent of same-sex abuse involves homosexual perpetrators; 96 percent of the perpetrators are heterosexual.” The upshot of this, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, is that, “A child’s risk of being molested by his or her relative’s heterosexual partner is over 100 times greater than by someone who might be identifiable as being homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual.”
4. While the Abel and Harlow Child Molestation Prevention Study reports that the average child sexual predator is more likely to molest girls, the predators with the most number of victims each are more likely to molest both boys and girls: “Those who reported molesting only girls averaged 5.2 victims and 34.2 acts. Those who reported molesting only boys averaged 10.7 victims and 52 acts. Those who reported molesting both boys and girls averaged 27.3 victims and 120.9 acts.” This means bathroom bills, or restricting bathroom use to only certain genders, will do absolutely nothing to protect children. If the most prolific predators will abuse children of either gender, this means the bathroom they use will make little difference to whether they abuse children or not. In fact, bathroom bills actively undermine child protection because they promote the idea of stranger danger (another myth we will address shortly).
5. The average child sexual predator is religious (93%), as documented by the Abel and Harlow Child Molestation Prevention Study. In fact, according to the The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Reporter in 2015, “It’s not unusual for ‘hard-core’ child molesters — with more sexual-offense convictions, more victims and younger victims — to be well-respected members of Christian congregations, and to be actively involved as church leaders.”
6. The average child sexual predator targets the children of their own families and friends. Stranger danger—the idea that strangers are lurking around every corner to harm children—is a myth. As child protection expert Boz Tchividjian noted for Religion News Service, “Only 10 percent of child molesters molest children that they don’t know. We must come to terms with the heartbreaking reality that those who pose the greatest risk to our children are within our families, churches, and circle of friends.” To put this another way, according to ChildHelp, “More than 90% of juvenile sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way.”
7. More than two-thirds of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM, otherwise known as “child pornography”) are made at home, says criminology professor Michael Salter for The Conversation, with the victims’ biological father (58%) or stepfather (41%) most likely to be the primary perpetrator. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of offenders in cases involving production of CSAM are white (75%), according to the United States Sentencing Commission.
8. Abuse in general—not just sexual abuse—is most often perpetrated by children’s own parents. The American Humane Association notes that, “79.4 percent of perpetrators were parents and 6.8 percent were other relatives”; in fact, “In under 1 percent of child maltreatment cases the perpetrator was a foster parent, residential facility staff, the child’s daycare provider, a legal guardian, friends or neighbors, or other professionals.” This holds true for physical abuse as well, with sixty-one percent of murdered children under 5 years old in the United States killed by their own parents: 30% by their mothers and 31% by their fathers, according to the American Journal of Psychiatry.
In summary, the average child sexual predator’s profile is: married, male, white, heterosexual, religious, surrounded by friends and family, and a parent. If you put that all together, you get the average, church-going husband or father—the very person many faith communities think is safest and most worthy of significant power over others.