“What Could Have Stopped This?”: Exploring Opportunities for Early Intervention Through the Voices of Women Who Have Perpetrated Child Sexual Abuse

The voices of individuals convicted of sexual offenses - including the voices of females - are often silenced in research. Exploring the user voice has many advantages, including service improvement and enhanced evidence-based program development and design. The current study utilized the user voice by attaining perceptions of women sentenced for child sexual abuse (CSA) in Australia - to identify what they perceived as missed opportunities for support that may have forestalled onset of their CSA perpetration. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 women across three jurisdictions in Australia who had been sentenced for CSA offenses. Two themes were identified from the inductive analysis: (1) desire for early intervention supports and (2) multi-level barriers to accessing support. Although a range of supports were desired spanning various developmental life-stages, personal, relationship, and system-level factors impacted accessibility to services. Three implications were identified from our findings: (1) further research could explore ways to enhance service accessibility, not just availability, ensuring those at-risk of offending are aware of - and can access - various services; (2) a gender-responsive lens in the prevention of female-perpetrated CSA could be adopted; and (3) prevention efforts could utilize a developmental life-course perspective. Such prevention needs to be practical and direct. Limitations and ideas for future research are discussed.