Leilah Gilligan of the Center for Sex Offender Management — a project organized by the Department of Justice that was cited in FoxNews.com’s alarm-sounding article in June — said she was not aware of any data showing that the sexual abuse of male students by female teachers was on the rise.

Fewer than 9 percent of reported episodes of child sexual abuse are perpetrated by women, according to the Child Maltreatment Report, an annual survey of crimes against minors produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, when it last released such data in 2013. Franca Cortoni, a professor at the University of Montreal who researches female sexual offenders, said, “There is no evidence whatsoever that suddenly more women teachers are having sex with their male students.”

Much of the FoxNews.com coverage coincided with the rise of the #MeToo movement, which prompted a wave of women to disclose past episodes of sexual harassment. Mr. Kotch said that the number of posts on the subject since his arrival was small compared with the volume of articles the site has published on sexual misbehavior by men, including the film mogul Harvey Weinstein.

“We aren’t shying away from focusing on sexual harassment in the workplace,” Mr. Kotch said.

FoxNews.com’s increased coverage of sex crimes allegedly committed by women began two months after the network ousted one of its prime-time anchors, Bill O’Reilly — a move made in the wake of a New York Times report that Mr. O’Reilly and the Fox News parent company, 21st Century Fox, had paid $13 million in confidential settlements to women who had complained about his behavior. (A subsequent Times investigation showed that the settlements involving Mr. O’Reilly totaled $45 million. Mr. O’Reilly has denied the allegations.)

Mr. Kotch said that the uptick in stories on the subject was not related to Fox News’s own sexual harassment issues, which burst into the open in 2016 with the forced departure of the Fox News chairman and chief executive Roger E. Ailes.

Mr. Ailes, who died in May, left the network he had helped create after Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor, sued him for sexual harassment. The anchor Megyn Kelly was another prominent Fox News figure to make an exit, when she went to NBC last year. In her memoir, “Settle for More,” Ms. Kelly accused Mr. Ailes of making “offers of professional advancement in exchange for sexual favors.”

Weeks after cutting ties with Mr. O’Reilly, the network said goodbye to its co-president, Bill Shine, who was accused of having dismissed complaints made by women about Mr. Ailes.