Contents
This post contains information from the book.
1. Sexual Offence Trends
According to the GSS in 2004,
- Less than 10% of sexual assaults were reported
- Most common reasons for not reporting sexual assaults to police: victim thought it wasn’t important enough to report, the incident was dealt with in another way, they felt it was a personal matter or they didn’t want to get involved with the police.
According to the UCR:
- Over 1/3 of sexual offences were not cleared (compared 26% of other violent offences).
- Most sexual offences were incident of unwanted sexual touching (81%).
- Victim Profile: young (15 to 24) women and girls.
- Men are most likely to be the perpetrator (97%) and are committed more often by young people.
- Children are most likely to be victimized by family whereas adolescents and adults are most likely to be victimized by friends or acquaintances.
2. Types of Sexual Offences
Rape, sexual assault, child molestation (which includes molesters and pedophiles), incest, prostitution (the criminal code defines this as a crime but it’s not necessarily a sexual offence) and paraphilias (see next section).
2.2 Paraphilias
Paraphilia: this is a classification of sexual fantasies, urges or behaviours involving, nonhuman objects; suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner; or children or other non-consenting persons that occur over a period of at least 6 months.
Here are a few types of paraphilias:
- Pedophilia: a sexual preference for children who have not yet begun puberty.
- Related: hebephilia (preference for children 11-14) and ephebophilia (preference for teens 15-19)
- Sexual sadism: being sexually aroused by inflicting humiliation or pain on others.
- Frotteurism: an interest in touching and rubbing against a non-consenting person.
- Related – “Chikan”: where men (in Japan) find unsuspecting, quiet, victims on trains or subways and grope them; because there is such a problem, there are designated women-only passenger cars during rush hours. (NSFW [not safe for work] video – they are acting, I promise… and there are pop-ups on this site; and SFW [safe for work] reference – you will need to be logged into scholar.google.com)
- Exhibitionism: an interest in exposing one’s genitals to an unsuspecting stranger.
- Voyeurism: an interest in observing unsuspecting people naked or engaging in sexual activity.
- Related – “Sharking”: where men (in Japan and apparently Europe) will find unsuspecting females (awake or asleep) and either remove or partially remove clothing from their bodies – this sometimes involves touching; may also refer to ejaculating in public on unsuspecting victims. (NSFW video from Europe; I have no reliable SFW reference – Wikipedia removed the article – but here’s one from Prankpedia; as you can see, there is some debate on how this assault is defined.)
3. Sex Offenders
3.1 Offender Types
Offending groups are heterogeneous, that is, they differ in their backgrounds, offence types and motivations. This affects how we manage and treat them.
Groth et. Al (1982) – this is the most popular typology; it was based on clinical interviews within the context of trying to treat offenders in prison). According to this typology, there are two types of child molesters:
- Fixated Offenders (the typical pedophile)
- Motivation: most likely to be characterized with pedophilia/ephebophilia, these offenders commit premeditated offences against children because they have not developed age-appropriate sexual preferences.
- Victim Preference: prefer extra-familial female (prepubescent) or male (pubescent/adolescent) and typically recruit vulnerable children and engage in extensive grooming to ensure continuous abuse. (Related: Sexual offences against children as the abusive exploitation of conventional adult-child relationships, PDF)
- Risk of Recidivism: very high and increases according to the number of victims.
- This is the closest real-world example I could think of… (I assume he’s not an offender yet).
- Regressed Offenders
- Motivation: similar to rapists, the act is not necessarily motivated by sexual needs alone – the offence stems from stressors in the environment which undermine self-esteem and confidence, causing them to act against children (which is a departure from their attraction to adults).
- Victim Preference: they tend to victimize children (gender depends on who is accessible) to whom they have easy access (which is why they tend to go for intra-familial or acquaintance).
- Risk of Recidivism: because they are not sexually fixated on children, with adequate treatment, they are at a lower risk of reoffending. They are capable of feeling remorse.
According to Canter et al. (2003) [PDF], there are 4 major types of rapists (in order of most prominent theme):
- Involvement: where the offender attempts some form of intimacy (pseudo-intimacy) with the victim, including complimenting and kissing the victim, and apologizing for the attack.
- Hostility: rape that is both physically and verbally violent (where the offender humiliates and demeans the victim).
- The gap on the right of the hostility quadrant suggests that there are sadistic sexual offences but they may not show up because they would come up in homicide cases.
- Control: where the offender is motivated by power and views the victim as an object to be controlled.
- Theft: where rape is an afterthought to another crime (the offender takes advantage of the opportunity).
All of these themes are measured against three facets of violent: sexual, physical and personal.
3.2 Typologies
Massachusetts Treatment Centre: Child Molester Typology, Version 3 (MTC:CM3): this model suggests that child molesters can be broken down by two distinct axes: degree of fixation and amount of contact.
- Degree of Fixation: the extent of their pedophilic interest (i.e. how much they fantasize about sexual contact and interpersonal relationships with children), high or low. We can then break this down into low or high social competence (how well they function as adults). This gives us four types of pedophiles (for this axis):
- Type 0: high fixation, low social competence;
- Type 1: high fixation, high social competence;
- Type 2: low fixation, low social competence; and
- Type 3: low fixation, high social competence.
- Amount of Contact: this is the extent to which the person has contact with any children (ex: teacher versus plumber, high versus low). This is further broken down into the meaning of contact and physical injury – and within physical injury, the degree of sadism. This gives us six types:
- Type 1: high contact, interpersonal (to develop a romantic relationship);
- Type 2: high contact, narcissistic (to satisfy sexual urges);
- Low contact, low physical injury and…
- Low sadism (Type 3 – Exploitative, Non-sadistic): they use only the physical force required to gain compliance from the child (there’s no sexual arousal);
- High sadism (Type 4 – Muted Sadistic): they use force in order to satisfy sadistic sexual interests and fantasies.
- Low contact, high physical injury and…
- Low sadism (Type 5 – Non-sadistic, Aggressive): violence is used to subdue the child (provoked by anger or accidental) but not sexually arousing; and
- High sadism (Type 6 – Sadistic): violence is sexually arousing.
Massachusetts Treatment Centre: Rapist Typology, Versions 3 and 4 (MTC:R3 and MTC:R4): this model suggests that rapists are distinguished by four primary motivations:
- Opportunity: antisocial, impulsive men who commit sexual assault when opportunity presents (ex: as an after-thought during a burglary) – these rapists are further distinguished by their degree of social competence (high or low).
- Generalized Anger (Pervasively Angry): men with long histories of aggressive behaviour directed at women (sexual aggression) and men (non-sexual aggression). They inflict more physical pain on their victims.
- Sexual Gratification: these men tend to plan their offence more than the previous two types; they are distinguished by their sadistic (overt or muted) and non-sadistic tendencies (and also by high or low social competencies). The muted sadistic was removed in the fourth version of this model.
- Misogynistic Anger (Vindictive): these men focus their anger solely against women and are more likely to use physical violence. They are further distinguished by their level of social competency (low or moderate).
In the fourth version, the layout of the model (linear in the third) was switched to a circular model (circumplex) in order to resolve structural problems. The fourth model supports current empirical evidence.
For a great “animation” of why and “how” they solved the issues, go to slides 34-55 of the PPT, Integrating Assessment, Etiology, Prognosis and Treatment from Brandeis University. (Really, it’s pretty great.)
3.3 Rates
Offending rates can vary across time (frequency), crime types, jurisdictions, and sampling techniques. (Ex: in Nunavut, there are higher rates of sexual offending but they also police quite differently there; you can’t keep secrets in small towns.) Here are some trends:
- Significantly more men are accused of sex offences than women and the peak age is 14.
Victimization rates: only 5-20% of sexual victimization is reported to police. In a lifetime, 20-40% of women will be victimized whereas only 2-10% will be victimized (take this with a grain of salt: men and children are less likely to report being victims of sex offences). Here are some trends:
- Significantly more females are victimized than men; peak age for men is ~4 and for women, 13.
- 80% of offences are committed by someone you know (friends, family or acquaintance).
4. Recidivism
Majority of sex offenders don’t recidivate but when you are reading research, you have to keep in mind that the length of follow-up, inclusiveness of criteria, detection rates, type of offence and offender characteristics all affect the results – as time goes on, re-offending rates always increase. Here are some trends:
- Rapists and boy-victim child molesters re-offend at the highest rates.
- Recidivism rates increase when a person has any prior sex offence.
- Younger (less than 50) men recidivate at higher rates than older men.
4.1 Predictors of Sexual Recidivism
Risk Factors – a study by Hanson & Brussière (1998) & Morton (2003): (data project) examined and coded studies by quality of treatment in order to determine what individual characteristics increased/decreased the probability of recidivism over the long-term (risk factors).
- Results: the top risk factors were sexual preference, any deviant sexual preference, prior sex offence, treatment not completed, and antisocial personality/psychopathy (1998) or
sexual deviancy, antisocial orientation, sexual attitudes, intimacy deficits and adverse childhood environment (2003)
Best predictors of sexual recidivism:
- Sexual Deviancy: any deviant sexual interests, sexual interest in children, any paraphilic interests, sexual preoccupation and sex as coping.
- Conflicts in intimate relationship and emotional identification with children were both significant predictors of sexual recidivism.
- Antisocial Orientation: antisocial personality, antisocial traits and a history of rule violation (within the context of their child- or adulthood)
- Sex offenders who had been separated from one or both parents at a young age were significantly more likely to sexually recidivate than those who have not been separated.
- Sexual Criminal History: prior sex offences, victim characteristics, diverse sex crimes and non-contact sex offences.
- Incomplete Treatment
- Intrusive sex (penetrative) is associated with lower rates of recidivism.
Factors Unrelated to Sexual Recidivism: victim empathy, denial, lack of motivation for treatment, internalizing psychological problems, and sexually abused as a child.
- Denial was associated with increased sexual recidivism among low-risk sex offenders such as incest offenders but associated (non-significantly) with decreased sexual recidivism in higher-risk sex offenders.
- Beliefs supportive of sex offending – mixed results.
- Self-esteem – mixed results.
5. Treatment and Management
Here are two ways to manage offenders when they’re released:
- Community Notification: where you inform the public that a sex offender will be released (includes photo, name and offence description in Canada)
- Sex Offender Registries: where sex offenders register with the police upon release and must keep their information up-to-date (available only to the police in Canada).
- Negative Effects for Offenders: may hinder their safe reintegration into the community (losing employment, threats, harassment, physical assault etc).
Incarceration: a prison sentence (regardless of the time spent in prison) does not deter sexual recidivism, though it does protect the public.
Three Approaches to Treatment of Sex Offenders:
- Pharmacological Treatment: treatments designed to reduce sex drive through drugs. Some of these drugs have bad side effects, making them potentially harmful. Not a great option.
- Behavioural Treatment: treatments designed to reduce deviant sexual interests and in some cases, increase appropriate sexual interests (ex: aversion – pairing deviant sexual stimuli or thoughts with aversive stimuli, covert sensitization – pairing negative thoughts with deviant stimuli, and masturbatory satiation – pairing unpleasant stimulation with deviant fantasies). Not a great option.
- Cognitive-Behavioural Treatment: combines elements of cognitive and behavioural treatment to address psychological problems and abnormal behaviour; for many years, the dominant approach was relapse prevention (RP) (disadvantages for this model include: does not fit with offenders who want to re-offend; and has a negative tone, in that it emphasizes the avoidance of risky situation and the removal of risk factors (rather than providing them with motivation to change). Best option!
- Good Lives Model – Comprehensive: goal is to help offenders identify and achieve healthy goals that promote psychological well-being which helps increase the motivation of offenders to participate and engage in treatment and reduce likelihood of reoffending.
You should note that research does suggest that any form of treatment (relapse prevention in particular) helps reduce recidivism, even if it doesn’t address the RNR principles (but obviously we should aim for these).
5.1 Effectiveness of Treatment
Research Trends: how to read a graph – if treatment rate is lower than the control (appears under the line), then treatment works!
- Most treatments are good (some have no effect)
- Most re-offending rates are low anyways
- There is a reduction in sexual and general recidivism when treatments are evaluation with credible designs (i.e. treatment helps).
- Barbaree and Marshall (1988) discovered that extra-familial child molesters who took part in community-based treatment programs fared better than similar offenders who did not participate (though not all research supports this finding).
Problems Assessing Effectiveness of Treatment:
- Sexual recidivism rates are low so we’d have to follow-up with a large number of participants for about 5 years.
- It’s tough to find an adequate comparison group.
- True experimental design would have to be used and offenders would be randomly assigned to treatment and no-treatment groups – this is problematic because the public would be pissed that we withheld treatment from sex offenders in the name of science.
- It’s tough to say what’s effective when we take into account that some offenders refused treatment (had they completed it, would they recidivate more or less?), some didn’t complete treatment and some just didn’t have access to the treatment.
- Dropping out of treatment is highly related to increased sexual recidivism
Regardless of the problems, meta-analytic research suggests that treated groups show significantly lower rates of sexual recidivism (and they’re best when they incorporate the RNRs).
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