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The cognitive distortions of sexual offenders are considered to be influential in the etiology and maintenance of deviant sexual behavior and are commonly accepted as valid predictors of treatment potential and success, despite the lack of systematic research to support these assumptions. Contributing to this gap in the research is the shortage of psychometrically sound assessment techniques to measure these cognitive distortions. The present paper describes the development and validation of two distinct measures, the MOLEST and RAPE Scales, designed to respectively assess the cognitive distortions of child molesters and rapists. Results indicate that the MOLEST and RAPE Scales are promising clinical and research measures, demonstrating strong internal consistency and reliability, convergent and discriminative validity, freedom from a socially desirable response bias, and utility in assessing the efficacy of a cognitive restructuring treatment component. Furthermore, sexual offenders' cognitive distortions as assessed by the MOLEST and RAPE Scales were found to be related to the number of victims and duration of sexually assaultive behavior.

Cognitive distortions are often referred to as attitudes toward rape in theory, research, and clinical practice pertaining to sexual aggression. In the social-psychological literature, however, attitudes are typically defined as evaluations; thus, in this context, attitudes toward rape are considered evaluations of rape (e.g., rape is negative vs. positive). The purpose of the current study was to explore whether a widely used measure of cognitive distortions (RAPE Scale; Bumby, 1996) assesses evaluation of rape, and, if not, whether evaluation of rape and the cognitions assessed by the RAPE Scale are independently associated with sexually aggressive behavior. Participants (660 male undergraduate students) completed the RAPE Scale as well as measures of evaluation of rape and sexually aggressive behavior. An exploratory factor analysis revealed that the RAPE Scale items formed a correlated but distinct factor from the Evaluation of Rape Scale items. Regression analyses indicated that the Evaluation of Rape Scale and the RAPE Scale had small to moderate independent associations with self-report measures of sexually aggressive behavior. Our results suggest that evaluation of rape may be distinct from cognitive distortions regarding rape, and both evaluation and cognitive distortions may be relevant for understanding sexual violence.