No abstract

This article proposes that the origins of sexual offending lie in the offender's experience of poor quality childhood relationships with their parents. This is said to increase their risk of being sexually abused, which in turn, feeds into the sexual fantasies they entertain, particularly during adolescence. The juvenile sexual history of sexual offenders involves high relative rates of masturbation, which becomes a preferred way of coping with stress. These high rates of masturbating, along with a lack of self-confidence in relationships, increase the likelihood that sexual fantasies will both incorporate elements of power and control and become more deviant over time. All of this is thought to create a disposition to offend that will be released only when the male's social constraints are disinhibited and he has an opportunity to offend.

This paper describes an approach to treatment for sexual offenders who are in categorical denial. Other efforts to have them, at least partially, admit responsibility had failed and they were to be released from prison without any treatment. Evidence that suggests denial is not predictive of risk and that treatment may reduce the risk of these offenders is reviewed. Essentially, this paper offers a possible approach to dealing with these intractable deniers which, it is suggested, is better than not trying to modify their risk, and that may prove to be effective.

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This paper examines the scientific, practical, and ethical issues surrounding the employment of the Random Controlled Trial (RCT) in the evaluation of sexual offender treatment. Consideration of these issues leads us to conclude that the RCT design is not suitable for determining the effectiveness of sexual offender treatment. We also examine the RCT study by Marques et al. (Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment and Evaluation 17:79-107, 2005) that is often held up as the model for the evaluation of sexual offender treatment. We found several problems with this study that, in our opinion, reduce its relevance for deciding whether treatment is effective with these clients. Finally, we examine two alternative strategies for evaluating treatment that may allow treatment providers to more readily examine, and report, the results of their programs.

This article describes an evaluation of the effects of an early version (1991-2001) of Rockwood’s prison-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy/Risk–Needs–Responsivity (CBT/RNR) sex offender program that had emerging elements of a strength-based approach. This program was implemented under contract to Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) and continued to evolve in response to emerging evidence until it closed in 2013. Thus, the program as evaluated here did not involve a fixed approach as did the comparison CSC program (hereafter referred to as SOTP). Long-term reoffense data, from Rockwood’s program ( n = 579), were compared with SOTP ( n = 625) and with a group of untreated men ( n = 107) sentenced for sex offenses. A modified brief actuarial risk scale (BARS-M) was used to control for baseline risk among the three groups, along with additional controls for age at release, victim type, and individual differences in the length of long-term follow-up period. Both treatment groups displayed lower rates of both sexual and violent reoffending when compared with the no-treatment offenders. Overall, the Rockwood program generated the lowest recidivism rates. The results demonstrate that prison-based sex offense–specific treatment can be effective. We discuss the strengths and limitations of the current design through the Collaborative Outcome Data Committee’s guidelines.

No abstract

This paper describes a technique designed to assist sexual offenders to recover memories of their offense. We have consistently observed that some sexual offenders present as having no recall of their offense although they are able to remember other events of the day of the offense. This failure to recall offense details prevents the offenders from making an appropriate disclosure which, in turn, blocks attempts to identify their offense pathways and develop relapse prevention plans. The memory recovery technique we describe is based on experimental literature on memory and we outline its use with 22 clients, 20 of whom showed satisfactory recovery of their memories.