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Twenty years of research into sex offenders' cognitive distortions has primarily focused on the measurement of distortions rather than on theorizing about the underlying structures that are responsible for generating and organizing them. Recently T. Ward (2000; T. Ward & T. Keenan, 1999) suggested that offenders have underlying causal theories about themselves, their victims, and broader categories of people (e.g., women and children), and that these implicit theories enable post hoc explanation as well as prediction of people's actions and reactions. D. L. L. Polaschek and T. Ward (2002) examined rape-related attitudinal scales and constructed and outlined five core implicit theories. Here, we examined whether evidence for these five theories was also found in offense process descriptions generated from interviews with 37 imprisoned rapists. Coding of the descriptions revealed support for all five theories.

Although considerable efforts have been made to develop and validate etiological models of male sexual offending, no theory is available to guide research or practice with female sexual offenders (FSOs). In this study, the authors developed a descriptive, offense process model of female sexual offending. Systematic qualitative analyses (i.e., grounded theory) of 22 FSOs' offense interviews were used to develop a temporal model documenting the contributory roles of cognitive, behavioral, affective, and contextual factors in female sexual abuse. The model highlights notable similarities and divergences between male and female sexual offenders' vulnerability factors and offense styles. In particular, the model incorporates male co-offender and group co-offender influences and describes how these interact with vulnerability factors to generate female sexual offending. The gender-specific research and clinical implications of the model are discussed.