EMDR With Sex Offenders: Using Offense Drivers to Guide Conceptualization and Treatment

Abstract

Evidence shows that sexual offenders have higher levels of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) than either the general population or other criminal populations. Historically, it was considered standard practice for sex offender therapists to dissuade their clients from addressing childhood trauma or adversity for fear of excuse making for his offending. The pathways model, which highlights etiology, made room for trauma treatment for offender’s ACE as a legitimate treatment intervention. The adaptive information processing model inherent in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) trauma therapy is theorized to reorganize the maladaptively stored clustering of cognitions and emotions related to overwhelming or traumatic experiences such as childhood sexual abuse. We suggest EMDR therapy as a means of restructuring distorted implicit cognitions and personal vulnerability factors which are theorized to drive offending behavior. Through a comprehensive literature review, the authors considered 5 extant models in the sex offender literature and developed the offense drivers model. This model is designed to guide and inform EMDR therapy with sex offenders. A case example illustrates the implementation of this treatment process. A checklist of offense drivers is provided to assist in case conceptualization and treatment.

Impersonal and Predatory Relations With Child Victims of Sexual Assault: Pedophilic Interest and Early Childhood Abuse

“…The most recent survey of treatment providers in North America performed by the Safer Society (McGrath et al., 2009), surveying over 1,300 offense-specific treatment programs in North America, found that no treatment providers list sexual trauma therapy as being with the top three theories that best describe their program (the figure is higher for adolescent offenders). Ricci and Clayton (2016) argue that there is a long-standing belief among treatment providers that directly targeting and resolving earlier trauma may foster excuse making among patients and thus hinder treatment progress. While this may be the case, it should be noted that most recently some practitioners have advocated Trauma Informed Care for sex offenders.…”