Interpreting Child Sexual Abuse: Empathy and Offense-Supportive Cognitions among Child Sex Offenders

Abstract

Researchers have suggested that child sex offenders hold distorted views on social interactions with children. Misinterpreting children's behavior and intentions could lead to sexually abusive behavior toward children. It is further suggested that the interpretation process is influenced by offenders' offense-supportive cognitions and levels of empathy. To examine the relationships between these three concepts, 47 contact offenders completed self-reports on offense-supportive cognitions and empathy. Vignettes were developed to assess the extent to which offenders attributed responsibility, benefit, and complicity to children in hypothetical child molestation incidents. This study showed that cognitions that justify sexual offending against children seem to diminish the threshold for sexual assault by assigning more cooperation and willingness of the victim in a child molestation incident.

Psychological treatment and therapeutic change in incarcerated rapists

“…On the other hand, rapists usually show numerous "cognitive distortions", that is, erroneous thoughts about women in general, their victims in particular, and the feasibility of the use of violence in social interactions. Such thoughts hamper their capacity to properly interpret and recognise the emotions, needs, desires, and intentions of others and in particular of their victims (Abel, Becker, & Cunningham-Rathner, 1984;Craig, Browne, Beech, & Stringer, 2006;Hempel, Buck, van Vugt, & van Marle, 2015;Marshall, Marshall, & Kingston, 2011;Merdian, Curtis, Thakker, Wilson, & Boer, 2014;Whitaker et al, 2008). In some individuals, cognitive distortions about sexual interactions have a leading aetiological role in their sexual offending, while in other cases cognitive distortions operate mainly not as aetiological factors but as post hoc rationalisations for justifying their actions (Maruna & Mann, 2006;Ward, Hudson, Johnston, & Marshall, 1997).…”

“…They tend to exhibit a marked egocentrism and severe difficulties in imagining and figuring out realistically what others, and particularly their victims, might think, want, and feel (Cohen & Strayer, 1996;Fernandez & Marshall, 2003;Geng, Xia, & Qin, 2012). Several studies have found a direct relationship between individuals' early sexual victimisation and exposure to pornography and the lack of empathy shown later by sex offenders (Becker & Johnson, 2001;Fergusson et al, 2013;Hempel et al, 2015;Mann & Barnett, 2013;Marshall, Marshall, Serran, & O'Brien, 2009). These empathic deficiencies may also undermine the rapists' ability to establish meaningful and appropriate interpersonal relationships, including interactions at school and at work, and the establishment of affective bonds (Agnew, 2014;Beavin, 2015).…”

Typologies and Psychological Profiles of Child Sexual Abusers: An Extensive Review

“…Child contact sexual offenders exhibit more cognitive distortions, compared to the non-contact child internet sexual offenders, especially in the areas of justifying their sexual behaviour, beliefs that children are sexual agents, and in the areas related to power and entitlement over their victims [40]. Similar to the personality traits speculated prior to this, cognitive distortion among contact CSOs was also found to be associated with other psychological profiles such as empathy offenders and distorted attribution of responsibility of their behaviour [37,39].…”

“…Based on the articles we have reviewed, the terms referring to child sexual abusers were classified according to the nature of the sexual abuse: contact child sexual abusers and online child sexual abusers (OCSAs). The contact child sexual abuser terms include child molester (CM) [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], child sexual offender (CSO) [ 36 , 37 , 38 ], contact sex offender against children [ 32 , 39 , 40 ], child sexual abuser [ 37 , 38 ], child sexual assaulter [ 36 , 38 , 41 ], sex offender against children [ 42 ], perpetrator of abuse [ 4 ], and offline child sexual offender [ 43 ]. The contact child sexual abusers refer to the sexual abusers who commit their act through physical contact.…”

“…The cognitive perspective includes the process such as taking another’s perspective or inferring one’s understanding in others [ 69 , 70 ]. In addition to processing the feelings and perspectives of others, empathy plays an important role in the criminal offences of CSOs [ 37 , 39 ]. Between the groups of offline CSO, child pornographic offender, and mixed offender, the latter has the greatest victim empathy deficit, followed by the offline CSO [ 46 ].…”