Risk Factors for Sexual Offending in Men Working With Children: A Community-Based Survey

Abstract

Identifying risk factors for sexual abuse in men who work with children and who have already abused a child could lead to more appropriate screening and prevention strategies and is thus of major scientific and societal relevance. A total of 8,649 German men from the community were assessed in an extensive anonymous and confidential online survey. Of those, 37 (0.4%) could be classified as child sexual abusers working with children, 90 (1.0%) as child sexual abusers not working with children, and 816 (9.4%) as men who work with children and who have not abused a child. We assessed the impact of working with children as an individual risk factor for self-reported child sexual abuse and compared personal factors, pedophilic sexual fantasies, deviant sexual behaviors, antisocial behaviors, and hypersexuality among the three groups. Most interestingly, working with children was significantly associated with a self-reported sexual offense against children, however, it explained only three percent of its variance. Child sexual abusers working with children admitted more antisocial and more sexually deviant behaviors than child sexual abusers not working with children and than men working with children who have not abused a child. Our findings support some of the suggestions made by other researchers concerning factors that could be considered in applicants for child-or youth-serving institutions. However, it has to be pointed out that the scientific basis still seems premature.

How Common is Men's Self-Reported Sexual Interest in Prepubescent Children?

“…The survey (constructs described in order of appearance in the survey) consisted of a multimethod approach tapping into sexual fantasies and behaviors involving prepubescent children and adults. For the sake of method transparency a full description of all measures included in the survey is listed here, although not all measuresparticularly the indirect latency-based and indirect questioning measures-fall within the scope of this report and therefore are reported elsewhere (e.g., Turner, Hoyer, Schmidt, Klein, & Briken, 2015).…”

An Internet study of men sexually attracted to children: Correlates of sexual offending against children.

“…Another study found that men who had sexually abused children in the context of work had higher rates of pedophilic diagnoses but lower rates of antisociality compared with men who had sexually abused children in nonwork-related contexts (Turner, Rettenberger, Lohmann, Eher, & Briken, 2014). In a large epidemiological study of men unselected for attraction to children or adults, there was a small, statistically significant association between working with children and reporting sexual contact with them (Turner, Hoyer, Schmidt, Klein, & Briken, 2016).…”

Prävention sexuellen Kindesmissbrauchs im Dunkelfeld – das Hamburger Modell

“…In den vergangenen ca. 20 Jahren wurden allerdings männliche Betroffene sichtbarer, im deutschsprachigen Raum insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit der Missbrauchsdebatte im Umfeld von Schulen und Kirche [3]. Daraus folgte ein anhaltender veränderter Diskurs.…”