International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

The literature on sexual homicide and serial murder has offered mostly descriptive or anecdotal accounts. What seems to underscore these crimes is a series of paraphilias (i.e., sexually deviant behaviors) that give rise to violent conduct. The motivational model of Burgess et al. and the trauma-control model of Hickey indicate as much in their respective sexual homicide and serial murder typologies. However, neither model offers a detailed conceptual account of the etiology and process of paraphilias, especially in relationship to lust murder, or erotophonophilia. This article attempts to fill this gap in the research. The authors demonstrate how the motivational and trauma-control typologies are assimilable, making possible an integrated theoretical paraphilic schema. The authors explain how paraphilias as a system of behavior function as motive in the sexually sadistic act of lust murder. They conclude by exploring the implications of their conceptual synthesis for clinical forensic treatment and law enforcement practice.

In this study, attachment theory was applied to three samples: male university students (controls), male nonoffending victims of sexual assault, and convicted male pedophiles. Adult attachment styles are investigated along with developmental histories of neglect, punishment, and sexual and physical abuse. It is proposed that adult attachment styles will differ among the pedophiles and the other two groups, and the duration of participants’ adult sexual relationships would vary with the amount of sexual and other trauma that they reported experiencing as young people. If these were confirmed, it would indicate that attachment style was a significant factor in the developmental history of pedophiles and male victims of sexual assault. The results of this study indicated that the victims and controls experienced more security of attachment than the pedophiles, who were found to have an insecure attachment style. Victims and pedophiles were found to have experienced similar levels of early abuse and trauma.

A major problem in the development of an adequate theory of the sexual offence process is the heterogeneity of offenders. This lack of a clear understanding of both why and how people sexually offend against children continues to hinder the development of effective methods of intervention for these individuals. The aim of this article is to critically review some of the approaches that have been adopted in an attempt to provide a reliable and valid classification system for child molesters and to consider the impact that such systems have had on the structuring of interventions to meet the differing needs of this client group.

Social networks and social support generally exert an important impact on the management of crisis and may thus influence prevention and rehabilitation strategies. The authors therefore investigated the social network and support in a group of 62 incarcerated sexual offenders. Irrespective of the underlying diagnosis, offenders were divided into a high-violent group and a low-violent group. A factor analysis resulted in five factors describing specific dimensions of social support. A significantly lower perceived social support was found in the high-violent group as compared with the low-violent offenders concerning the factors “talking about problems and feelings to someone” and “rely on someone.” This low support exclusively referred to men outside the family. Neither the number of previous convictions nor length of prior imprisonment predicted the amount of displayed violence. The authors’ results are compared with those in the pertinent literature and are discussed in light of relevant therapeutic strategies in prevention and rehabilitation.

Sexual victimization has become one of the most publicized and researched social problems in society. However, potential linkages between the intended and unintended effects of sex offender management legislation have gone largely unaddressed in social science literature. This article addresses these linkages by applying a social-systems model to help better understand the problems of managing sex offenders. Additionally, latent consequences of current and proposed sex offender legislation, including community notification laws, are examined. It is argued that sex offenders (and the community at large) may face a considerable variety of problems not intended by such legislation. In addition, we examine the “one-dimensional monster” stereotype of a sex offender and how this ostracism may discourage offenders from reporting their behavior and seeking counseling. Finally, we provide proposals for addressing these issues with the use of the therapeutic jurisprudence model.

This study examined the ability of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) to reliably differentiate between men with and without histories of child molestation crimes at a maximum-security state hospital forensic mental health unit. Results showed that as hypothesized, molesters (n = 28) were less likely than non-sex offenders (n = 35) to exhibit thinking errors captured by the Cutoff, Entitlement, and to a lesser extent, the Cognitive Indolence, Discontinuity, and Power Orientation scales of the PICTS. The findings support its use in targeting general criminal thinking errors for treatment in mixed-offender populations, as well as its use in sex offender populations to augment other sex offense cognitive distortion measures when designing treatment.

The author discusses the importance of the Internet in disseminating advertising matter targeted to stimulate interest in pedophilia. The case of a suspect held in custody for using the Internet for this end is presented. The case is considered in light of the current literature that regards pedophilia as a pathological entity. As such, the author proposes that pedophilia should be considered a mental disorder in legal terms. Besides the pedophilic-child binomial, he discusses the exploiter who is not affected by pedophilia but takes advantage of the Internet for profit. Because of the repugnancy that pedophilia causes, social pressure to apprehend the offenders is intense and can cause witch hunting, both of the pedophile, who is a person with a psychological disorder, and of the exploiter, who may be indirectly responsible for such conduct. Societal pressure sometimes looms over forensic medical judgment, and the author suggests the possibility of justice giving in to such pressures.