NCJ Number
185112
Journal
Child Abuse Review Volume: 9 Issue: 4 Dated: July-August 2000 Pages: 264-274
Date Published
2000
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This study of the criminality of convicted child sex abusers is the first British comparative analysis of the criminality of intra-familial and extra-familial abusers.
Abstract
The study focused on the lifetime police records of the subjects. In a cohort of 374 convicted male child sex abusers, 50 percent had convictions of "sex only" crimes; 26 percent for "sex and other" offenses; and 24 percent for "sex, other, and violent" crimes. There were three "relationship-to-victim" subgroups: biological relatives, which consisted of fathers and other biological relatives (18 percent); non-biological relatives, which consisted of cohabitees or stepfathers (10 percent); and 72 percent who were "extra-familial" offenders, having had no family relationship to the child. This atypical pattern of abusers indicates a filtering process, in which intra-familial abusers are less likely to be prosecuted than extra-familial offenders. The main findings were that biological relatives were more often "sex only" offenders, but averaged more sexual offenses than the other groups; non-biological abusers had more "other" criminal convictions for violence and were more similar to the extra-familial offenders than biologically related abusers; extra-familial abusers consisted of more "other" criminal and violent offenders than the non-biological abusers; non-biological offenders, however, had a pattern of criminality more like the extra-familial group than the other intra-familial abusers. The violent men, often with long histories of both sexual and non-sexual offending, pose particular problems for the criminal justice and child protection services. 5 tables and 19 references