NCJ Number
195594
Journal
Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment Volume: 14 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2002 Pages: 241-251
Date Published
July 2002
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This study evaluated the Empat as a measure of empathy with patients civilly committed under California's Sexually Violent Predator law.
Abstract
In 1996 California enacted legislation that provided for the civil commitment of sexual offenders following their prison incarceration. Because of the promising results of the initial research on the Empat and the lack of a generally accepted measure of victim empathy for sexual offenders, the Empat was chosen for inclusion in the standard assessment battery for California's Sex Offender Commitment Program (SOCP). The Empat contains 45 items to which the offender is asked to respond on a five-point Likert scale from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree." Items describe situations specific to victims of sexual abuse and nonsexual abuse. The developers of Empat (McGrath et al., 1998) reported significant findings following the initial investigation of the measure. Specifically, they reported that sexual offenders, even those instructed to "fake good," showed less sexual abuse empathy than controls. In contrast, sexual offenders' scores of general empathy equaled the scores of controls as measured by the Empat. Higher scores were also reported for a sample of child molesters who completed a 24-week relapse prevention program. Members of the current sample were classified as sexually violent predators (SVP's) under California law and committed to Atascadero State Hospital (ASH), the State's maximum-security forensic mental health facility. The ASH sample consisted of 73 child molesters, 30 rapists, and 5 patients convicted of both child molestation and rape. This reflects the distribution of offender types in the entire SVP population at ASH. The Empat was administered as part of a standard assessment battery conducted with patients at the point that they began to actively engage in the treatment process. Rapists and child molesters in the current sample scored significantly higher in victim empathy than any of the original sex offender groups, with rapists scoring higher than the control group cited by McGrath et al. Clinicians have found the Empat to be too face valid and easily manipulated by patients within this population. The authors advise that until the construct of empathy is consistently defined and reliably measured, the relationship between empathy and sexual offending cannot be determined. An effective measure of empathy specific to sexual offenders does not yet appear to be available; however, the emerging construct of perspective-taking, along with a recognition of the need to qualify assessment findings with information regarding contextual variables, apparently offer the most promising direction for the development of more useful instruments. 2 tables and 22 references