NCJ Number
192656
Date Published
2001
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This chapter focuses on the sex offender and treatment in the institutional and community setting.
Abstract
Sex offenses are the most underreported of all major crimes. Sexual offenses encompass a wide range of behaviors. The rapist differs from the child molester, and stranger rapists and acquaintance rapists also differ considerably. The majority of rapists appear to be traditional macho males who rarely respect women as autonomous human beings who have absolute rights to their own bodies. Some rapists require violence and victim degradation for their satisfaction. In community corrections, treatment of rapists should center on discussions of sex roles, images of women, and the victim’s experience. Rapists who are imprisoned are usually those who are violent. Their treatment should be more intense and specialized, and administered by psychiatrists and psychologists. Child molesters are usually weak and lonely individuals. They tend to be concentrated in three age categories: the teens, mid to late thirties, and the mid fifties and older. Some special conditions that usually contribute to child molestation are mental deficiency, unemployment, and loneliness. There are major differences between rapists and child molesters. The biggest differences are the average ages of the two groups and the rapists’ greater propensity to use force. The treatment of child molesters is best accomplished within specialized sex abuse clinics. A treatment program named SANE (Sexual Abuse Now Ended) is a victim-oriented program based on the philosophy of “restitution therapy.” The offender is terminated from the program successfully only when he has (1) revealed all victims as indicated by passing a polygraph examination, (2) when he has recognized and confronted his deviant arousal patterns revealed by plethysmograph tests, (3) his penile arousal to nondeviant sexual material is greater than it is to deviant sexual material, and (4) his therapist has determined that the offender has accepted his full responsibility for his actions and has made “emotional restitution” to his victim(s). Prison-based sex offender treatment programs in different States teach common fundamentals such as victim awareness, behavior patterns, examining unresolved childhood issues, relapse prevention, and thinking errors. 49 references