Research on Sex Offenders Continues

Dr. Grant Harris

  As I've described in several columns, members of the Research Department have studied sex offenders for over 20 years. When talking to a tour group last week, I noticed that people are very curious about this topic and lay people and professionals alike often ask the same questions. Here are some common ones and the answers I give these days:

What do you mean by "sex offenders?" Although there are many sexual behaviours that are crimes, we have studied men who commit the most serious ones -- sexual contact with children (child molesting or pedophilia), and coercive or forceful sexual assaults against women (rape).

Are sex offenders sick? Is there some kind of psychological profile of a sex offender? Sex offenders come from all social classes and occupational groups. In recent years, many of our sex offender clients have come to us from our local communities. We have been surprised at the ubiquity of the problem even in our small communities.

Most sex offenders are not psychotic. Except for their sexual behaviour, they do not appear to be seriously psychologically disturbed. A significant minority of sex offenders though qualify for a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy. As such, they have a history of nonsexual criminal activity and a generally exploitative and irresponsible lifestyle. Similarly, there are no psychological tests or profiles that reliably identify sex offenders. The only exception to this statement is a laboratory test of sexual arousal called phallometric testing.

It's interesting and important to realize that it's normal for men show some sexual arousal to underage partners and rape, but much less than their arousal to mutually consenting sex with adults. On the other hand, phallometric tests show that child molesters show a much greater arousal to children as sexual partners than do other men. And rapists show a much greater arousal to violent and coercive sex. Phallometric testing can help us explore the causes of sex offending, help estimate future risk, and give us a treatment target and a way to monitor clinical progress.

Are there women sex offenders? We have only studied male sex offenders. The vast majority of sex offenders are men. There are some reports of women child molesters, but rape committed by women is virtually nonexistent. Sex offending is almost entirely a male behaviour. This probably says something about how men's and women's sexuality evolved differently. It seems that evolution has caused men's sex drives to be more variable, competitive and aggressive.

What can treatment do to stop sex offenders from repeating their offenses? The ability of drugs or psychological treatment to reduce the recidivism of sex offenders is unknown. The current research shows that sex offenders are, at least, very difficult to treat. Sex offenders seem especially prone to deny that they have any problems that require treatment and many quit treatment before completion. Sex offenders who quit treatment are especially likely to commit new offenses. One thing is certain -- there is no cure for a sex offender. The deviant sexual interests and temptation to reoffend are lifelong problems that no treatment can abolish; the goal must be control.

Would castration be a solution? Castration is the surgical removal of the testicles leaving the penis intact and has been used with large numbers of sex offenders in Europe. The follow-up studies have not been well done, but the large numbers involved probably justify the conclusion that castration would reduce recidivism (compared to doing nothing or putting sex offenders in prison temporarily). How large the reduction in recidivism would be is unclear, however. Of course, castration has many problems as a solution to sex offending. Unlike a criminal conviction, it cannot be reversed if it is discovered that the court erred. Like capital punishment, its use could easily become inequitable and arbitrary, so that the wealthy could always avoid it and it would be used disproportionately on poor people. Legal and constitutional safeguards to prevent mistakes and unfairness would be tremendously expensive and time consuming. And unless an offender's consent was truly voluntary, he could use illicit testosterone or other steroids to reverse the effects of castration.

Why do some men become sex offenders? No one knows. It certainly has something to do with how men's sexuality has evolved. Sexual experience in childhood and adolescence is clearly important too. It does seem clear that many men who eventually become sex offenders had deviant sexual interests in their early teens. There's a limit to what we can learn by studying men who are already sex offenders. A more powerful method is to study a large group of boys as they grow up. The idea here is to discover what early influences and experiences later lead to deviant sexual interests and sex offending behaviour. Members of the Research Department have made some first steps on such a project.