Theories of Sexual Offending

Sexual Assault

Sexual Assault

A global public health and criminal justice problem, with high victimization rates across countries, genders, ethnic groups, and levels of hardship.

Prevalence

The proportion of individuals in a population who have experienced sexual abuse before the age of 18, which ranges between 8% and 31% of girls and between 3% and 17% of boys.

Recidivism

The tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend, which is the focus of forensic and correctional psychology in the classification of sexual offenders.

Dynamic Risk Variables

Factors that contribute to the likelihood of an individual committing sexual offenses, which are used in classification systems to determine the level of risk posed by an offender.

Categorization Systems

The theoretical and statistical methods used to classify individuals based on the crimes they commit, their level of risk, and the dynamic risk variables they exhibit, which are necessary for reducing recidivism rates.

Level I theories

Theories that explain sexual offending by taking several variables or aspects into account to provide a comprehensive, nuanced, and high-level explanation of the various elements that contribute to sexually hazardous behaviour among distinct cultures.

Level II theories

Theories that describe and grasp how individual characteristics affect sexual offending from a remote chronological perspective by identifying causes of heterogeneity in their prevalence and influence for different populations.

Level III theories

Theories that explain the process of participating in sexually hazardous behaviour by focusing on the motivations, cognitions, behaviours, and contextual circumstances that contribute to the behaviour in the days, hours, or minutes preceding an offence.

Self-Regulation Process Model

Level III theory of sexual offending developed by Ward and Hudson that identifies four offence pathways driven by acquisitional or inhibitory goals.

Acquisitional Goals

Goals that motivate sexually harmful behaviour by seeking to obtain something, such as power or control.

Inhibitory Goals

Goals that motivate sexually harmful behaviour by seeking to avoid or escape something, such as negative emotions or stress.

Offence Pathways

Four distinct pathways that represent the different goals and ways of meeting them that can drive sexually harmful behaviour for different individuals.

High-Risk Situation

A situation in which an individual makes contact with the victim, becomes sexually aroused, and experiences a rise in deviant sexual fantasies, despite their initial objectives and chosen techniques.

Lapse

The stage at which an individual participates in actions that facilitate the commission of the crime, such as ensuring they are alone with the victim or removing their victim's clothing.

Post-offence Evaluation

The stage at which individuals participate in a process of post-offense introspection, likely eliciting negative sentiments of guilt and shame in avoidant persons, while approach individuals may experience happy emotions upon completing their aim.

Attitude toward Future Offending

The stage at which individuals consider their sexual violating intentions and may use this as an opportunity to reflect on their failures and improve their approach.

Cossins' Power/Powerlessness Theory

A feminist theory of sexual offending that proposes that males' helplessness drives sexually damaging behaviour.

Normative masculinity

Being sexually domineering, successful, egotistical, distant, predatory, immoral, and secretive.

Laws and Marshall's Conditioning Theory

A theory that suggests sexually dangerous people favour deviant and harmful sexual practises due to behavioural reinforcement and social learning.

Finkelhor's Precondition Model

A multi-factorial hypothesis of child sexual offending, with emotional congruence, sexual desire, blocking, and disinhibition contributing to sexual offending. It helps doctors consider the variety of reasons that motivate sexual offending and the process through which it occurs.

Ward and Siegert’s Pathways Model

A model to explain the aetiology and maintenance of sexually hazardous behaviour towards children, with four types of dysfunctional systems. Each pathway is distinguished by a central vulnerability that drives the behaviour and is responsible for generating the cluster of psychological and behavioural features that are specific to that pathway.

Intimacy Deficits

A pathway characterised by a fundamental or core impairment in social skills and close connections with adults. These people may substitute minors as "pseudo-adults" if they have trouble establishing intimacy with age-appropriate partners.

Deviant sexual scripts

A pathway comprising people who misrepresent sex settings. Childhood sexual abuse may have caused these misconceptions. Some people view sexual activity as intimacy, thus they want impersonal sex and have many short-term relationships or promiscuity.

Emotional dysregulation

A pathway characterised by a lack of emotional competence, under-regulation of emotions, and the use of maladaptive tactics to cope with negative emotions. These people associate sex with well-being and desire sex to escape bad moods like anger, loneliness, and anxiety.

Antisocial cognitions

A pathway characterised by those with antisocial beliefs or attitudes. These individuals have normal sexual scripts, and their sexually destructive behaviour is usually part of a larger history of property and violent crimes. They choose minors as their sexual targets due to their habitual exploitation of every opportunity for self-gratification.

Multiple dysfunctional mechanisms

A pathway characterised by those with multiple dysfunctional mechanisms. These individuals have normal sexual scripts and sexually destructive behaviour, which is usually part of a larger history of property and violent crimes. They choose minors as their sexual targets due to their habitual exploitation of every opportunity for self-gratification.