Introduction

• Sexual assault is a global public health and criminal justice problem, with high victimisation rates across countries, genders, ethnic groups, and levels of hardship.

• A recent meta-analysis of international prevalence studies revealed that between 8% and 31% of girls and between 3% and 17% of boys are sexually abused before the age of 18.

• Moreover, between 6 and 59% of women and between 0.2 and 30% of men report having been sexually victimised as adults.

Classification of Sexual Offending

• Classification practises in the correctional realm have progressed without explicit consideration of classification's function in science.

• Due to the practical nature of forensic and correctional psychology and its emphasis on minimising recidivism rates, this is the case.

• It is claimed that classifying persons according to the crimes they commit, their level of risk, or the quantity and kind of dynamic risk variables is sufficient to explain and reduce their likelihood of committing additional crimes.

• It is necessary to have separate classification systems for different activities, as knowing someone is a high-risk sexual offender only tells you their potential of committing other crimes.

• The creation of categorization systems involves a high level of theoretical literacy in addition to statistical knowledge.

Levels of Theory

• Level I theories: These are the most complete and intricate theories, taking several variables or aspects into account to explain sexual offending.

  • The purpose is to provide a comprehensive, nuanced, and high-level explanation of the various elements that contribute to sexually hazardous behaviour among distinct cultures.

  • In lieu of direct abductive inference from raw or aggregated data, these theories are often formed through the integration of theories already developed at other levels.

• Level II theories (middle level theories): These describe and grasp how these individual characteristics affect sexual offending from a remote chronological perspective.

  • These often detail how these characteristics appear through time and amongst individuals, identify causes of heterogeneity in their prevalence and influence for different populations, and explain how they contribute to sexual offending.

  • These theories are produced by abductive inference from raw or aggregated data due to their more focused and granular nature.

• Level III theories (microtheories): This explains the process of participating in sexually hazardous behaviour; this process is frequently referred to as a "offence chain" or "offence cycle."

  • These theories tend to concentrate on the motivations, cognitions, behaviours, and contextual circumstances that contribute to the behaviour in the days, hours, or minutes preceding an offence.

  • These tend to focus on how individuals engage in sexually hazardous behaviour rather than on characteristics that explain a predisposition or propensity towards such conduct.

  • These are frequently multifactorial in character, but differ from Level I theories in their comprehensiveness and temporally limited description of behaviour.

Level III Theories: Descriptive Offence Process Models

• Ward and Hudson's Self-Regulation Process Model is an influential Level III theory of sexual offending.

  • It posits that the goals that motivate behaviour can be classified as either 'acquisitional' or 'inhibitory' goals.

  • They developed four distinct offence pathways that represent the different goals, and ways of meeting them, that can drive sexually harmful behaviour for different individuals.

  • These pathways are nested within the broader context in which the offending occurs, and represent the different ways that individuals already predisposed to engaging in sexual abuse might react to proximal factors and circumstances that trigger this behaviour.

• Phase 1 (Life Event)

  • Some incident in an individual's life elicits an emotional and/or cognitive response, which in turn elicits deeply held beliefs (i.e. schema) or memories associated with these emotions or cognitions.

• Phase 2 (Desire for Deviant Sex or Activity)

  • The provoked emotions, memories, or beliefs result in a desire to participate in sexually hazardous behaviour or closely related behaviours (e.g. substance use).

  • This is due to the fact that these behaviours have evolved into a maladaptive coping mechanism or response to perceived slights.

• Phase 3 (Offence-Related Goals Established)

  • The mostly subjective aspirations from Phase 2 become more conscious, offence-related goals that the individual then consciously considers.

  • Whether the aim is avoidant or approach-related (as mentioned above) will rely on the individual's current skills, feelings, cognitions, beliefs, and temperament.

• Phase 4 (Strategy Selected)

  • The individual will select a set of solutions to help them achieve their Phase 3 objective (i.e. one of the four pathways outlined above).

  • This may be a conscious or unconscious procedure based on established behavioural habits.

• Phase 5 (High-Risk Situation Entered)

  • Individuals will make contact with the victim as a result of either their approach or avoidance efforts failing.

  • Individuals will likely become sexually aroused and experience a rise in deviant sexual fantasies, despite their initial objectives and chosen techniques, as a result of previously established ties between their victim and sexual enjoyment.

  • This is likely to result in negative emotions, such as shame and fear, in avoidant persons, further diminishing their ability to manage their behaviour.

  • This may also apply to those with approach objectives.

• Phase 6 (Lapse)

  • The 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.

  • At this stage, the individual has the intent to perform the crime and is driven by a strong desire for sexual fulfilment.

• Phase 7 (Sexual Offence)

  • The person engages in the sexually hazardous conduct.

  • The elements of this abuse, such as the level of violence employed, will depend on each individual's belief structures, emotional wants, and previous behaviour patterns.

• Phase 8 (Post-offence Evaluation)

  • The participants participate in a process of post-offense introspection.

  • This is likely to elicit negative sentiments of guilt and shame in avoidant persons, whereas approach individuals may experience happy emotions upon completing their aim.

• Phase 9 (Attitude toward Future Offending)

  • People consider their sexual violating intentions.

  • Some may repeat the same techniques and aims, while others may use this as an opportunity to reflect on their failures and improve their approach.

  • Some previously shy people may now actively seek out sexually offensive situations.

  • To inform future decisions, new learnings from the most recent infraction will be integrated into belief systems and behaviour patterns (consciously or subconsciously).

Level II Theories: Single-Factor Models

Cossins’ Power/Powerlessness Theory

• Cossins' Power/Powerlessness Theory: It is a feminist theory of sexual offending that proposes that males' helplessness drives sexually damaging behaviour.

• A sense of masculinity and authority earned via this procedure may encourage this behaviour.

• Normative masculinity means being sexually domineering, successful, egotistical, distant, predatory, immoral, and secretive.

• Cossins maintains that biological characteristics, temperament, and other psychological aspects do not need to be considered when explaining dangerous sexual behaviour.

• This theory is inconsistent.

• It argues that men sexually assault women and children to assert or reassert their masculinity and social authority, but sexual offenders are generally social pariahs.

• It also fails to explain how sexuality becomes intimately associated with power and masculinity for males, especially when most men don't meet this normative ideal.

• Sexuality, masculinity, and power may be linked by men's maltreatment or exposure to deviant sexual practise.

• Yet, this pathway does not explain why children are sexually attractive. Most males don't have a natural sexual attraction to children, either.

• Without biological, developmental, and individual variables, sexual attraction to and abuse of minors cannot be explained.

Laws and Marshall’s Conditioning Theory

• According to Laws and Marshall's Conditioning Theory, sexually dangerous people favour deviant and harmful sexual practises.

• Behavioural reinforcement and social learning generate this inclination.

• These behaviours and fantasies promote and enhance the chance of abuse or deviant fantasies.

• Learnings will shape preferences and behaviour over time.

• Deviant sexual orientation predicts future sexual offending in sexual offenders, according to meta-analyses.

• Yet, most sexual offenders do not prefer deviant behaviour.

• Most child sexual abusers do not like children.

• Hypersexuality, sexual obsession, and cognitive-behavioral processes also contribute to sexual offending.

Level I Theories: Multivariate Model

Finkelhor’s Precondition Model

• Finkelhor's Precondition Model: It is a multi-factorial aetiological hypothesis of child sexual offending.

• Emotional congruence, sexual desire, blocking, and disinhibition are believed to contribute to sexual offending.

• Emotional congruence, sexual arousal, and blocking are thought to underlie child sexual abusers' deviant sexual inclinations, whereas disinhibition explains how these interests become active offending.

• Finkelhor's Precondition Theory advanced comprehensive aetiological explanations of child sexual offending.

• It helps doctors consider the variety of reasons that motivate sexual offending and the process through which it occurs.

• However, the model has some flaws and inconsistencies, such as the removal of distal or developmental elements that contribute to the predisposition to offending and a lack of understanding surrounding how each of the four factors leads to distinct methods or forms of offending.

• It also fails to explain the aetiology of offending behaviour for those who sexually abuse both children and adults.

Ward and Siegert’s Pathways Model

• The Pathways Model was established by Ward and Siegert to explain the aetiology and maintenance of sexually hazardous behaviour towards children.

  • It claims that the qualities and behaviours of individuals who commit sexual offences against children are the result of the interaction of 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.

• Pathway one: Intimacy Deficits

  • The first aetiological pathway characterises those with a fundamental or core impairment in social skills and close connections with adults.

  • Insecure attachment patterns generate unsatisfying or dysfunctional adult relationships and extreme loneliness, causing intimacy deficits in these persons.

  • This pathway's sexual and personal partners are adults, but they may substitute minors as "pseudo-adults" if they have trouble establishing intimacy with age-appropriate partners.

  • These people may also sexually abuse children.

• Pathway two: Deviant sexual scripts

  • The second aetiological pathway comprises 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.

  • Some people choose children as sexual partners because of necessity or opportunity.

• Pathway three: Emotional dysregulation

  • Lack of emotional competence makes third-aetiological pathway persons vulnerable.

  • Under-regulation of emotions and the use of maladaptive tactics to cope with negative emotions are the key symptoms of this emotional dysfunction.

  • Maladaptive coping techniques, including sex, to regulate unpleasant mood states are the second main dysfunction.

  • Due to extensive masturbation in early adolescence and a lack of other ways to boost self-esteem and mood, these people associate sex with well-being.

  • Thus, they desire sex to escape bad moods like anger, loneliness, and anxiety.

• Pathway four: Antisocial cognitions

  • In the fourth aetiological pathway, those with antisocial beliefs or attitudes are vulnerable.

  • These individuals have normal sexual scripts, and their sexually destructive behaviour is usually part of a larger history of property and violent crimes.

  • Childhood and adolescence may have shown this trend of antisocial and/or criminal behaviour.

  • Due to their habitual exploitation of every opportunity for self-gratification, these people choose minors as their sexual targets.

• Pathway five: Multiple dysfunctional mechanisms

  • In the fourth aetiological pathway, those with antisocial beliefs or attitudes are vulnerable.

  • These individuals have normal sexual scripts, and their sexually destructive behaviour is usually part of a larger history of property and violent crimes.

  • Childhood and adolescence may have shown this trend of antisocial and/or criminal behaviour.

  • Due to their habitual exploitation of every opportunity for self-gratification, these people choose minors as their sexual targets.