Treatment programs for serious offenders such as sex offenders typically include an empathy training component as part of a comprehensive intervention package. The reasons for doing so are partly based on research evidence indicating that social disconnection and relationship ruptures related to empathy failures often trigger offending, and also…

Rehabilitation and treatment perspectives and interventions have concentrated efforts on areas where perpetrators of sexual abuse are deficient, neglecting those where offenders actively seek and strategically plan sexual offence situations and scenarios. Whereas sexual offenders may display deficiencies in some aspects of their lives, there are…

An innovative theory of the nature of cognition, the extended mind theory (EMT), has emerged recently in the cognitive science literature. According to the EMT, the boundaries of the mind extend beyond the boundaries of skull and skin, into the world beyond. My aim in this paper is to consider the practical implications of the EMT for therapists…

Child sexual offenders are hypothesized to hold offence-supportive beliefs that set them apart from others. The current study seeks support for this view via a cognitive-experimental approach. Child sexual offenders and offender controls were exposed to pictures of semi-clothed children (priming condition) or clothed, mature adults (control…

In this article, the authors draw on literatures outside sexual offending and make suggestions for working more positively and constructively with these offenders. Although the management of risk is a necessary feature of treatment, it needs to occur in conjunction with a strength-based approach. An exclusive focus on risk can lead to overly…

Develops a descriptive model utilizing grounded theory to classify sex offenders' cognitions concerning their offending behavior. The model consists of four categories that were tested to determine their content validity and reliability. Results suggest that the model has provisional validity and adequate interrater reliability. Discusses the…

Examines gender differences in community corrections officers' (CCOs') attributions for child sexual offending. Results found that CCOs' reasons regarding why men sexually abuse children strongly paralleled current scientific theories on the etiology of child sexual abuse. Also, significant gender differences were found regarding the frequency…

Study uses a grounded theory approach to the qualitative analysis of the descriptions of thoughts and feelings of 26 incarcerated child molesters describing a recent or typical offense. The resulting model was applied to the offense descriptions of an independent sample of 12 incarcerated child molesters to ascertain its cross-sample validity and…

A qualitative analysis of interview data with 41 rapists determined that five implicit theories (ITs) underlie rapists' offense supportive beliefs/feelings/motives: (a) dangerous world (DW)--where men have feelings of generalized anger and/or resentment toward others; (b) women are dangerous--where men hold a set of attitudes that are hostile…

While the phenomenon of sexual fantasy has been researched extensively, little contemporary inquiry has investigated the structural properties of sexual fantasy within the context of sexual offending. In this study, a qualitative analysis was used to develop a descriptive model of the phenomena of sexual fantasy during the offence process.…

Examines gender differences in undergraduates' attributions for child sex offending. Results showed that undergraduates' reasons for child sexual abuse strongly parallel contemporary scientific theories of abuse, and that there were significant gender differences in the frequency with which participants cited various types of reasons given for…

A study involving 64 Australian sex offenders and 33 non-sex offenders found childhood emotional abuse and family dysfunction, childhood behavior problems, and childhood sexual abuse were developmental risk factors for paraphilia. Emotional abuse and family dysfunction was found to be a risk factor for pedophilia, exhibitionism, rape, or multiple…