From Victim to Offender

How child sexual abuse victims become offenders

Freda Briggs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000257205
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Tom was the only adult who gave me the attention and affection that I so badly needed. I loved his caresses and the times he comforted me. I loved talking to him because he was the only adult who listened and understood. - Neil's Story From Victim to Offender shows how victims of child sexual abuse become juvenile and adult offenders. The stories told by these offenders reveal the vulnerability of boys to paedophiles and pederasts who provide the male attention lacking in some children's home lives. They show how early sexualisation damages children's sexual development, their relationships and their adult lives. The story of a female offender reveals that this problem is not confined to boys. These stories highlight the inadequacy of current child protection programs for the protection of boys. The editor's introduction and the chapter from a psychologist who specialises in the treatment of offenders emphasise the need to improve child protection and treatment programs for offenders. From Victim to Offender offers unique insights into the experiences of victims and offenders of sexual abuse, and is essential reading for professionals who are concerned about child protection and those responsible for the rehabilitation of offenders.

1 Perspectives on child molesters

Kevin M. Wallis

A prominent morning radio personality recently proclaimed (in answer to a comment from a caller) that all child sexual offenders should be put away for the 'term of their unnatural lives'. Perhaps this short statement sums up the community feeling about this category of criminal. While the sexual abuse of children is unnatural, there is often nothing unnatural about the perpetrators. Those who believe that sex offenders are easily distinguished from non-offenders make a grave error. Until offences are revealed, most child sexual offenders are perceived by other adults as 'good blokes' or men who 'get along well with kids'. It is this social visage of normalcy that helps offenders to gain access to victims and prevents those who receive children's disclosures from believing them and taking the necessary action to stop the offences.

As child molesters are defined by their crime, it is useful, in lay terms, to define what constitutes the sexual assault of a child. The offence of child sexual assault is where an adult or someone in a position of trust or power uses that position to emotionally manipulate, coerce through threat or inducement, or use physical force to involve the child in sexual activity.

Offences range from exhibitionism and other forms of sexual provocation or suggestive sexual behaviour through to genital fondling, oral sexual acts, anal or vaginal penetration of the victim's body by any part of the offender's body, or any object used by the offender.

The following chapters of this book, written by childhood victims and adult sex offenders, give the reader a glimpse into the secret domain of child sexual abuse. However it is only a glimpse because these people represent only a small proportion of those who either have been or who are still involved in the sexual abuse of children. Most of the offenders who wrote the chapters have a paedophile or a fixated sexual preference for children. Those who do not have a primary sexual preference for children are underrepresented, as are the offenders who sexually assault females.

The sexual offender is usually a male who is known to the victim. Usually he is part of the immediate or extended family of the victim, a male family friend or an adult met through the victim's peer associations. Most offenders would be seen as conventional, protective and good family men with stable work histories.

This Mr Average image is not the public perception of the child molester. The public image is a stereotyped caricature of deviance— 'the dirty old man' or 'the beanie, tracksuit and runners' type of criminal, seen in television crime detection programmes. The stereotype is typically a stranger who entices children into public toilets or into his car for the purposes of sexual gratification. Although some offenders fit the description, this group constitutes a very small minority.

Oilier common myths about offenders are that they are mentally ill, that the offences are caused by negligent wives and their own dysfunctional, socially disadvantaged, low-income families. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of offenders have no psychiatric illness and to argue that sexual offences are symptoms of some diagnostic category only provides them with an excuse to minimise their responsibility for their own behaviour.

To describe sexual assault as a symptom of a dysfunctional family again minimises the responsibility of the offender by distributing the blame for the offence onto his wife, other family members or even the child victim

Finally, as three of the authors confirm, child sexual assault is not confined to low-income families, but occurs throughout all classes of society.

Various estimates as to the incidence of sexual assault postulate that one in three females and slightly fewer males will be sexually molested before they reach eighteen years of age. The estimates of abuse incidence and the dramatic increase in the reporting of sexual assault suggest that child abuse is widespread throughout the community and it is illogical to place the blame on a small subgroup of fixated offenders.

The non-fixated or regressed sex offenders are those who have an age appropriate sexual preference but, at times of stress, look to children to satisfy their emotional needs (Sgroi, 1982). The role of stress is viewed as a precipitator which triggers the offence. However, while increased stress levels might be correlated with the pre-offence emotional state of the offender, there is nothing in the nature of that relationship that explains causality, that is, why an offender specifically decides to molest a child rather than choose some other stress reduction strategy.

Although sexual offences do not fit a common assumption about the motivation underscoring the crime, one postulate is that sexual offences, although sexual in character, are motivated by the psychological needs of the offender. Hence one line of studying the child molester is to examine the qualities of pre-offence stressors, and how those stressors interact with the offender's personality. Sgroi describes offender traits as being clustered about feelings of insecurity and over-dependency; tendencies to isolate from social contacts; and a coping strategy of looking to their families to satisfy all their emotional needs. Findings from a broad range of personality tests have generally been unsuccessful in identifying a personality type or traits that are common to child molesters. While some offenders may exhibit certain personality characteristics or clusters of personality traits, these findings do not establish a causative link between personality type and offence behaviour.

An issue relating to the psychological profiling of offenders is the timing of the test administration. Obviously, offenders are tested after their offences and the test results rest on an assumption that the post-offence personality profile is not significantly different from the child molester's pre-offence or pre-disclosure personality profile. Attitudinal scales might remain unaffected, however scores from scales measuring emotional dimensions (for example, depression and anxiety scores) could be significantly different given that the social and legal consequences for sexual offences are severe.

In conclusion, the question of a predisposing personality type is of some relevance but it is only one factor amid other social and situational influences.

A social perspective regarding sexual offences against children has only emerged through the efforts of feminist writers and researchers. The credit for bringing the issue of sexual assault to public attention and lobbying for the establishment of agencies to address the plight of those who have been sexually abused, belongs to the feminists.

Feminists generally adopt a socio-cultural model of sexual assault, arguing that society invests the male gender with power, while disempowering women and children. Sexual assault is perceived as the abuse of power rather than a sexual act. Herman and Hirschman (1981) contend that sexual abuse, especially the abuse of children, is a consequence of patriarchy.

The sexual abuse of children is as old as patriarchy itself ... As long as fathers dominate their families, they will have the power to make sexual use of their children. Most fathers will choose not to exercise this power; but as long as the prerogative is implicitly granted to all men, some men will use it.

The authors maintain that the issue of sexual abuse would have remained buried in the male-dominated society if it were not for the interest in the subject generated by the feminist movement.

Patriarchy is the premise on which the male-gender role behaviour is commonly based. The attitudes associated with patriarchy tend to emphasise control over emotions and control over others. That control is reinforced by role bound obligations. The traditional family stereotype is headed by the strong, benevolent father and provider who is responsible for the material welfare of his family. His wife satisfies the emotional needs of her husband and children while providing the logistic support at home to keep her husband functioning and earning in the wider society. The socio-political prominence given to the stereotypical nuclear family reinforces traditional gender role behaviour.

The concept of gender-based power is central to the feminist perspective on the aetiology of the sexual abuse of children. The feminists see that men are in powerful positions relative to females and children and that some men abuse that power to sexually abuse less powerful victims. It is axiomatic that more power is attributed to the male gender than to the female gender by Western culture. While the sexual abuse of children fits this direct abuse of power model, it is important to note that the majority of perpetrators perceive themselves as powerless. They see themselves as failures in the male role and failures in developing and maintaining age appropriate relationships. This results in offenders adopting a victim mentality to life. They resort to using children as substitutes for adult partners because they perceive children to be in a less powerful position than themselves.

Sex offenders are riot a homogeneous group, either in their socialisation, their psychology' or in the situations in which the abuse occurs. In my ten years' experience of assessing more than 800 imprisoned male sexual offenders who have abused children, the majority of non-fixated offenders (those who have a dominant age-appropriate sexual preference) seem to fit into this latter group. These men usually have a strong adherence to the traditional gender stereotypes but, because of self-doubt and over-dependency, they have no confidence in their ability to live up to their male role expectations. Their relationships are mostly symbiotic dependencies, either passive dependent in style or, in other cases, overly dominant, where the male tries to control his internal insecurities by controlling the others on whom he depends for emotional support. These men tend to sexualise their emotions and seem to discriminate good from bad relationships on the nature and frequency of the sexual activity.

These offenders are so emotionally dependent that any change in their partner's behaviour, no matter how innocuous, is perceived as a threat and this produces an emotional overreaction.

In any dependency, there is a reciprocity of need in that both partners will adopt positions relative to each other that complement each other's emotional needs. For example, an insecure man who hides his emotional fragility behind a tough exterior is complemented by the stereotypical dependent female gender role. The two reinforce the dependent pathology of each other. However, the price to pay for any dependency is a loss of autonomy and to maintain the dependency, individuals often forgo their desires and suppress their emotions so as to not threaten the equilibrium of their relationship.

If the disturbance in the dependency relationship is not resolved, or the pathological routine of the relationship is not restored, then the individuals look to have their dependency needs met by some other source—having an affair, substance abuse or work, for example. Some dependent individuals, when their security is threatened, turn to minors as a non-threatening source of physical, psychological and emotional support.

Dependent relationships seem to be the norm in Western culture where the individual, for the most part, has been encouraged by consumerism to define self-identity using social and occupational roles, material possessions and the approval of others.

The role of sexual attractiveness and sexual proficiency as part of the interpersonal attraction and relationship bonding process has been manipulated by media to the point of dominance where other aspects of emotional interplay between people have become side issues. Individuals are manipulated to adhere to gender role stereotypes, and the sexualisation of emotions is the process which underscores the manipulation.

Given the role of dependency in broad society, there are many dependent relationships that undergo stress or break up, yet it does not follow that the discord from those relationship problems causes child molestation. An overly dependent personality, a tendency to sexualise emotions and the opportunity to abuse a child do not explain why some men abuse children and others, who have similar factors in their psychological profile and environment, do not.

There is, at present no empirical data that establishes a causal link between personality or social situation and sex offences. The attempts to show the connection are confounded by the essentially nondescript nature of offenders who can come from different family, educational and socio-economic backgrounds and present diverse psychological profiles.

Another method of attempting to delineate child molesters from the 'normal' population is to examine offender types using their sexual preference and the behaviours associated with their offences. Wyre (1987) differentiates groups of child molesters by their primary sexual preference (either age appropriate or paedophile), lifestyle patterns, type of molestation, the frequency of offences and the manipulation strategies used to carry out their crimes. For example, 'fixated paedophiles' have a primary sexual preference for, and sexual arousal to, children. They prefer the company of children and have few, if any, adult friends. The most common form of seduction is to insinuate themselves into the trust of the child victim and, when possible, the trust of that child's parents or guardians. Typically, this type of offender is attracted to a child of a particular age who is perceived as being emotionally neglected or vulnerable.

Wyre described several other groups; for example, the 'inadequate paedophile' and the 'parapaedophile' using the same methodology, that is, the combination of offender and offence characteristics.

In the Sex Offender Assessment Programme at Cooma Correctional Centre, the same approach is used to describe different types of sexual offenders who have committed sexual assaults on children. In line with the literature, child molesters are first divided into fixated (primary sexual preference for children) and non-fixated (primary sexual preference for age-appropriate relationships). Then the two basic categories are further differentiated into subcategories, using the degree to which the offender identifies with the victim and the scale and direction of aggression exhibited by the offender as core criteria.

The fixated offenders are divided into four categories. The first category, corresponding to Wyre's 'inadequate paedophile', is called the transitional paedophile. These offenders, usually developmentally or socially delayed, have an age-appropriate sexual preference but lack the social skills to form age-appropriate relationships. They molest children as a non-threatening substitute for age-appropriate relationships. Usually, the sexual offence against a child is this offender's only sexual experience. The recall of that experience as a masturbatory fantasy reinforces the paedophile sexual preference.

The term 'transitional' is used to describe the process by which the offender moves from an age-appropriate sexual preference to a paedophile preference. The management of these offenders has been.

• to link them into social skills training programmes where they have the chance to form friendships with peers;
• to use strategies such as orgasmic reconditioning, where the fantasy of an under-age sexual partner is gradually replaced by an age-appropriate sexual fantasy.

The second descriptive category is termed the 'moral conflict paedophile'. This sex offender has a compulsive sexual preference for children and exhibits a histoiy of emotional or psychiatric disturbance that stems from a conflict between his sexual preference and guilt relating to that preference. It is with this group of paedophiles that the use of antiandrogenic medication (Upjohns Depo Provera) is indicated; the medication reduces their sex drive and, in doing so, diminishes their intrapsychic conflict. The use of antiandrogenic medication is controversial. All of the men who are prescribed the medication at Cooma Correctional Centre are fully informed of the actions and major side-effects, and are only included in the Depo Provera programme on the basis of informed consent. All of the men have reported a subjective improvement in their emotional stability in response to antiandrogenic medication. It is this subjective reduction in emotional distress that motivates offenders to view Depo Provera as an effective management strategy.

The third category of fixated offender is the 'social conflict paedophile'. This offender argues that sexual activity with children is a variation of normal sexual activity, and that it is societal attitudes to adult-child sexual contact that create trauma for the adult and the child. These paedophiles typically describe themselves as lovers of children (mainly boys) and they emphatically deny that their sexual activity is in any way abusive. They differ from the moral conflict group in that they have no internal conflict about their sexual preference. They see themselves as a sexual subculture that is oppressed and maligned by a rigid and puritanical society. Like any subculture, these paedophiles seek reinforcement of their views and behaviour with children by linking up with other paedophiles. They join groups or clubs such as NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Lovers Association), not only to provide a focus for paedophilia and share information relating to their victims and sexual experiences but also to publish pro-paedophile literature and lobby on a politico-social basis for changes to the law to lower or remove the age of consent for sex. Such offenders see nothing wrong with their sexual preference or sexual behaviour and they are usually only motivated to modify their behaviour to avoid legal consequences.

The fourth category of child molester is the 'sociopathic paedophile'. This offender differs from those in the two preceding paedophile categories in that he or she does not identify with the victims. To this paedophile, the victim is objectified and is only used as a means of sexual gratification. While the moral and social conflict paedophiles have cognitive distortions that rationalise their relationships with child victims, the sociopathic paedophiles do not create fantasies to justify having sex with children. They set up opportunities for abuse with no expectations of creating lasting relationships with victims. They also use more traditional criminal methods (for example, abduction, alibis, threats) to avoid detection and conviction. While this type of offender can have an exclusive paedophile preference, many of the sociopathic paedophiles encountered in Cooma's sex offender programme have had age-appropriate sexual relationships. These offenders are essentially amoral and they take advantage of any sexual opportunity that affords them control over a victim.

The dimension of identification is a continuum. At one extreme there is total identification where the offender perceives no personal boundaries between himself and his victim. At the other extreme the offender has no identification with the victim. The moral and social conflict paedophile identifies with his victim in that there is something about the child's appearance (usually male) which reminds him of how he was at that age.

Of all the fixated offenders observed in Cooma's sex offender programme, only one was not sexually abused in childhood. The typical offender gains the trust of the child, either by mirroring the interests and age-related behaviour of the victim or by assuming a nurturing, supporting pseudoparent role. The paedophile has a pre-existing fantasy const...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Perspectives on offenders Kevin M. Wallis
• 2 In search of love
• 3 Unholy orders
• 4 Children in the 'care and protection' of the State
• 5 Little Jim
• 6 'It did me no harm—I did no harm'
• 7 Child prostitution and the law
• 8 The greatest taboo of all
• 9 One law for the rich and another for the rest of us
• Postscript: Boys—the forgotten victims Freda Briggs