NCJ Number
223745
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 35 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2008 Pages: 879-894
Date Published
July 2008
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This study examined the offense and personality characteristics of 90 female sex offenders.
Abstract
The women were primarily White (64 percent), married, and with a mean age of 33 years. The majority offended alone (60 percent), did not use force on their victims (86 percent), were not related to their victims (64 percent), and did not perceive a romantic relationship with their victims (80 percent). They were likely to have a previous arrest (68 percent) and to have been sexually abused (69 percent) and physically abused (57 percent) in childhood. Aggravated sexual assault of a child was the most frequent offense (31 percent), followed by sexual assault of a child (20 percent), indecency (16 percent), and sexual performance of a child (6 percent). Twenty percent of the participants had committed multiple offenses. The average victim of the offenders was a 12-year-old female (51 percent). The 79 women who completed a valid Personality Assessment Inventory fell into 3 distinct classes based on severity of psychopathology. One class had subclinical psychopathology levels but had elevated scores on scales that measured substance abuse problems. The second class reported at-risk levels on several clinical scales, with the highest being on the Borderline Features scale. The smaller third class of women consisted of more severely disturbed women. In addition to being administered the Personality Assessment Inventory, the women completed the Trauma Symptoms Inventory, which measures psychological sequelae of traumatic events; and the Static-99, which estimates the probability of sexual and violent recidivism among adult males. 4 tables, 1 figure, and 40 references