NCJ Number
78083
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: (June 1981) Pages: 145-158
Date Published
1981
Length
14 pages
Annotation
Data from pentitentiary files revealed that 29 of 41 incarcerated pedophiles used threats of violence or actual physical force to secure their sexual goals, and these sexual goals frequently involved penile penetration.
Abstract
A search was made over a 2-year period of 41 pedophiles incarcerated in Canadian Federal penitentiaries in the Ontario Region, with attention given particularly to childhood experience with aggression, criminal history, and the details of the criminal offense. The research suggested that incarcerated pedophiles appear to be physically violent individuals whose violence may be related to deviant sexual arousal patterns resulting from both a failure to learn to inhibit responses to children, and a confusion between sex and aggression. This conclusion may be the result of modeling inappropriate ways of securing the cooperation of children, as well as a failure to learn to discriminate different arousal patterns during adolescence. Deviant sexual arousal, resulting both from this confusion over sources of arousal, as well as an attraction to children as sexual objects, leads to the molestation of children including both sexual acts and physical abuse. The deviant arousal (sexual and aggressive) that these individuals experience is enhanced by the immediate arousing effects of alcohol, which also serves to diminish the social prohibitionss that ordinarily constrain behavior. Anger similarly disinhibits sexual desires, thereby increasing the probability that these offenders will attack a child. About 20 references are included.