Can God Help? Religion and Spirituality among Adolescent Male Sex Offenders

Abstract

Religion has been identified as a key protective factor against delinquency among teens. Sex offending, in particular, is often seen as a moral as well as a clinical and a correctional issue. Yet, there is virtually no research exploring religion among adolescent sex offenders. Although religion is a multidimensional construct, it has most frequently been assessed by one or two blunt measures such as church attendance or self-rated salience of religion in existing studies (Johnson, De Li, Larson, & McCullough, 2000). In this project, we used a multidimensional measure (the BMMRS) to explore the impact of religion on delinquency committed by adolescent sex offenders (N = 196). We found that religion played a significant role in the lives of the incarcerated adolescent males who formed the sample. In a mediation analysis, religion partially meditated the relationship between trauma and nonsexual delinquency among this population. Implications for research and treatment are explored.

Keywords:

• juvenile delinquency
• male sex offenders
• child maltreatment
• adolescents
• religion