Treatment for Non-Contact Sexual Offenders: What We Know and What We Need

Abstract

Much of the research on treatment of sexual offenders is focused on contact sexual offenses, which include physical contact with a victim. Conversely, there is a dearth of literature on effective psychological interventions for individuals who commit non-contact sexual offenses. This paper briefly reviews the research on the characteristics and risk of some of the main types of non-contact sexual offenders (i.e., online, voyeuristic, exhibitionistic) before critically examining the psychological treatment literature in this area. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dr. Candice Monson for earlier revisions to this paper.

Notes

1 The term CSEM replaces the term child pornography to encompass all sexualized material of children and reflect an accurate definition of the material (Terminology Guidelines for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, 2016 http://luxembourgguidelines.org/english-version/).

2 In Canada, the term sexual assault replaces the term rape and encompasses all aspects of the definition of sexual abuse (http://rebuildingyou.com/sexual-abuse-types/).

3 In Canada, sexual interference is defined as touching, with the body or another object, the body of a person under the age of 16 for sexual purposes (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-151.html).

4 The Criminal Code refers to CSEM as child pornography.

5 See Middleton et al., 2009 for details on this psychometric battery.

6 See Gillespie et al., 2018 for details on the psychometric battery.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.