https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1252-8756
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ABSTRACT
This article reports on a study which focused on young sex offenders’ empathy levels for sexual abuse victims in general as portrayed in a case study, as well as empathy for the offenders’ own specific victims. Beckett and Fisher’s Victim Empathy Distortion Scale (1994) was used to measure and compare 96 young sex offenders’ empathy levels. The quantitative research results indicated that research participants displayed significantly less empathy towards their own victims when compared to the empathy displayed towards a general sexual abuse victim in a case study. Following the completion of the questionnaires, in-depth, qualitative data was obtained regarding the young sex offenders’ thoughts prior to, during and directly after committing the offence. In addition, they also explained their current thoughts and feelings for the victims in their case. The divergent responses which were given by the participants is a clear indication of the heterogeneous nature of youth sex offending.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Black African individuals comprise 80.2% of the South African population (South Africa Demographics Profile, Citation2018) and 79.6% of the general prison population (Africa Check, Citation2017).
2 Coloured is a concept used in South Africa, including on the national census, for persons of mixed race ancestry. Coloured individuals comprise 8.8% of the South African population (South Africa Demographics Profile, Citation2018) and 18.2% of the general prison population (Africa Check, Citation2017).
3 White individuals comprise 8.4% of the South African population (South Africa Demographics Profile, Citation2018) and 1.6% of the general prison population (Africa Check, Citation2017).
4 120 is the perfect score (30 questions × the maximum score of 4 for each question) and would refer to the absence of empathy deficits.