Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Social Phobia, and Loneliness in Incarcerated Internet Child Pornography Offenders

Abstract

The present report offers a brief review of studies that have attempted to identify the features that distinguish offenders convicted of using the Internet to download or distribute sexual images of children. Most of these studies have simply examined child pornography Internet offenders (CPOs) and described their features while some, but few, studies have compared them with offenders who have directly contacted children for sexual purposes (CCMs). Overall existing research has suggested that, among other issues, CPOs appear to be socially anxious and emotionally lonely, and to also display obsessive and compulsive features. We report the early data from an ongoing study comparing CPOs and CCMs on these 3 features. The tentative results suggest that CPOs are more lonely and obsessive-compulsive than are CCMs, and that while social anxiety does not distinguish the two groups, the CPOs score in the range that meets diagnostic criteria for this problem.