Applicability of MEGA^♪ to Sexually Abusive Youth With Low Intellectual Functioning

Abstract

The study explored the predictive validity of Multiplex Empirically Guided Inventory of Ecological Aggregates for Assessing Sexually Abusive Children and Adolescents (Ages 4 to 19) (MEGA^♪; Miccio-Fonseca, 2006b), a comprehensive developmentally sensitive risk assessment outcome tool. MEGA^♪ assesses risk for coarse sexual improprieties and/or sexually abusive behavior in male and female youth ages 4 to 19 years (adjudicated and nonadjudicated), including youth with low (i.e., borderline) intellectual functioning. MEGA^♪ has 4 distinct risk scales with robust internal consistency reliability on cross-validation: Risk Scale (0.81), Protective Scale (0.78), Estrangement Scale (0.79), and Persistent Sexual Deviancy Scale (0.74). Sexual recidivism in cross-validation (N = 1,056) was 8.4%, defined as sexually related probation or parole violation (formal or informal). ROC analysis for Risk Scale demonstrated MEGA^♪ has good predictive validity (AUC = .71, 95% CI of .62–.80, p < .001). Youth with low intellectual functioning scored significantly higher on the Risk Scale and Persistent Sexual Deviancy Scale, highlighting the importance of accurately assessing these youth.

Keywords:

• sexually abusive youth
• sex offenders
• adolescent sex offenders
• youth with low intellectual functioning
• risk assessment tools

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Corrigenda

Notes

¹We define coarse sexual improprieties as behaviors that reflect an unsophisticated awareness of psychosexual conditions, environments, or social situations. Youth with coarse sexual improprieties engage in sexual behaviors that are crude, indecent, and outside the societal norms of propriety (e.g., crude sexual gestures, sexually suggestive comments, mooning, looking up skirts, a young child rubbing his or her genitals in public or trying to grab another's genitals, a child looking over a stall in a public restroom; Miccio-Fonseca, 2010).

²Sexually abusive behaviors and improprieties fall along a coercion continuum of low, moderate, high, or very high (lethal) risk; this applies to sexually abusive youths who are either adjudicated or nonadjudicated.