Sexual Offenders who Target Children: Behavior and Measuring Risk

In most cases, an adult who wants to have sex with a child will engage in what experts call "grooming": They work to win the child's trust and affection to ensure sexual compliance. Unlike a typical friendship, the potential molester may offer the child's family unlimited support and help. That's what makes the grooming process so insidious, according to Carla van Dam, who trains adults to recognize the behavior. "We can't fathom that someone would be so predatory," she said. "We love it when people love our children, and share our belief about how special our kids are."

She likens a child molester's charm offensive to that of indicted financier Bernard Madoff. "When they look too good to be true, you worry," she said. Madoff "promised 21 percent returns [and] he had people clamoring to be allowed to be his clients. This is the same dynamic."

Barbara St. Pierre, who trains adults to recognize CSA in Gloucester, Mass., says grooming can also be subtle. A local 12-year-old recently came to her mother with troubling e-mails from a good family friend -- the married man next door. "The man was talking about how he cared for [the girl] so much, how he loved her," St. Pierre said. He hadn't made sexual advances, but the girl's mom had been to one of St. Pierre's CSA education classes and wasn't taking chances: She brought the matter to police (who wouldn’t act in the absence of a crime) and then to an adult she'd met through the training. With encouragement from that advocate, the mom then confronted the man and his wife. Soon after, the man disappeared. While the young neighbor he approached is safe, St. Pierre worries that the man will simply target somebody else's child.

"Our message is taking universal precautions," she said. "It's very important for all adults to understand the warning signs of potential abuse and grooming tactics, and not make an assumption that if someone looks nice and is friendly and has a respectable position in community, they're safe."

People who abuse children may also want to stop their behavior, but it can be difficult to find help. Those who are attracted to or fear they may harm children -- even if they haven't acted on their impulses -- may worry that a therapist will report them to authorities. That’s not necessarily so, said Steven Sawyer, who heads Project Pathfinder, a therapeutic service based in Minnesota. Sawyer’s nonprofit led a six-year social marketing campaign funded by the CDC that encouraged offenders to call for help. Overwhelmingly, clients told him they would have taken the help earlier if they’d known it was available. Sawyer says the risk of being reported varies by case. “Sometimes I’ll call CPS while [they] sit here. Sometimes there is no report we can make. That’s something to work through, not a barrier to getting help.”

Recidivism among sex offenders is lower than for other types of violent offenders. According to the ATSA: "40 percent to 45 percent of untreated sexual offenders will sexually re-offend in their lifetime. These rates are considerably lower than rates of re-offense for other types of violent offenders."

The largest federal study -- by the Bureau of Justice -- found that convicted sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense -- 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders. But 5.3 percent of sex offenders were arrested for another sex crime.

Among all offenders, those who were themselves sexually abused as children are at highest risk of being arrested for new crimes. There is also emerging evidence that adults who are convicted of possessing child pornography are likely to offend in several ways.

The Washington Examiner reported on a study published by The Journal of Family Violence. Psychologists with the Federal Bureau of Prisons interviewed 155 inmates convicted of child pornography possession. During treatment: “131 inmates admitted to having at least one hands-on sexual offense. Of the 155, 40 had a criminal history of abusing children before being caught with child pornography. They reported during therapy having abused an average of 19 victims each. The remaining 115 with no known history of child abuse reported abusing an average of nine victims.”

In a study of 201 adult men convicted of possessing child pornography, psychologists Michael Seto and Angela Eke found evidence of varied criminal offenses: More than half had a prior criminal record of any kind, 24 percent had been convicted of contact sexual offenses and 15 percent had previous child pornography offenses.

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