Child sexual exploitation (CSE) investigators are required to view thousands of sexually graphic images involving children as part of their daily work, raising concerns about possible harmful occupational health effects. We administered a battery of 24 psychological scales to 141 current CSE investigators and 106 investigators engaged in other areas of policing. Fourteen scales focused on potential psychological outcomes of the investigators’ roles (burnout, post-traumatic stress, post-traumatic growth, depression, anxiety, stress, and physical symptoms) and ten focused on factors that may act as protective or risk factors for psychological distress (well-being, psychological mindedness, self-sacrifice, role overload, work engagement, and social identity). The first analysis compared the two groups on all scales. It was found that in some areas CSE investigators experienced greater levels of distress and had more risk factors than other investigators (disengagement burnout, lack of post-traumatic growth, role overload, and low identification with the organisation), but on most measures there was no significant difference between the two groups, suggesting that some of the sources of work stress may be generic to policing. The second analysis examined the extent to which measures of psychological distress were predicted by the other psychometric scales and socio-demographic variables. The prediction models differed between the two groups, suggesting that there different protective and risk factors for each group. For CSE investigators, psychological mindedness and ‘vigorous’ work engagement emerged as key protective factors while role overload was the main risk factor. The results have implications for the selection, monitoring, and management of CSE investigators.

This study provides an evaluation of recidivism outcomes for a specialized, field-based treatment program for youth who perpetrate sexual offenses in an Australian jurisdiction. Using survival analyses, recidivism outcomes for the treatment group (n = 200), who were followed for an average of 5.07 years (SD = 3.13), were contrasted with a sample of sexually offending youth who were either referred but not accepted or not referred to the program (n = 295). Rates of sexual recidivism were low and not significantly different between the groups (9.5% for treated and 10.8% for untreated). Unadjusted Cox regression results indicated that the treated group were less likely to violently recidivate compared to the untreated group (HR = 1.41, 95% CI [1.01, 1.96]), but this effect became nonsignificant when controlling for offense history covariates (HR = 1.22, 95% CI [0.87, 1.72]). Both groups exhibited high rates of nonsexual offending during the follow-up period, and treatment factors including clinician-rated success, were found to be associated with a lower frequency of reoffending after treatment. Findings highlight important considerations for both practice and research. First, findings suggest the need for specialized programs to ensure factors associated with general recidivism are also addressed in treatment; second, findings reinforce potential utility for clinician-rated and structured assessments to inform treatment planning and outcomes. Finally, the findings raise the importance of appropriate comparison groups when designing evaluation studies, to accurately inform policy and practice.

The present study sought to address gaps in knowledge concerning Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth who commit sexual offenses. Developmental histories and onset sexual offense characteristics of Indigenous ( n = 81) and non-Indigenous ( n = 130) adjudicated male youth were compared. Results indicate that, in addition to problems affecting both groups, Indigenous youth in this sample were disproportionately exposed to systemic vulnerabilities (e.g., familial antisocial attitudes and incarceration, engagement with antisocial peers, poor school engagement and voluntary school dropout, low socioeconomic status) associated with onset of sexual offending. Differences in the circumstances and context surrounding the onset sexual offense (e.g., use of drugs/alcohol, relationship to person harmed, co-offending, age of person harmed, location, threats/force) were also found. When these analyses were stratified by age of person harmed, these differences were retained only for offenses against children below 16 years. Together, these findings highlight the need for more contextualized primary-, secondary-, and tertiary-level prevention efforts to reduce youth sexual offending in Australia and elsewhere.

Twenty five years ago, US criminologist Lawrence Sherman wryly asked: “If future crime is six times more predictable by the address of its occurrence than by the identity of the offender, why aren’t we thinking more about wheredunit, rather than just whodunit?” (Sherman, 1995, pp. 36–37). Many empirical observations that crimes of various kinds are more likely to occur in particular places, and at particular times, have since led to significant reductions in the incidence of specific crimes, ranging from bicycle theft to residential burglaries, to assaults in and around bars, to armed robbery, and so on (see e.g. Wortley & Townsley, 2016). Analysing and responding to the spatial and temporal dimensions of specific kinds of crime is now commonplace among crime prevention agents and practitioners.

This study examined the role of the reaction of the victim, the nature of the physical setting, and the proximity of third parties in deterring offenders from completing an act of child sexual abuse (CSA). A self-report study was conducted with 238 adult males serving a custodial sentence for CSA, of whom 82 identified an occasion in which they had tried to have sexual contact with a child but did not because they were stopped or discouraged. We examined the situational characteristics of the noncompleted offense and compared these with the most recent completed offense by the same offenders. The most common reason for stopping the noncompleted offense, given by more than half of the participants, was the negative reaction of the child, and in particular, the direct request by the child to stop. Actual or potential actions by third parties were the next most cited reasons, with around a quarter of cases stopped because the offender was interrupted. In comparison to the noncomplete offense, in the completed offense the child was more likely to be younger and to be perceived as a willing participant. The most common suggestion for what might have stopped the completed offense, endorsed almost universally, was a negative reaction from the child. Factors that increased the chance of being detected-someone being nearby and the possibility of being observed-were also strongly endorsed. We argue that the findings provide the basis for devising offense-focused prevention strategies for CSA.

The assessment of offenders' risk of reoffending, particularly sexual reoffending, is a core activity of forensic mental health practitioners. The purpose of these assessments is to reduce the risk of harm to the public, but they are controversial and become more contentious when Australian practitioners who want to undertake such assessments in an ethically responsible way must use reliable validated instruments, disclose the limitations of their assessment methods, instruments and data to judicial decision-makers and understand how decision-makers might use their reports. The purpose of this systematic literature review was to explore the practices of Australian practitioners and courts in respect of the assessment of Australian Indigenous male sexual offenders' risk of reoffending. We could not identify an instrument that has been developed for the assessment of this population group. Australian courts differ in whether they admit and give weight to practitioners' evidence and opinions based on data obtained with non-validated instruments. We could only identify three possible predictor variables with enough quantitative support to justify including them in an instrument that could be used to assess Indigenous sexual offenders. There is a need for research regarding the validity of the instruments that practitioners use.

Individuals convicted of sexual offenses are rarely asked their views of the police and courts. The aims of this study were to examine the impact of feelings of guilt on perceptions of the police and police interview outcomes and spill-over effects from perceptions of the police to perceptions of the courts. Participants were 116 adult males incarcerated for sexual offenses who were invited to report their perceptions of police interviewers, feelings at the time of interview, interview outcomes, and perceptions of the court process. Feelings of guilt were related to perceptions of the police. Both feelings of guilt and perceptions of the police were associated with interview outcomes. Spill-over effects were found as perceptions of the police were directly related to perceptions of the courts. The findings highlight the important role of police officers as gatekeepers to the criminal justice system, with associated implications for police officers' training and practice.

Offender and offence characteristics associated with the onset of child sexual abuse in adolescence and adulthood were examined in a sample of males adjudicated for sexual offences. Predictors of adolescent- and adult-onset abuse reinforce that adolescents and adults, for the most part, are two distinct offender populations who may be motivated to sexually abuse for different reasons and who are influenced by opportunity structures, constraints and experiences that characterise these developmental stages. Findings support tailored prevention efforts for adolescents and adults. Emphasis should be placed on primary and secondary prevention efforts that are currently less developed in Australia, compared to tertiary responses.

Previous research indicates considerable overlap between populations of boys who are victimized and boys who victimize others. This study was concerned with whether a systems-focused treatment program designed to address individual and systemic risk factors associated with the perpetration of sexual and violent crimes might also be successful in reducing boys’ victimization by others. Boys adjudicated for sexual offences who received ‘treatment as usual’ (TAU; n = 335) were compared with similarly adjudicated boys who completed the treatment program ( n = 200) on their histories of contact with police either as offenders or victims. Despite their higher rates of pre-intervention victimization, the treatment group were victimized less frequently post-intervention than the TAU group. Continued offending was the strongest predictor of victimization post-intervention. These findings suggest that offending and victimization share common risk factors that may be addressed simultaneously within offence-focused treatment.

This commentary considers the impact to date of Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on child- and youth-serving organizations, particularly its influence on organizations' efforts to create and maintain 'child safe, child friendly' cultures, policies and practices. Opportunities and challenges for organizational leaders are outlined. The commentary calls for more involvement by researchers in empirical research that is relevant to the causes and prevention of abuse in organizations, and for findings to be disseminated in ways that are useful to organizations.

This study explored sex offenders' parental and adult attachment difficulties and assessed the extent to which these were associated with preferences for therapists' interpersonal qualities. One-hundred and twelve adult male child sexual offenders were invited to provide self-report data on their attachment histories, adult attachments and preferences for therapists' interpersonal qualities. A weak relationship between childhood and adulthood secure attachment was found, suggesting that attachment at the time of offending may be more relevant than childhood attachment to the aetiology of sexual offending. Participants valued a range of therapists' qualities previously identified as important for positive treatment change. Therapist trust and genuineness were perceived as particularly important by those with attachment difficulties, demonstrating the need for these qualities in offender programmes where attachment difficulties would be expected. There were some differences in the preferences for therapists' qualities between participants with different adult attachment types, highlighting the importance of responsivity factors in treatment.

Abstract This chapter examines historical and current developments in situational approaches to sexual offending. We consider the implications of situational theories for clinical and risk management responses to known sexual offenders, and more widely for the prevention of sexual offending. We conclude that situational factors are a theoretically and practically crucial, but widely neglected, aspect of sexual offending. In our view, neither dispositional nor situational factors alone are sufficient to explain sexual offending. Rather, sexual offences always occur as a result of proximal interactions between individual and situational factors.

The sexually abused-sexual abuser hypothesis posits that persons, especially males, who are sexually abused as children are at particular risk of sexually abusing others later in life. We tested this hypothesis by prospectively examining associations between maltreatment and offending in a birth cohort of 38,282 males with a maltreatment history and/or at least one finalized offense. We examined these associations within the context of the wider birth population. Proportionally few boys were the subject of official notifications for sexual abuse (14.8% of maltreated boys, and 1.4% of the birth population); proportionally very few of these sexually abused boys (3%) went on to become sexual offenders; and, contrary to findings typically reported in retrospective clinical studies, proportionally few sexual offenders (4%) had a confirmed history of sexual abuse. Poly-victimization (exposure to multiple types of maltreatment) was significantly associated with sexual offending, violent offending, and general (nonsexual, nonviolent) offending. We found no specific association between sexual abuse and sexual offending, and nor did we find any association between sexual abuse and sexual offending specifically within the poly-victimized group. The total number of sexual abuse notifications did make a small unique contribution to the variance in sexual offending compared to other offending. Implications concerning maltreated boys and male sexual offenders are discussed.

The current study examines offending trajectories of adolescent sexual offenders (ASOs). Until recently, classification frameworks have not been designed to account for the heterogeneity of offending patterns in adolescence, how these are associated with the unfolding of sexual and non-sexual criminal activity, and whether and to what extent they are related to the characteristics of sex offenses in adolescence. The current study takes a longitudinal view of offending in adolescence by examining retrospective longitudinal data of 217 ASOs referred for treatment to a clinical service between 2001 and 2009 in Australia. General offending trajectories in adolescence were examined using semi-parametric group-based modeling, and compared according to non-violent non-sexual, violent-non-sexual, and sex offending criminal activity parameters (e.g., participation, onset, frequency, specialization/versatility) and the characteristics of the referral sexual offense. The results show distinct differences in the unfolding of sexual and non-sexual criminal activity along different offending trajectories of ASOs, and further, that these trajectories were differentially associated with the characteristics of the sexual offenses they committed.

Where sexual offending is considered at all in developmental and life-course criminology (DLC) theories, it is generally understood to occupy a position at more serious end of a continuum of irresponsible, socially deviant, or unlawful behavior. Thus DLC theories explicitly or implicitly assume that the same concepts and principles that apply to all other forms of offending apply equally to sexual offending. This chapter presents an integrated theory of sexual offending that incorporates ideas from DLC approaches. It briefly addresses each of the 10 points listed by David Farrington as the key empirically confirmed developmental dimensions of offending and antisocial behavior. The chapter's aim is to present an integrated theory of sexual offending that considers the contribution of individual, ecological, and situational factors. The theory proposed here is a new iteration of a model originally proposed by Marshall and Barbaree and later revised and extended by Smallbone, Marshall, and Wortley.

Most studies that have explored the impact of youth sexual offender treatment on recidivism have not assessed whether effectiveness varies for important subgroups. The present study evaluated the impact of treatment provided by the Griffith Youth Forensic Service (GYFS) on 104 adjudicated youth sexual offenders referred between 2006 and 2012. Sexual, violent and other offending outcomes were examined, based on Australian Indigenous cultural heritage and whether the youth resided in a remote community, over an average 2.5-year follow-up timeframe. The findings indicated that GYFS treatment was equally effective for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth for preventing sexual recidivism and, for youth residing in remote and non-remote locations, for preventing sexual, violent and other recidivism. Treatment was less effective in preventing violent and other recidivism for Indigenous youth. The core components of the GYFS treatment programme therefore appear particularly well suited for reducing sexual recidivism by Indigenous offenders and those residing in remote communities.

Endemic sexual violence and abuse has been observed in a number of specific circumstances, most notably conflict zones, remote and marginalised communities, and religious and state institutions. In this article we examine several documented examples and argue that a similar set of causal processes are at work in all of these otherwise apparently disparate circumstances. Rather than construing the problem as ‘organised’ sexual abuse, we present the problem in terms of the breakdown (or disorganisation) of usual individual, situational and ecological constraints.

ObjectiveInternet child exploitation investigation is an area of policing associated with high levels of work stress, potentially contributing to the development of mental and other health-related problems. This study extends prior research suggesting that child abuse investigation officers have normal levels of life satisfaction using a well-validated and more robust measure of subjective well-being.MethodThe Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) was self-completed by a representative sub-sample of Australian police officers (N=139) who work in a confronting and challenging area of child abuse investigation (Internet child exploitation). Their data were compared to a comparative sample of 102 non-Internet child exploitation police officers and participants of the first 28 surveys of the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (N=55,697).ResultsConsistent with previous research, mean subjective well-being for Internet child exploitation officers was above the Australian adult normative range and comparable to the control group of non-child abuse police investigators. Analysis of domain-based satisfaction judgments comprising the PWI revealed that satisfaction with Relationships and Achieving in Life contributed more variance to the prediction of life satisfaction than in the comparative mainstream Australian sample.ConclusionAustralian police officers who work in Internet child exploitation investigation have a higher-than-normal level of subjective well-being. These results attest to the resilience of these investigators in their ability to withstand the confronting nature of their work and handling potentially significant sources of negative workplace stress. The results also highlight the importance role that organisational and informal social support plays in facilitating this resilience.