Re: degree of trauma and pedophile

["William F. Northey, Jr., Ph.D." <northey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:05 PM 5/7/99 -0400, R. Dwight Noble wrote:
>
>
>Hello group,
>
>Need some help for a student of mine.  He's constructing a instrument
>that might assess the risk for perpetrators of sexual abuse.

Is your student trying to assess people who have been identified as
perpetrators or children who have been sexually abused and might become
perpertrators?

In the latter case, Darlene Hall,  Fred Mathews,  & John Pearce, are
working on a typology of "Problematic Sexual Behavior in Sexually Abused
Children."  They have found that children who assume responsibility for the
abuse and those who reponds physiologically are more likely to engage in
problematic sexual behavior.

As far as the assessment of trauma in adults.  Robert L. Emerick has
developed the Sexual Truama Inventory (STI) and has some studies on its
relibiality and validity.  Emrick describes the STI as:

The Sexual Trauma Inventory is a 300-item true-false questionnaire that is
constructed to measure a survivor's 1) knowledge about human sexuality, the
paraphiliac, and victimology, 2) process of victimization, 3) trauma
potentiators, 4) vulnerability to sensory stimulated intrusive memory, and
5) cognitive, social, and sexual symptomatology that are related to sexual
abuse. The inventory is an assessment instrument which clarifies issues
that are challenging to a client's health: however, it is notdesigned to
validate allegations of sexual abuse.

While trauma seems related, I do not know of any research that has
attempted to assess the degree of trauma and its relationship to sexually
abusive behavior.  Further, if you look at any of the actuarial devices
which assess recidivism, sexual victimization has not come up as a risk
factor--again, I don't know if anyone has tried to include this in there
assessment packages. 

While this might be an important variable, the question becomes how do you
assess it with adults given the veracity of self reports.

Bill
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William F. Northey, Jr., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Human Devevlopment and Family Studies
School of Family and Consumer Sciences
110 Johnston Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403-0254
419-372-7848 (Voice)
419-372-7854 (Fax)
northey@bgnet.bgsu.edu
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