Re: incidence of abuse among abusers

[John M Price PhD <jmprice@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 8 Feb 2002, Stephanie Dallam wrote:

> > > Does anyone know of studies that have examined the incidence of
> > > retrospective histories of child abuse among adult perpetrators of
> > abuse?
> 
> 
> Briggs, F, & Hawkins, RM. (1996). A comparison of the childhood experiences
> of convicted male child molesters and men who were sexually abused in
> childhood and claimed to be nonoffenders. Child-Abuse-and-Neglect, 20(3),
> 221-233
> 
> Briggs and Hawkins (1996) found that 93% of participants in a sample of 84
> incarcerated child molesters had been sexually abused in childhood. However,
> rather than reporting the abuse or having used it as an excuse for their
> behavior (which may have led to more a more lenient sentence), the inmates
> tended to
> be accepting of their abuse as a commonplace, inevitable, and consequently a
> normal part of childhood.

Can you relate how this abuse was corroborated?

Also, there was a GAO report on this idea that abuse causes a cycle of
abuse (and one is left, then, wondering where it started).  I have a copy
on my FTP site.  The zipfile contains both the ASCII and PDF formats:

ftp://ftp.calweb.com/users/j/jmprice/no-cycle-of-abuse.zip



-- 
John M. Price, PhD                                     jmprice@calweb.com
Life: Chemistry, but with feeling!      |      PGP Key on request or FTP!
Comoderator: sci.psychology.psychotherapy.moderated          Atheist# 683