A comparison of the childhood experiences of convicted male child molesters and men who were sexually abused in childhood and claimed to be nonoffenders

Abstract

Eighty-four incarcerated child molesters and 95 nonoffender comparison subjects were interviewed. All of the nonoffenders and 93% of the child molesters had been sexually abused in childhood. The prisoners were more socially disadvantaged as children and had received more verbal and physical abuse. The prisoners were more accepting of their abuse in the sense of not understanding or accepting that it was aberrant behavior but rather thinking that it was a commonplace, inevitable, and consequently a normal part of childhood. Liking some aspect of the initial abuse also differentiated prisoners from the nonoffenders. Prisoners were abused by a larger number of people than were nonoffenders. Prisoners did not use the fact of their own abuse as an excuse for their own offenses. Abuse by a female was more common in the prisoner group. It is possible to see what constitutes sexual abuse to an outsider being construed positively by some victims, especially where the sexual acts occur in a context that includes affection and attention. This factor seems important to remember when trying to understand the replication of abuse across generations. The men who were least damaged by abuse were those abused by strangers in “one-off” offenses, which they recognized as wrong and from which they escaped without accepting responsibility for the adults behavior.