Assessment and treatment approaches with online sexual offenders

Abstract

Given the dramatic increase in the accessibility of the Internet, especially during the last decade, mental health professionals have had to begin to face the challenge of assessing and treating sexual offenders who have used the Internet to facilitate or commit their sexual offences. Child abuse images and sexual abuse are not, of course, new problems, but the increasingly sophisticated computing technology and the advent of the Internet have both eased the production and hastened the distribution of child abuse images, while also facilitating communication between perpetrators and potential victims (Klain, Davies, and Hicks, 2001; Quayle and Taylor, 2002; Wortley and Smallbone, 2006). Despite this, as Seto and Eke (2005) and Armstrong (2009) concede, relatively little is known about the characteristics, and hence treatment needs, of individuals who commit such offences. As Laulik, Allam, and Sheridan (2007) reason, many of the existing studies of online offenders have tended to focus on their behavioural characteristics (Taylor, Quayle, and Holland, 2001) and motivational typologies (Sullivan and Beech, 2004), rather than the psychological functioning of this population, and hence are somewhat limited in the extent to which they can inform robust assessment models and treatment design. This chapter comprises two discrete sections that describe methods thatcontribute to the comprehensive assessment and treatment of online sexual offenders. It begins by describing key ethical considerations when conducting assessments within a relatively new area of practice, before setting out the advantages of a collaborative model of assessor and offender working. The chapter will then set out ways in which a robust assessment of risk and need may be conducted, by triangulating information sources from static and dynamic risk instruments alongside psychometric information. The assessment section concludes by outlining future directions and key assessment questions for the field. The second half of the chapter then turns its focus toward treatment responses. Online sexual offending is a term that can be applied to a diverse range ofdifferent attitiudes and behaviours. In keeping with earlier chapters, ourdefinition of online sexual offending encompasses not only the viewing, production and/or distribution of indecent images of children, but also ‘online grooming’. As discussed by Davidson in Chapter 1, online grooming involves the process of socialisation during which an offender interacts with a child in order to prepare him/her for sexual abuse (Sexual Offences Act 2003 – Article 15). It is important to point out that the majority of literature to date has focusedon men who access indecent images of children. However, recent research (Webster, Davidson, Bifulco, Gottschalk, Caretti, Pham, and Grove-Hills, 2010) indicates that indecent image use and online grooming are not mutually exclusive behaviours. Therefore, whilst acknowledging the dearth of evidence regarding men who use the Internet to contact and groom children, we feel that a comprehensive review of assessment and treatment processes for online sexual offenders should also encompass those who groom. Chapters within this volume (that is, Gottschalk; Martellozzo; Taylor)have described the range of cognitions and behaviours associated with online sexual offenders. In this chapter we outline comprehensive assessment and treatment responses. Although presented separately for conceptual clarity, it is important to note that assessment and treatment are not mutually exclusive concepts in practice. Rather information drawn from initial assessments should underpin treatment approaches, with subsequent information gathered from treatment interventions used to update early dynamic assessments.