Factors associated with criminal convictions for sexually inappropriate behaviour in men with learning disabilities

Abstract

Care professionals were interviewed regarding the extent, nature and victims of inappropriate sexual behaviour of 46 males with learning disabilities, and an adapted and expanded form of a version of the Structured Anchored Clinical Judgement risk assessment protocol (SACJ-Min: Hanson and Thornton, 2000) was completed for each client. Comparisons of the 16 criminally convicted and 30 non-convicted men revealed few differences on factors associated with sexual recidivism. However, convicted men were more likely to have targeted children and males as victims and had perpetrated more serious sexual offences. Variables that differed significantly, or nearly so, between the two groups were entered as predictors in a logistic regression analysis. The analysis generated a powerful model, accounting for almost 50% of the variance. However, the only significant predictors of convicted status to emerge from this analysis were child victim and, less reliably, emotional loneliness. The results suggest that the decision to prosecute a man with learning disabilities who displays sexually inappropriate behaviour is based more on the identity of the victim than on the nature of the offence.