PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC INTERVENTION IN YOUNG PEOPLE AND ADOLESCENTS WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Sexual harassment behaviors, using strategies of coercion, harassment and sexual intimidation, violate people's sexual freedom and are crimes punishable in accordance with current legislation. Criminal liability begins at age 16; Acts carried out up to this age, punished by law as crimes, fall under the jurisdiction of the Educational Tutelary Law, resorting to non-criminal, but liability measures. It is important to understand the extent to which cognitive distortions and empathic deficits influence sexual behavior and strategies used by the aggressor. The research typology consists of a case study; whose object of study involves a 15-year-old male teenage aggressor, who practiced sexual harassment and committed a crime of coercion, harassment and sexual intimidation of a 14-year-old teenager, with the educational guardianship law being applied with assessment measures and psychological support for 14 months. The objective is to promote changes in behavior and attitudes based on awareness and understanding of situations in which they acted in accordance with wrong beliefs. The methodology involves psychological interviews and observation in the assessment of the aggressor and cognitive-behavioral therapy in psychotherapeutic intervention. The results reveal dissonances in the discourse, signs of cognitive distortions and empathetic deficits regarding the exercise of sexuality, based on beliefs arising from sub-cultural patterns of the surrounding environment. Psychological intervention of a psycho-educational and psychotherapeutic scope ensured a change in behavior and attitudes, registering an adjustment of individual sub-cultural standards to the universal collective standards in force in the exercise of citizenship in relation to sexuality in intimate relationships.