MAP Forum

• not all child sex offenders are ‘paedophiles’. That is, child sex offenders are a heterogeneous group with varying offender profiles;
• children are usually abused by someone they know, although data suggest that strangers comprise nearly one in five perpetrators of child sexual abuse against males;
• not all child sex offenders have been victims of sexual abuse themselves and there are complex relationships between being a victim of child sexual abuse and becoming a perpetrator, which require further research. It is important to recognise that while many offenders report a history of being sexually abused, most victims of child sexual abuse do not become perpetrators later in life;
• while not all child sex offenders have high rates of recidivism, a specific subset—those who target extrafamilial male children—do frequently reoffend; and
• although it is difficult to accurately determine how many children a child sex offender has already offended against by the time he is detected for an offence, this number varies according to offending profiles and is unlikely to be as high as is commonly assumed. There is, however, a subset of extrafamilial male offenders who abuse high numbers of victims.

In fact, child sex offenders are a heterogeneous group, with varying offending profiles. Abel et al.’s (1987) study found key differences between incest perpetrators and other child sex offenders. Abel et al. (1987) found that perpetrators of paedophilia (incest) had a median of 1.3 victims (for those who targeted female children) and 1.2 victims (for those who targeted male children; n=159 and 44 respectively; mean=1.8 and 1.7 respectively). Paedophilia (incest) perpetrators reported a very high number of acts per victim by comparison with paedophilia (non-incest) perpetrators. Paedophilia (incest) perpetrators with female targets had an average of 45.2 acts per victim; those with male targets had an average of 36.5 acts per victim (n=159 and 44 respectively; medians not reported).

The profile of paedophilia (non-incest) perpetrators differed substantially from this. As described above, paedophilia (non-incest) perpetrators had a median of 1.3 victims (for those who targeted female children) and 4.4 victims (for those who targeted male children; n=224 and 153 respectively; mean=19.8 and 150.2 respectively). The number of completed acts per victim was comparatively low, at an average of 1.2 for female victims and 1.9 for male victims (Abel et al. 1987).