Characteristics of Sexual Offenders

Characteristics of sex offenders *Adult child abusers have 10 times more victims than offenders who rape adults. *Child abusers have an average of 76 victims; a rapist has an average of seven. In any gathering of 100 women, 4-5 have been sexually abused by a father figure. *A child molester appears to engage in sexual activity that is driven by anger and hostility. To the child molester, the victim is more an object or a symbol to the offender rather than a person. Rather than committing repeated assaults against the same victim, the child molester attacks “different victims in successive offenses”. *Approximately 50% of adult sex offenders report their sexually deviant behavior began in adolescence. *Mothers of adolescent incest perpetrators were significantly more likely to have been sexually victimized as children than were other mothers. *Adolescent offenders seem to show all of the same variations of sexually abusive behaviors, as do older offenders.