More (characteristics) and its scarey.

It is very apparent from this and other studies that index offense and prior sexual offenses are very poor indicators of the diversity and extent of actual deviant sexual behavior (Weinrott & Saylor, 1991). This is an understood truism for the category of extrafamilial child molester, as it is almost assumed that these offenders have additional victims. However, for incestuous offenders some people in corrections/offender management find this same result surprising or unlikely. Indeed, more than half of our sample with an incestuous index offense admitted to also having non-incestuous victims. Being an incest offender makes one much more likely to be assessed as low-risk to recidivate based on the existing actuarial risk assessment instruments. In some regions (e.g., Canada), the case management decisions following from this are based on the premise that risk and treatment needs are directly related. That is, that an incest offender who is deemed “low risk” is also deemed “low needs” in terms of treatment. Unfortunately, an offender’s need or suitability for treatment is hardly related to their status as an intra or extrafamilial offender. Indeed, it could be argued that an incest offender who maintains a relationship with his family would be in greater need for comprehensive treatment so as to perpetuate the least amount of future harm to an already flawed family system.

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.