posted 11-10-2009 01:55 PM            

DOJ reports the conviction of a 35 year old man for the production of child pornography.

The real sick kicker is that he was using and abusing his 2 and 10yr. old daughters.

Further investigation disclosed that there is a "National Network of "Fathers" and Guardians that are producing and selling child pornography videos and photos.

The Federal Judge stated that this was the vialist theft of children's innocence that he had seen in 47 years of law practice.

The sex offender was sentenced to 50 years in Federal Prison with lifetime supervision.

Perhaps our Therapists can shed some light on what is described as an epidemic of
sexual child abuse in this country.

posted 11-11-2009 07:58 PM            

No doubt that sex offenders are dangerous and harm their victims. Sex offenders harm there communities even when not offending because they cause fear.

If I recall correctly we had about 1/4 million or so sex offenders under correctional supervision in the US during 2007.

Supposing you are correct that only 20% are caught - not sure where that comes from, and we need to be careful about throwing numbers around - then we have perhaps 1.25 million sex offenders among us. That is certainly a lot of offenders - they are everywhere and we should watch and protect our kids.

However, with over 200 million people in the US 1.25 million is a small percentage. Probably not an epidemic, but there may be some rise in deviancy and compulsivity as a result of ease of access, perceived anonymity, affordability, and networking resources as a result of modern technology (internet). We are still studying these things.

The normative joke (which would be on us) is that if sexual offending really is far more common than we realized - say we catch only 3 - 5% of offenders - then we'd have 5 to 15% of the population as sex offenders (caught or uncaught). If we are catching only 3-5% of them, then we really stink at our jobs. Also, at 5-15% of the population, we'd be hard pressed to say that the behaivor is non-normal. 5-15% of the population is left-handed (are those numbers non-normal?)

We have to learn to see through the fog of mistakenly interpreting increased reporting and increased concern about these things as evidence of increased prevalence.

There is some indication that a small number of sex offenders are responsible for a high number or an unexpectedly large proportion of sexual offenses. Obviously these guys are our most deviant and dangrous offenders.

There is also evidence suggesting that a large portion of sex offenders were not sexually victimized as childrn, and that sexually victimized children do not tend to grow up to become sex offenders (victims do sometimes grow up to experience other trauma effects throughout their lifetimes).

As a profession interested in providing long-term support to the sex offender supervision and treatment arena, we would be at risk for wearing out our credibility with our scientific minded risk managers and clinicians if we don't stay factual, realistic, and evidence based.

It will be great for polygraph to play an increased role in better informing our emerging understanding of these complex questions of prevalence, course, impact and risk management.

.02

r

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room."
--(Stanley Kubrick/Peter Sellers - Dr. Strangelove, 1964)