Sex Offender Treatment by Wilcox Daniel T. Garrett Tanya Harkins Leigh & Tanya Garrett & Leigh Harkins

Author:Wilcox, Daniel T., Garrett, Tanya, Harkins, Leigh & Tanya Garrett & Leigh Harkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118674406
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-08-05T20:00:37+00:00

Types of Female Sexual Offenders and Their Offense Process

Groups of female sexual offenders have been examined in order to identify typologies or offenders who have similar offense characteristics (Mathews et al., 1989; Sandler & Freeman, 2007; Vandiver & Kercher, 2004). Whereas the identification of typologies has been helpful in some regards, it has shown limited clinical utility (Pflugradt & Allen, 2010).

Typologies have also provided limited information about the etiology of sexually offending behavior among women. Gannon and her colleagues (Gannon et al., 2008, 2013) moved away from typologies and started to delineate the offense process for female sexual offending. These authors constructed an offense chain model; the descriptive model of the offense process for female sexual offenders (DMFSO). Their model not only highlighted how and why the offense process unfolded, but how particular patterns of sexual offending evolved.

Gannon et al.'s (2008, 2013) model describes the lifetime sequence of contextual, behavioral, cognitive, and affective events that facilitate and maintain female sexual offending. Further, it shows that women tend to follow one of two main pathways to offending, while a few follow a third pathway. The first pathway, directed-avoidant, describes an offense process characterized by sexual offense avoidance and negative affect. The women in this pathway offended either out of extreme fear for their lives or because they wanted to obtain intimacy with their male co-offender. These women were often oblivious to, or passive to the early planning of child sexual abuse initiated by the male co-offender.

The second pathway, called explicit-approach, describes women who appeared to explicitly plan their offense in order to achieve various goals such as sexual gratification, intimacy with victim, or financial reward (i.e., prostitution-related offending). These women tended to experience positive affect such as excitement in anticipation of their offense. The third pathway, called the implicit-disorganized pathway, describes women who offended against either children or adults. This offense pathway appears to be characterized by little organized planning and sudden disorganized offending associated with either negative or positive affect.

In addition, this model (Gannon et al., 2008, 2013) delineates how the elements addressed in this chapter (i.e., cognition, affect, behavioral, and contextual factors) contribute to the offense process. While the initial model was validated in an independent sample (i.e., Gannon et al., 2013), it is important to note that it still requires further investigation before its clinical utility can be confirmed. Nonetheless, the model provides interesting avenues to help guide the assessment of the offense pattern of female sexual offenders.

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