Comprehensive Mental Health Practice with Sex Offenders and Their Families by Hilarski M. Carolyn;Wodarski John S.;

Author:Hilarski, M. Carolyn;Wodarski, John S.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1596716
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

An offender would also complete the STEP assessment at the end of treatment in order to ascertain whether change had taken place. Treatment impact was evaluated by looking at whether offenders had shifted significantly in their attitudes following treatment on the measures described in Exhibit 5.1. The methodology used here is termed clinically significant change (Hansen & Lambert, 1996). Responses were examined at an individual level to ascertain whether someone had moved from a score more likely to be found in a dysfunctional distribution of scores (i.e., child abuser attitudes) to a score more likely to be found in a functional distribution of responding (i.e., non–child abuser attitudes).

A clinical assessment would consist of a detailed functional analysis to determine the underlying motives and functions for the offending behavior. Functional analysis typically involves obtaining detailed information about the antecedents, behaviors, and consequences of offending (the ABC model). This should include the actual behaviors carried out along with the accompanying thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately this is not always a straightforward task with sex offenders due to them frequently being at some level of denial about aspects of the offence and therefore not willing to be completely truthful about the areas that the assessor needs to obtain information about. Indeed, even in those offenders who are open about the level of their offending behaviors there is often a reluctance to disclose their thoughts and feelings around their offending. In order to assist in gaining the information for the functional analysis it can be helpful to provide the offender with a framework to understand the process of offending.

Currently, the most useful framework is called a decision chain (Ward, Louden, Hudson, & Marshall, 1995). This model supersedes earlier frameworks such as Finkelhor’s (1984) preconditions to abuse or the Wolf (1984) offense cycle. A decision chain is a sequence of choices leading to an offense. Each choice is characterized in terms of the situation it took place in, the thoughts that made sense of and responded to the situation, and the emotions and actions that arose from these thoughts. Thus, in any analysis of offense behaviors the diversity in offending must be taken into account. This accommodates individuals whose firmly entrenched beliefs about the legitimacy of sexual contact with children or forced sex with adults leads them to experience positive emotions during the offense process. Decision chains can represent with equal facility offenses that spring from negative emotional states and poor coping strategies (as in the Wolf cycle) and those where these negative factors are not involved (Eldridge, 1998; Laws, 1999; Ward & Hudson, 1996). An exploration of victim awareness, empathy, and the role of fantasy in sexual offending would also be part of such a clinical assessment. Kelly (1998) notes that special consideration must be given to spiritual assessment for clergy offenders.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.