A descriptive study of adolescent sexual offenders in an Irish community based treatment programme

In the present study a group of sexually abusive adolescents who had completed a community based treatment programme were compared with a group of non-offending peers matched for age, sex, and socio-economic status. Physical abuse, parental separation, and school related educational and behavioural difficulties were more common in the histories of the sexually abusive adolescents than in the histories of their control group counterparts. Despite this, compared with the control group, the sexually abusi ve adolescents were found to have the same level of psychological and psychosocial functioning following treatment. This was interpreted tentatively as evidence for treatment effectiveness. However, not all cases responded to treatment. When the sexually abusive adolescents were classified by treatment staff as those at high and low risk for reoffending following treatment, high risk cases who failed to respond to treatment were found to have lower ability levels, lower levels of maternal and paternal care,...