Replication of child sexual abuse in males

Abstract

This thesis reviewed the major methodological, theoretical and empirical research literature pertaining to replication of child sexual abuse (CSA) in males. The review concluded that a dearth of scientific evidence exists in support of child sexual abuse replication. The aim of the current study was to empirically examine the relationship between childhood sexual victimization experiences and adult offending behaviour in males. Some 45 male incarcerated child sexual offenders undergoing treatment were interviewed about their childhood sexual experiences and their offence history. Some 78% of the sample were sexually abused as children and data from this group were used to study CSA replication. Simple replication of any characteristic from the first, last or all CSA experience(s) was not apparent from simple correlation analysis. Such characteristics included age of victim, gender, victim-offender relationship, sexual act and force associated with abuse. Multivariate analysis revealed that the gender of the subject's first victim was able to be predicted from a mean gender rating of each subject's perpetrators and a mean physical rating of each subject's entire child sexual abuse history. This function was able to correctly predict the gender of the first victim of 79% of the abused sample. Gender replication was found to be significantly modulated by happy, physically pleasant and physically intrusive child sexual abuse experiences. It is suggested that the results are more supportive of social learning explanations than psychodynamic models of CSA replication. The need for more sophisticated, multivariate analysis of replication is stressed. Finally, the results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and treatment of male victims and adult perpetrators of child sexual abuse.