Criminality and violence in intra- and extra-familial child sex abusers in a 2-year cohort of convicted perpetrators

Bagley, C. and Pritchard, C. (2000) Criminality and violence in intra- and extra-familial child sex abusers in a 2-year cohort of convicted perpetrators. Child Abuse Review, 9 (4), 264-274. (doi:10.1002/1099-0852(200007/08)9:4<264::AID-CAR635>3.0.CO;2-6).

Abstract

Men convicted of sexual abuse against children are an important but understudied population. In this study, based upon lifetime police records, of the criminality of convicted child sex abusers, we undertake the first British comparative analysis of the criminality of intra- and extra-familial abusers. In a cohort of 374 convicted male child sex abusers, 50% had convictions for ‘sex only’ crimes; 26% for ‘sex and other’ offences; and 24% for ‘sex, other and violent’ crimes. There were three ‘relationship-to-victim’ subgroups: ‘biological relatives’, consisting of fathers and other biological relatives (18%); ‘non-biological relatives’ — cohabitees or stepfathers (10%); and 72% who were ‘extra-familial’ offenders, having no family relationship to the child. This atypical pattern of abusers indicates a filtering process, in which intra-familial abusers are less likely to be prosecuted than extra-familial offenders. The main findings were: (i) biological relatives were more often ‘sex only’ offenders, but averaged more sexual offences than the other groups; (ii) non-biological abusers has more ‘other’ criminal and convictions for violence, and were more similar to the extra-familial offenders than biologically related abusers; (iii) extra-familial abusers consisted of more ‘other’ criminal and violent offenders than the non-biological abusers; (iv) non-biological offenders, however, had a pattern of criminality more like the extra-familial group than the other intra-familial abusers. The violent men, often with long histories of both sexual and non-sexual offending, pose particular problems for the criminal justice and child protection services.

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