Elsevier

Aggression and Violent Behavior

Volume 11, Issue 1, January–February 2006, Pages 44-63
Aggression and Violent Behavior

An integrated theory of sexual offending

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2005.05.002Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper represents a first attempt to provide an integrated framework to explain the onset, development, and maintenance of sexual offending. According to the Integrated Theory of Sexual Offending (ITSO), sexual abuse occurs as a consequence of a number of interacting causal variables. We examine the factors that affect brain development (evolution, genetic variations and neurobiology) and ecological factors (social and cultural environment, personal circumstances, physical environment) and discuss how they impact upon core neuropsychological functions underpinning human action. The ITSO then explains how clinical symptoms arise from the interaction between these neurological systems and ecological factors. The capacity of the ITSO to incorporate competing theories of sexual offending is considered, and we end the paper by critically evaluating its usefulness in stimulating research and further theory development.

Introduction

Recently, Ward, Polaschek, and Beech (2005) have examined modern theories relating to all aspects of sexual offending, such as: comprehensive explanations of sexual abuse (e.g., Ward & Siegert, 2002); single factors associated with sexual abuse, such as intimacy deficits (e.g., Marshall, 1989), empathy problems (e.g., Marshall, Champagne, Brown, & Miller, 1997), cognitive distortions (e.g., Mann & Beech, 2003, Ward & Keenan, 1999); and the offense process itself (e.g., Ward & Hudson, 1998). Results of this extensive analysis suggest that there are a number of types of causes plausibly associated with sexual crimes. These causes include: genetic predispositions (Siegert & Ward, 2003); adverse developmental experiences, e.g., abuse, rejection, attachment difficulties (Beech & Ward, 2004); psychological dispositions/trait factors, e.g., empathy deficits, attitudes supportive of sexual assault, deviant sexual preferences, emotional skill deficits, and interpersonal problems (Thornton, 2002, Ward & Beech, 2004); social and cultural structures and processes (Cossins, 2000); and contextual factors, such as intoxication and severe stress (Hanson & Harris, 2000, Hanson & Harris, 2001).

Achievements in the field of sexual offending have been considerable, and it is apparent that there are a number of subtle, rich, and valuable accounts of the various aspects of sexual offending. However, it is arguable that a key flaw in the majority of theories is that they tend to focus on the surface level of symptomology and fail to take into account the fact that human beings are biological or embodied creatures. What references there are to the casual (underlying) properties of sexual offenders and their environments are typically simply general descriptions of observable factors. They are convenient labels for summarizing behavior masquerading as causal mechanisms. The danger with such theorizing is that it may simply recycle ideas from everyday ‘commonsense views of human behavior (i.e., folk psychology), which fail to capture the causal origins of dysfunctional sexual behavior. Thus, existing theories neglect of neuropsychological and biological levels of analysis results in incomplete explanations of sexual offending, such as rape and child sexual abuse.

A further issue concerns whether, and how, such diverse processes could be unified into an integrated theory of sexual offending, or even if the attempt is worth the effort. It could be argued that we should continue to refine and evaluate etiological factors in a piecemeal way. However, in light of current knowledge it may now be possible to move towards a global integration of all aspects of sexual offending. Therefore, the preliminary theory we will outline below represents an attempt to acknowledge these features of human nature and human functioning by explicitly linking sets of causal factors to explain why sexual offenders exhibit the symptom or problems clusters they do. Our goal is to knit together a number of factors and processes thought to be causally implicated in the occurrence of sexual abuse into an Integrated Theory of Sexual Offending (ITSO). We believe that the field could benefit from the exposition of a theory that integrates different levels of analysis within an ecological framework.

It is important to note that at this stage we are concerned to knit together ideas from a number of distinct sources including neuropsychology, ecology, psychopathology, and clinical assessment. In this paper we do not explicitly set out to draw from other theories of sexual offending. This is due to our concern, as noted above, that such theories may be simply a re-description of surface features of sexual offending and neglect important areas of analysis. That is, other theories generally fail to address the underlying causal mechanisms actually resulting in sexual offending.

In summary, aims of this paper are: to describe the roots of the ITSO; outline its core set of assumptions; demonstrate its capacity to absorb competing theories of sexual offending; and critically evaluate its usefulness in stimulating research and further theory development. The ITSO is meant as a general theory of sexual offending and we will refer to examples of rape and child sexual abuse throughout the paper. The ability of the ITSO to incorporate or generate the key ideas of competing theories is addressed toward the end of this paper.

Section snippets

Theoretical Sources for the Integrated Theory of Sexual Offending (ITSO)

This section looks at the diverse sources from which the ITSO has been derived, these include: philosophy of science, current ideas in biology and ecology, neuroscience, developmental psychopathology, and clinical/empirical work in the risk assessment field.

Overview of the theory

We will now systematically outline the ITSO, which is shown in schematic form in Fig. 1.

It can be seen from Fig. 1 that we suggest that there are three sets of factors which interact continuously, these are: biological factors (influenced by genetic inheritance and brain development), ecological niche factors,6

Relationship to other theories of sexual offending

We propose that the ITSO has the theoretical resources to unify other prominent theories of sexual offending. We do not have the space in this paper to demonstrate this for every theory, so we have chosen what we see as some of the most promising etiological theories in print in order to illustrate how this can be done. The theories we have selected are: Finkelhor's (1984) precondition theory, Hall and Hirschman's Quadripartite Theory (1992), Marshall and Barbaree's (1990) Integrated Theory,

Future directions and conclusions

In this paper we have sketched out a possible framework for integrating many of the factors identified in research and theory determinants of sexual offending (see Fig. 1). Although it is clearly premature to systematically evaluate the ITSO, in our view it does have certain strengths. First, as the name of the theory itself suggests, the Integrated Theory of Sexual Offending shows considerable potential for bringing together theories from all three levels of theory, including the major

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