Treatment of Sex Offenders

9 Early Detection and Intervention for Adolescents at Risk for Engaging…
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understanding of sexually abusive behavior and obtaining or enhancing skills.
Content might focus on a number of different related areas, including:
• A comprehensive definition of abusive sexual behavior.
• Education about consent to sexual contact that anticipates common misinformation
and distorted beliefs (e.g., teaching that sexual contact with a younger child
is never okay, even if the child doesn’t resist, appears to consent, and actively
participates in the behavior).
• Education about the negative effects of sexual abuse on children.
• Education about the crimino-legal consequences of sexual abuse.
• Education and skills development in setting healthy sexual boundaries.
• Education to acknowledge sexual feelings and arousal as normal.
• Education about healthy versus unhealthy sexual thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors.
• Skills development for healthy management of thoughts and feelings
(self-regulation).
• Healthy relationship skills development.
• Engaging students in advocating for and creating a healthy environment at school
and at home that does not tolerate abusive sexual behavior.
• Instruction about when and who to ask for help, if a child becomes concerned
about him-/herself or the behavior of another person.
Anticipating the negative reactions that parents and community members sometimes
have toward curricula focused on sexuality, it is worth noting that some of the
specific skills development need not focus solely or specifically on sexual arousal
but could involve practice in managing different kinds of emotional arousal—such
as anxiety—using commonly used self-regulation procedures (such as relaxation
breathing, mindfulness techniques, and visualization). And particularly given that
one of the desired outcomes of such a program would be for children to seek and
receive help when needed, special efforts should be made to deliver content and
facilitate discussion in a manner that—while clearly communicating the wrongness
of sexually abusive behavior—withholds negative judgment and shaming of youth
who might struggle with unhealthy thoughts or arousal.
Based on other programs that have demonstrated efficacy, the school-based portion
of the program should be approximately ten sessions in length. Based upon the
content of the program and the developmental level of the participants, sessions of
approximately 50 min would likely be sufficient. Nation and colleagues ( 2003 ,
2005 ) also note that, because the effects of most strategies diminish over time,
effective interventions often include some type of follow-up or booster sessions to
support the continued use of information and skills learned in the original activities.
Although the prevention literature does not provide any guidelines regarding
optimal timelines for effective booster sessions, given that the known mean age for
the onset of sexually abusive behavior is 12–15 years, a booster session to review
the program content should probably occur within 1 year of completion of the main
set of sessions.