A Practical Guide to Working with Sex Offenders

210 Pages·2020·1.207 MB·English

by  Diane Wills, Andrew Wills

A Practical Guide to Working
with Sex Offenders
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A Practical Guide
to Working with
Sex Offenders
Diane Wills and Andrew Wills
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers
An Hachette Company
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Copyright © Diane Wills and Andrew Wills 2021
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ISBN 978 1 78592 506 1
eISBN 978 1 78450 892 0
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Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. A Brief History of Sex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 11
Sexual behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Sex, sexology and sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Sex and gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2. Sex and Sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Sex, love, power and sexuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
The portrayal of sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3. Theories of Sexual Offending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Why do they do it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4. People Who Sexually Harm Others. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Offending against children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Sexual violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Female perpetrators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Stalking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Mental illness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Harmful sexual behaviour by young people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Older people. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5. Theories of Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
The risk society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Perceptual bias, likelihood and complexity thinking . . . . . . . . . 77
Defensive, defensible, precautionary principle and false positives . 82
Prior assumptions and Bayesian inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
6. Assessing the Risk of Those Who Cause Sexual Harm . . . . 93
Organizational defensive and professional defensible
decision-making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Using risk assessment ‘tools’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
7. Legal Contexts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . 103
Prosecutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Consent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Sentencing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Civil orders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Children and young people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Mental health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
8. Approaches and Debates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Treat, cure or control? From theory to practice and from
practice to effective outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
A brief history of interventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
The rise of evidence-based practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Control, treat and correct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Cognitive behavioural approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Programm-ization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Empathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Adverse childhood experiences and DESISTANCE . . . . . . . . . . 139
9. The Reflective Professional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Promoting positive change to reduce the risk of future harm . . . . 147
Professional values and personal change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
A person-centred approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Thinking critically about complex behaviours . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Looking after ourselves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Appendix: List of Sexual Offences (Sexual Offences Act 2003)
and Recorded Number of Sexual Offences (2019) . . . . . . . . . 187
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Introduction
This book is about working with those people who perpetrate
sexually harmful behaviours. Acknowledging the very serious
impact on those who are affected by this behaviour, the book is not
about ‘victims’ – that is a different book. It is difficult to strike a
balance in content and use of language professionally and more
generally. Whilst the title of this book uses the term ‘sex offenders’,
the use of language throughout attempts to avoid the term where
appropriate, and there are several reasons for this.
Using the term ‘sex offender’ strictly means that a person has
been found to be guilty by a Court of illegal sexually abusive immoral
behaviour. Without entering too deeply into the philosophy of law,
it is possible to suggest that the law is underwritten by a common
base of principles of the community that constitutes ‘institutional
morality’ (after Ronald Dworkin, 1931–2013, cited in Gillespie &
Weare, 2019, p.11). The term ‘sex offender’ does not cover all those
who have harmed or are suspected of harming somebody. Therefore
in Chapter 4 we use the phrase ‘people who sexually harm others’
because this is a broader term that includes all those who have been
found guilty of a sexually harmful behaviour in a Criminal Court,
and includes situations where it is accepted that harm has occurred
or is likely to occur but where no person has been found guilty of a
crime (see also Chapter 7).
What is more, by naming or labelling a person a ‘sex offender’, the
person is identified primarily by the worst ‘bad’ thing that they have
done. Recognizing that harming another person sexually is ‘a very
bad thing’, identifying the person solely by their harmful behaviour
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A Practical Guide to Working with Sex Offenders
is not helpful when trying to work effectively with them to reduce
future risk of harm (see Chapter 9).
The next point raised by language is whether to call the person
who has been harmed a ‘victim’ or a ‘survivor’. Bearing in mind that
not all people survive the extremes of sexual violence, identifying a
person as a victim also has a number of connotations. Identifying a
person solely by the worst thing that has happened to them is again
perhaps not entirely helpful; the person is more than just ‘a victim’.
Whilst we have tried, where appropriate, to avoid the term ‘victim’,
we have inevitably had to use it, as there is no entirely suitable
alternative.
Sex and sexual behaviour is a complex phenomenon that is hard
to define in its totality. Sex is generally socially ubiquitous, even in its
absence. ‘Deviant’ abusive sex adds a layer of complexity, particularly
in the use of language – it is a moving social landscape that has
undergone very significant changes in social expression. Some social
expressions used in the past would not be acceptable now, and some
contemporary social expressions would have been decidedly judged
immoral in the past – there are substantial examples all around us.
Undertaking this work requires us to consider our own standpoint
on sex and sexuality, including an understanding of our own sexual
interests, experiences and behaviour that can be an uncomfortable
process but necessary for an effective reflective practitioner. It is also
reflexive because when we think reflectively about sexual behaviour,
our thoughts about sex tend to change.
Talking about sex is uncomfortable, but paradoxically it is
ubiquitous. Herschel Prins (1980), a founding voice of forensic
psychiatry, raises some fundamentally insightful issues, such as
whether sex offenders should be treated as a separate identifiable
group of people different from all others; that (in 1980 at least) there
were as many claims of spurious as well as genuine expertise as to
causes of sexual harmful behaviour; and that this is an intensely
emotive topic. He concludes, from a psychodynamic perspective,
that ‘successful management treatment may lie within the person
offering it’ and that it is necessary to be ‘aware of one’s own sexual
“blind-spots”’ (1980, p.213). Hence the initial chapters in this current
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