ABSTRACT
Like many clinicians, I work with adolescents who offend sexually, in a holistic fashion within a comprehensive treatment programme. Our assessment process is designed to highlight unique strengths and weaknesses with respect to a wide variety of issues such as social orientation, sexual fantasy, family communication, affective expression, sexual attitudes, and so on. As such, it initially felt somewhat arbitrary to separate those treatment targets that are “offence specific” from those that are “offence related”. While it is clear that treatment aimed at reducing an adolescent’s deviant sexual arousal is clearly in the “offence specific” category, it becomes less clear when the treatment target is enhancing nonsexual affective expression; especially when an individual’s sexual offences are closely tied to an inability to cope effectively with negative affect such as increased anger or boredom. In cases such as this, therefore, cognitive-behavioural treatment aimed at assisting the adolescent to cope with negative affect is crucial (and directly related one could argue) to the reduction of risk of sexual assault recidivism. For the purposes of this chapter, however, “offence related” treatment tasks are those that do not involve reference to sexual offending specifically. Furthermore, although family interventions are surely essential ingredients of offence related treatment, these are discussed in significant detail elsewhere in this volume. There are any number of sexual offence related treatment goals depending on the unique needs and strengths of each adolescent and his or her family. The offence related treatment goals addressed in this chapter are those most frequently noted in the literature as essential. These include social skills, romantic relationships/sexual education, anger expression/control, impulse control, and prior victimisation.
