ABSTRACT
Although it appears that individuals with intellectual disabilities do not offend at any greater frequency than the general population (Lindsay, 2002) sexual offending appears disproportionately represented among this group when we consider indices reflecting the characteristics of sexual offender populations (Day, 1993; Thomas and Singh, 1995). British community-based programmes for adult sexual offenders have reported around 10 per cent of clients have an intellectual disability (Allam et al., 1997; Doyle and Gooch, 1995) and surveys of intellectually disabled victims of sexual abuse have consistently identified other service users as the most frequent perpetrators (Beail and Warden, 1995; Brown et al., 1995; Thompson, 1997). There is little by way of follow-up studies with this group, but Klimecki et al. (1994) in investigating re-offence rates among offenders with an intellectual disability found a recidivism rate of almost 31 per cent (30.8%) for sexual offences, with the vast majority of re-offences (84%) occurring within the first twelve months.
