ABSTRACT
Tony Ward, a prominent researcher and theorist on sex offending, argues that many researchers do not take theory development seriously and that ‘the theoretical landscape is characterized by lack of communication and fragmentation’ (Ward, 2014: 137). Within sport research, Celia Brackenridge (2001) has led the way, incorporating theoretical analyses from the start, however, there has been a distinct lack of theory development since her seminal text ‘Spoilsports’. Early accounts of child sexual abuse are dominated by perspectives that construe child sex offending in pathological terms. For example, Groth et al. (1982) argue a child sex offender is ‘an immature individual whose pedophilic behaviour serves to compensate for his relative helplessness in meeting bio-psycho-social life demands’ (in Herman, 1990: 183). However, for Jenks (2005b: 94-95) such explanations are ‘sadly simplistic . . . stemming from the face-value positivism at the heart of their grasp of the issue.’ This is an important and substantive criticism that helps to frame the debate around the theorization of sexual violence and sex offending. Cowburn and Myers (2015: 672) provide an important overview, separating the field into ‘psychological approaches’ – that ‘focus on working with individual offenders’ – and ‘sociological perspectives’ – that ‘locate sexual offences and sex offenders within a wider social context’. Using this broad template, the purpose of this chapter is to introduce some of the key perspectives and debates in the field while making no claim to a comprehensive review.
