Sexual offenders against male children: Sexual preferences

• Published in: Behaviour research and therapy 1988, Vol.26 (5), p.383-391
• Main Authors: Marshall, W.L., Barbaree, H.E., Butt, Jennifer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Age Factors; Child; Child Abuse, Sexual - psychology; Erotica; Homosexuality - psychology; Humans; Male; Paraphilic Disorders - psychology; Pedophilia - psychology; Penile Erection; Sex Factors; Sex Offenses; Sexual Partners - psychology
• ISSN: 0005-7967; 1873-622X
• DOI: 10.1016/0005-7967(88)90071-X

Erectile responses among men who had sexually abused male children were compared with the responses of matched non-offenders. Stimulus presentations included nude males and females of ages ranging from 3 to 24 yr, and verbal descriptions of sexual interactions involving varying levels of intrusiveness and coercive behavior between an adult male and a boy. As a group, the child molesters responsed with moderate sexual arousal (20–40% of full erection) to the nude males of all ages. Non-offenders showed no response to the male stimuli. Surprisingly, the two groups did not differ in their response to the nude female stimuli. While the non-offenders showed no response to the verbal descriptions, the offenders showed moderate to strong arousal to the non-coercive sexual interactions, with inhibition of response to the more coercive situations. The offender group ( n = 21) was subdivided into a group showing a homosexual orientation ( n = 7) and a group showing a heterosexual orientation ( n = 14) based on their responding to adult male and female stimuli. These two groups differed in their erectile responses in several important ways. First, in response to the nude male stimuli, the homosexual group showed strongest responding to the 15 yr old with a slight drop in responding to more adult targets and a steeper sloped decrease in response to younger targets. In contrast, the heterosexual offenders, responsed maximally to the 11 yr old target with a slight decrease over the younger aged-targets but a steep slope in their graded responding to older aged males. Second, in response to the verbal descriptions, the homosexual offender group showed greater levels of response to the non-coercive interactions than did the heterosexual offenders, and they showed a pattern of inhibition to the more forceful and violent coercive interactions. These findings are discussed in terms of the sexual preference hypothesis of sexual deviance, and the previous findings in this area.