Contact Sexual Offending by Men With Online Sexual Offenses

There is much concern about the likelihood that online sexual offenders (particularly online child pornography offenders) have either committed or will commit offline sexual offenses involving contact with a victim. This study addresses this question in two meta-analyses: the first examined the cont...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sexual abuse 2011-03, Vol.23 (1), p.124-145
Main Authors: Seto, Michael C., Karl Hanson, R., Babchishin, Kelly M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Child
Child Abuse, Sexual - prevention & control
Child Abuse, Sexual - statistics & numerical data
Child pornography
Child Sexual Abuse
Children
Criminal Psychology
Criminals - psychology
Criminals - statistics & numerical data
Erotica - psychology
Historical account
Humans
Incest - statistics & numerical data
Internet
Interpersonal Relations
Male
Males
Men
Meta-analysis
Offenders
Offenses
Pedophilia - epidemiology
Pedophilia - prevention & control
Pornography
Rape
Recidivism
Reviews
Risk
Risk Assessment
Risk Factors
Sex crimes
Sex Offenders
sexual assault
Systematic review
Victims
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Summary:There is much concern about the likelihood that online sexual offenders (particularly online child pornography offenders) have either committed or will commit offline sexual offenses involving contact with a victim. This study addresses this question in two meta-analyses: the first examined the contact sexual offense histories of online offenders, whereas the second examined the recidivism rates from follow-up studies of online offenders. The first meta-analysis found that approximately 1 in 8 online offenders (12%) have an officially known contact sexual offense history at the time of their index offense (k = 21, N = 4,464). Approximately one in two (55%) online offenders admitted to a contact sexual offense in the six studies that had self-report data (N = 523). The second meta-analysis revealed that 4.6% of online offenders committed a new sexual offense of some kind during a 1.5- to 6-year follow-up (k = 9, N = 2,630); 2.0% committed a contact sexual offense and 3.4% committed a new child pornography offense. The results of these two quantitative reviews suggest that there may be a distinct subgroup of online-only offenders who pose relatively low risk of committing contact sexual offenses in the future.
ISSN:1079-0632
1573-286X
DOI:10.1177/1079063210369013