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Recidivism and Treatment Effectiveness
with Adolescent Sexual Offenders
by Niki Delson
Prepared for the Jefferson County Commissioner's Task Force,
10/99: By Gail Ryan, MA., Director, Perpetration Prevention Program,
Kempe Children's Center; Sr Instructor, Dept Pediatrics, Univ. Colo
HSC; Facilitator, Nat'l Adolescent Perpetration Network Denver Colorado.
Background: The identification and treatment of sexually abusive
youth is a relatively new occurrence. In 1983, there were only 20
programs in all of North America providing specialized care and
treatment for such youth. Today, there are over 1000 programs in
the US and the world providing specialized "offense-specific"
treatment to adolescents, and several hundred programs also treating
younger children. In these 15 years, specialized programming has
evolved to a point of consensus among the multidisciplinary professionals
involved with the management of cases, clear treatment goals and
objectives, and development of a continuum of services providing
different levels of intensity and restrictiveness for youth on the
basis of differential diagnosis and risk assessment. With the evolution
of the field, research data have begun to validate our understanding
of these youth and recidivism data are now becoming available, charting
recidivism rates in the years following treatment One new study
has compared outcomes for treated and untreated youth.
References to Empirical Research: Margaret Alexander (Journal of
Sexual Abuse Treatment and Research, 1999) Eight studies totaling
over 1000 juveniles who participated in offense-specific treatment
in a variety of settings and found that combined recidivism rates
for all those youth were 7.1% in 3-5 year followup. (This was in
comparison to adults who had overall rates of 13%: 20% for the rapists,
14.4% for the child molesters, and 19.7% for exhibitionists) Rates
were even higher among untreated adults (18% overall). These studies
did not have untreated juvenile comparisons.* Charles Borduin and
his colleagues (Int'l Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative
Criminology, 1990) compared the effect of an offense-specific, multisystemic
treatment to nonspecific traditional counseling and found that the
specialized multisystemic treatment resulted in an 83% reduction
in the rate of sexual offense recidivism (as well as a 50% reduction
in non-sexual offense recidivism), compared to that of the youth
who received traditional nonspecific therapy. Sexual recidivism
was 12.5 % in the specialized treatment sample compared to 75% in
the sample who had traditional counseling. Most recently, James
Worling (submitted for publication, CAN Int'l Journal, 1999) reports
that his program in Canada obtained records from all jurisdictions
in Canada of any new (juvenile or adult) charges filed against two
groups of sexually abusive youth, an average of 6 years after they
were identified and assessed. One group had successfully completed
offense-specific group treatment along with treatment aimed at enhancing
family and peer relationships, and the second group had been assessed
for treatment due to similar sexual offenses, but had either not
entered treatment or had dropped out of treatment prematurely. They
found that the treated group had a 72% reduction in sexual recidivism,
along with a 41% reduction in non-sexual violence charges and 59%
reduction of non-violent/non-sexual charges, in comparison to the
untreated sample: 18% of the untreated boys had new charges, compared
to 5% of those who had successfully completed treatment.
Conclusion: Research to date indicates
that recidivism rates of juveniles who commit sexual offenses are
significantly less than those of adults, and are further significantly
reduced by successful completion of treatments which specifically
address the sexual offense issues, when compared to rates of youth
receiving nonspecific treatment and/or youth who are identified
and assessed, but do not complete treatment. .Reducing the risk
of recidivism by sexually-abusive youth by providing specialized
treatment programs is likely to result in fewer victims and make
the community safer.
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