Empathy, Intimacy, Loneliness, and Self-Esteem in Nonfamilial Child Molesters: A Brief Report

Marshall, William L.; Champagne, Frances A.; Brown, Christine; Miller, Sarah

doi:10.1300/j070v06n03_06

Cited by 82 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Researchers have proposed a link between self-esteem and sexual offending, for example, Marshall, Champagne, Brown, and Miller (1997) found that child molesters had significantly lower self-esteem than nonsexual offenders. However, self-esteem has been established as a common feature of rapists (Marshall, Barbaree, & Fernandez, 1995), and also for abusive male partners (Russell & Hulson, 1991), and general measures of social self-esteem have not been found to discriminate child molesters from other groups.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Schemas in Child Molesters, Rapists, and Violent Offenders

Milner

Webster

2005

Sex Abuse

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One focus of research concerning offending behavior has been the concept of the cognitive distortion, although the importance of the need for research into the underlying cognitive structures in offenders has been highlighted. This study examined schemas in child molesters, rapists, and violent offenders, predicting content differences in the offence-related schemas between these groups. In accordance with previous research, the prevalence of a "suspiciousness/hostility to women" schema in rapists was predicted. Twelve rapists, twelve child molesters, and twelve violent offenders incarcerated in a male maximum-security prison completed "Life Maps" (autobiographies) and the My Life questionnaire (R. E. Mann & C. R. Hollin, 2001), both designed to indicate the presence of schemas. A content analysis template containing nine schemas was constructed and applied to the Life Map data. Results showed a significant difference in the prevalence of schema type between the three groups. There was a prevalence of a "hostility/distrust of women" schema in the rapists. Analysis of the My Life questionnaire revealed a difference between violent offenders and rapists only. This study highlights the need for further research into schemas with sexual and violent offenders.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Schemas in Child Molesters, Rapists, and Violent Offenders

Milner

Webster

2005

Sex Abuse

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“…Child molesters (Segal and Marshall, 1986;Marshall and Mazzucco, 1995;Marshall et al, 1997a;Marshall, 1997) and rapists (Overholser and Beck, 1988;Marshall et al, 1995b) have been shown to suffer from low self-esteem. Self-esteem is the central aspect of the self-concept, and has been linked among sexual offenders with various other difficulties such as empathy deficits, loneliness, and a lack of intimacy (Marshall et al, 1997a), as well as deviant sexual arousal (Marshall, 1997).…”

Section: Self-esteemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Self-esteem is the central aspect of the self-concept, and has been linked among sexual offenders with various other difficulties such as empathy deficits, loneliness, and a lack of intimacy (Marshall et al, 1997a), as well as deviant sexual arousal (Marshall, 1997).…”

Section: Self-esteemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current issues in the assessment and treatment of sexual offenders

Marshall

Serran

2000

Clin. Psychol. Psychother.

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The present paper reviews what is currently known about sexual abuse and the treatment of the offenders. Sexual offending is primarily committed by males and as many as 50% of females and 33% of males are sexually victimized in some way during their life. While some of these acts involve minimally intrusive behaviours (e.g. exhibitionists), many involve forced vaginal or anal intercourse and varying degrees of associated physical violence and deliberate humiliation of the victim. The effects on the victim can be severe and long-lasting. Current theories of the aetiology of these behaviours incorporate biological and developmental factors occurring within a socio-cultural context that fails to discourage sexual abuse. Experience is said to create a vulnerability that in some men finds expression in sexually abusive behaviour. Appropriate assessment targets the issues that are addressed in treatment, including: cognitive distortions, sexual behaviours and attitudes, social functioning and substance abuse. In addition, treatment also attempts to generate a set of relapse prevention plans for each offender. NATURE AND PREVALENCE OF THE OFFENCESSexual offences include a variety of behaviours, such as exhibitionism, frotteurism, voyeurism, child molestation, and sexual assault. This article will be restricted to child molestation (both extrafamilial and incest) and sexual assault of women. Although women (Matthews, 1998) and children (Johnson, 1998) also commit sexual offences, males constitute the majority of offenders and will be the focus of this article.

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“…Barriga, Gibbs and colleagues have documented signifi cant associations between four types of self-serving cognitive distortion, as measured by the HIT -self-centering, blaming others, minimising/mislabelling, assuming the worst -and anti-social behaviour -as assessed by self-report, parent-report, archival data and criterion grouping (Barriga and Gibbs, 1996;Liau et al, 1998;Barriga et al, 2000;Barriga et al, 2001a,b;Barriga et al, 2008). With respect to empathy, a study of adolescent sex offenders (McCrady et al, 2008) documented signifi cant negative correlations between the Child Molester Empathy Measure (Marshall et al, 1997) and sex-specifi c cognitive distortions (as measured by the Burt Rape Myth Acceptance scale; Burt, 1980) as well as generic cognitive distortions (as measured by the HIT).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%