Managing sexually harmful behaviour in a residential special school

Abstract

Accessible summary Children and young people with learning disabilities who present sexually harmful behaviour are often not allowed into the community. This study describes the work carried out with a boy with sexually harmful behaviour attending a residential special school. The staff helped teach the boy how to behave in social situations and about sex, consent and relationships. Afterwards, the boy was able to participate in supervised community activities. SummaryChildren and young people with learning disabilities who present sexually harmful behaviour are marginalised and do not always participate in community activities. This case study describes a multi‐component intervention that successfully reduced the sexually harmful behaviour of a 16‐year‐old boy with a mild learning disability. The intervention was comprised of cognitive behaviour therapy, Social Stories™ and a behavioural programme that reinforced appropriate behaviour with social praise and access to preferred items and a range of community activities. Following the intervention, he was able to participate in a wide range of supervised community activities.

Multi-component behavioural intervention reduces harmful sexual behaviour in a 17-year-old male with autism spectrum disorder: a case study

“…The duration of the programme is consistent with other reports (e.g. Lindsay & Smith, 1998;Pritchard et al, 2011) and points towards the need for long-term intervention if treatment gains are to be maintained. A weakness of the current report is that it is an uncontrolled case study.…”

“…Vollmer et al (2012) recommend treatment based on applied behaviour analysis (with its emphasis on effective assessment, direct observation, data collection and generalization and maintenance of behaviour) concurrent with CBT and sex and relationship education (SRE). Pritchard et al (2011) reported that a behavioural programme based on a token economy, CBT and a differential reinforcement of other (DRO) behaviour procedure successfully reduced high rates of harmful sexual behaviour presented by a 16-year-old boy with a mild intellectual disability. The multi-component behavioural intervention described below was developed to treat the persistent problem behaviour presented by Osian (not his real name).…”

Sodium valproate withdrawal correlates with reduced aggression

“…; Pritchard et al . ,b) The ‘saying no’ protocol prevents mild forms of challenging behaviour from escalating to more severe forms by providing the individual with a pathway to obtain a desired activity rather than simply denying access to something the person is requesting. For example, if Dewi requested access to a preferred computer game during his leisure time that could not be provided, he would be offered a choice of preferred alternative activities that he could access immediately.…”

“…; Pritchard et al . ,b). Dewi received one, 30‐min session per week over a 55‐week period (38 sessions in total).…”

A Review and Treatment Selection Model for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities Who Engage in Inappropriate Sexual Behavior

“…These behaviors have included (a) exhibitionism or disrobing (e.g., Carlson et al 2008;Hagopian et al 2002;Lutzker 1974;Sprague and Horner 1992); (b) public masturbation or sexually stereotypical behavior (Hagopian et al 2002;Sailor et al 1968;Sprague et al 1997); (c) inappropriately touching others (Magee and Ellis 2001); (d) publicly discussing sexually inappropriate topics (Early et al 2012;Pritchard et al 2011); (e) aggressively coercing peers into sexual interactions (Polvinale and Lutzker 1980); (f) masochism (Money and Annecillo 1991;Widermannova and Strnad 1963); (g) paraphilia (i.e., sexual arousal to atypical objects, individuals; Early et al 2012); and (h) persistence in pursuing romantic relationships, which may be perceived as stalking (Stokes et al 2007).…”