Neuropsychological deficits in sexual offenders: Implications for treatment

Abstract

This paper provides a brief overview of the growing body of evidence that a proportion of adult sexual offenders present with some localized form of brain pathology, often left temporal lobe, that may, in part, explain the presence of gender dysphoria and the attraction to deviant behaviour patterns in sexually anomalous men who prefer child surrogate partners or unsuspecting women. Given the treatment-resistant stance of many sexual offenders, certain treatment techniques are illustrated that have some proven merit. Such partially impaired men are amenable to action-oriented, visual (right-brain) training methods that compare favourably with traditional verbally-mediated, insight-orientated approaches. The techniques employed rely on social skill training, psychodramatic role plays (using a doll or mannequin), stress reduction and anger management, empathy training, guided visualization, neurolinguistic programming (NLP), cognitive restructuring, sketches of covert fantasies or deviant actions for group discussion, and victimpelpetrator role reversal, selectively applied within the context of a relapse prevention (RP) model for adult sexual offenders.

Personality and cognitive functioning among hospitalized sexual offending Roman Catholic priests

“…Thus, hospitalized sex offending clergy were found to score higher on only the overcontrolled hostility measure relative to hospitalized non-abusing clergy. The lack of significant differences among the groups while ex~_ mining these defensive and cognitive measures is surprising given previous research on sexual offending laypersons (Cassens et al, 1988;Duckworth & Barley, 1988;Duthie & McIvor, 1990;Hucker et al, 1986;Kalichman et al, 1992;Lang, 1993;Langevin et al, 1989) and was contrary to our hypotheses. However, these findings may suggest that some results obtained on sexual offending laypersons may not clearly apply to sexual offending clergy.…”

“…A number of studies also suggest cognitive impairment among sexual offenders (e.g., Cassens, Ford, Lothstein, & Gallenstein, 1988;Hueker, Langevin, Wortzman, Bain, Handy, Chambers, & Wright, 1986;Lang, 1993;Langevin, Wortzman, Wright, & Handy, 1989). These studies suggest problems in the left temporal-parietal area (e.g., Hueker et al, 1986), frontal lobes (e.g., Flor-Henry, Lange, Frenzel, & Koles, 1991), and problems regarding low cerebral blood flow (e.g., Hendricks, Fitzpatrick, Hartmann, Quaife, Stratbuck~r, & Graber, 1988).…”

The Neuropsychology and Neurology of Sexual Deviance: A Review and Pilot Study

“…Based on unpublished data collected by Yeudall and colleagues with 109 sexual offenders (including homicidal rapists, aggressive sexual criminals, pedophiles and incest offenders, fetishists, and exhibitionists) and 192 non-criminal controls, Flor-Henry (1987) concluded that verbal abilities and executive functions were the most impaired cognitive domains of sexual offenders. Based on these results and corroborative EEG data, Flor-Henry (1987) proposed the seminal hypothesis that sexual deviance is associated with a dysfunctional cerebral asymmetry, involving fronto-temporal anomalies of the left hemisphere (see Lang 1993).…”

“…Thus, the hypothesis that a left fronto-temporal abnormality would disrupt a regulatory control mechanism and provoke paraphilic tendencies still prevails (e.g. Lang 1993;Waismann et al 2003). In order to explore the possibility that fronto-temporal and not parieto-occipital dysfunctions would affect sexual offenders; that more indications of left than right hemisphere damage would be observed; and that pedophiles would be more cognitively impaired than rapists of adults, preliminary data were collected among 20 male inpatient sexual offenders.…”

Understanding processing speed weaknesses among pedophilic child molesters: Response style vs. Neuropathology.

“…A growing body of evidence suggests that sexual offending in general and/or child molestation in particular are associated both with generalized brain dysfunction, as well as with dysfunction in discrete regions of the brain. For example, structural imaging has shown that sexual offending against children is associated with structural temporal-parietal abnormalities (Lang, 1993), decreased frontal, temporal, and parietal gray matter volumes (Schiffer et al …”