New study examines risk factors for child sexual offences

CrossCurrents

Andrea Zoe Aster

What's the tipping point? In the past decade, the Internet has become an anonymous smorgasbord of child pornography for those who would feed such proclivities. The crucial issue is whether consumption of child porn triggers actual sexual abuse - a debate that has heated up since Toronto software developer Michael Briere, who kidnapped, raped and murdered a 10-year-old girl two years ago, confessed to police that Internet images of pedophilia pushed him over the edge.

Groundbreaking research challenges Briere's plea that there is a link between child-porn possession and sex crimes against children. "A history of viewing child porn is not itself a strong indicator of who is going to sexually abuse children," says Dr. Michael Seto, a clinical psychologist with the Law and Mental Health Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and an associate professor in psychiatry and criminology at the University of Toronto. Seto's study is researching yet-unmined police data that documents child-porn offences in an attempt to discover exactly what distinguishes individuals who view Internet child porn who go on to commit offences against children.

In a recent study, published in the April issue of Sexual Abuse, involving a sample of Ontario sex offenders, Seto and colleague Angela Eke found that of 201 child-porn offenders, 17 per cent committed some sort of crime again within a three-year period, and four per cent committed a sexual offence. The main point was that child-porn offenders with a prior criminal record were significantly more likely to reoffend in some way.

"The conclusion was that a past criminal history matters," says Seto. "Does a person have a history of antisocial or criminal behaviour? That's a much stronger predictor [than child-porn possession] of who would reoffend," says Seto.

It's somewhat comforting that in a climate of unreined access to Internet porn, mere possession is not the strongest predictor of future deviance. Indeed, the greater availability of child porn since the early 1990s does not correlate with an increase in sexual crimes with children, says Dr. Martin Lalumière, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, who researches sex crimes. "In fact, there has been a significant decrease in sex crimes in North America overall," says Lalumière. "That's not to suggest that child porn satisfies fantasy, thus making it less likely that people will act out - that hypothesis has not yet been supported by the data. But it is still good advice to make sure that those who have been convicted of child-porn possession stay away from it."

So the question remains: What is different about the four percent of child-porn offenders in Seto and Eke's study who do act out?

One thing is for certain: If there are commonalities among pedophiles, they currently elude police. Of the two-dozen arrests the Toronto Police Service has made this year, the demographics are all over the map. Suspects range in age from 18 to 82, an officer said in a recent article in Macleans. "They are people who live in housing projects and in Forest Hill mansions."

Still, there is a more methodical approach, and Seto and Eke are hot on the trail with a new study, designed to produce a useful tool to evaluate the future threat a child-porn offender may pose, in an area where no such tool currently exists, says Eke, manager of the Research Unit for the Behavioural Sciences Section of the Ontario Provincial Police. Ultimately, it is hoped that the study's findings will lead to development of a much-needed risk-assessment tool that will help to predict the shift from child-porn viewing to sex crimes against children.

The limitation of the initial study was that Seto and Eke had access only to limited data from Ontario's sex offender registry, including name, address and criminal history, says Seto. Now, funded by the Ontario Mental Health Foundation, the team is pouring over close to 400 complete files of Ontario's child-porn offenders, with the cooperation of the OPP and Toronto, Peel and York regional police.

"What's unique about this research is that the police have searched the offenders' homes and computers, so we have access to the porn content," says Seto. "Are the offenders viewing images of 13- and 14-year-old girls? A lot of men might find those images attractive, but it's a different story if there are images of three-year-olds and other deviant content like violence."

By developing a checklist of risk factors, the team aims to determine whether child care workers, clinicians, police and the courts need to be worried about risk of sexual offences against children. "This information about risk can be helpful in prioritizing cases for investigation, making decisions about bail and sentencing and treatment," says Seto.

It's too early in the study to determine what factors increase the risk of future offences, says Seto. Risk-factor data collected includes such factors as age, previous criminal charges, employment history, living arrangements and, of course, the nature of the content in the offender's porn collection. "We can't say for sure, but the factors I think will turn out to matter most are a risk-taking lifestyle, substance abuse and an impulsive, antisocial character," says Seto. The team expects to complete the study by next year.

"We're trying to fill an existing gap," says Seto. "The literature on sex offender risk-assessment has only grown over the last 10 years and we're aiming to extend that into the realm of child-porn offenders."

"If someone has already committed a sexual offence, we have tools to assess him," says Eke. "But what about the child pornography offender who hasn't committed a sexual assault? What's his future risk? That's what we're aiming to find out."

 

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