Women who sexually offend against children; the role of care and compassion in their experiences and their treatment

Abstract

The thesis contains two papers concerned with women who sexually offend against children. The first document is a theoretical review of the literature considering whether a therapeutic approach, Compassionate Mind Training (CMT), could be successfully applied to females who sexually offend against children. CMT aims to develop a person’s self-caring and compassionate mentality. It is argued that CMT could be used to tackle certain existing psychological difficulties; (a) attachment disorder, (b) shame, and (c) low self-esteem. It is suggested that adopting CMT would improve the effectiveness of offence-based intervention techniques and in some cases allow women to access such programmes when their psychological difficulties would previously have prevented this. The second document reports upon the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of a small number of semi-structured interviews with females who sexually offend against children. The analysis focuses on the way in which these participants make sense of their early relationships, specifically their experiences of care and compassion, and the means by which they understand and make sense of their experiences. One cluster of themes is presented: ‘expectations of parents’ roles’. The women’s stories are interpreted and the similarities and differences between the women’s experiences are discussed