Identification of five fundamental implicit theories underlying cognitive distortions in child abusers : a preliminary study

Qualitative analysis of interviews with 22 child abusers found strong evidence for Ward and Keenan\u27s (1999) proposal that there are five implicit theories in child abusers that account for the majority of their cognitive distortions/thinking errors. These implicit theories are: Child as a sexual being where children are perceived as being able to and wanting to engage in sexual activity with adults and also are not be harmed by such sexual contact; Nature of harm where the offender perceives that sexual activity does not cause harm (and may in fact be beneficial) to the child; Entitlement where the child abuser perceives that he is superior and more important than others: and hence is able to have sex with whoever, and whenever, he wants; Dangerous world where the offender perceives that that others are abusive and rejecting and he must fight to regain control; and Uncontrollable where the offender perceives the world as uncontrollable and hence he believes that circumstances are outside of his control. There was no evidence for any other type of implicit theory. Results of the study also indicated that there was a significant difference in terms of the endorsement of the Dangerous world implicit theory between participants reporting a history of child sexual abuse and those who did not. Offenders against male victims were significantly more likely to endorse the Child as a sexual being and Dangerous world implicit theories compared to men who had offended against female children

Police and carers' views on reporting alleged offences by people with intellectual disabilities

Evidence suggests that care staff have difficulty recognizing offending behaviour in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) and that they are reluctant to report such behaviour to the police. Whilst there has been speculation as to why there may be such reluctance, there are no empirical studies. In this study, questionnaires using vignettes of fictitious crimes were completed by 80 care staff in residential homes and 65 police officers. The fictitious perpetrators in the vignettes were described either as non-disabled or as having ID. Care staff and police ratings of causal attributions and affect were compared, and the effect of perpetrator status (with or without ID) was also examined. The findings confirmed that care staff are still reluctant to report incidents by people with ID to the police. Carer and police views were generally in accord concerning perpetrators without ID but there were significant differences between groups rating perpetrators with I