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Pharmacy Links

HETEROSEXUAL OFFENDERS VS. MINORS: EARLY LIFE

27th March 2009

The heterosexual offenders vs. minors were seldom the only children in the family—only 7 per cent had neither brothers nor sisters; the equivalent percentage for the control group is 10 per cent. Like the majority of the control and sex-offender groups, the offenders vs. minors were predominantly “middle children,” that is, neither the youngest nor oldest.

They are characterized by an excellent adjustment to their fathers from fourteen to seventeen, slightly better than the control group and exceeded by only two other groups. The same relatively good adjustment typifies their relations with their mothers, where once again they are superior to the control group. When asked with which parent they got along better, just over half (only one other group was higher) replied they got along equally well with both parents. The same impartiality is found also in the prison and control groups and among other sex offenders who were involved with persons age twelve or older and where no force was used.

In brief, the offender vs. minors appears to have had an almost ideal adjustment to his parents. It is noteworthy that a good relationship with parents is correlated with lack of force in the sex offense and with an object of twelve or older.

Despite the happy picture given above, over half of the offenders vs. minors came from broken homes. This is no surprise since the same is true of nearly all sex offenders and the prison group, though of only about 30 per cent of the control group. The great bulk of the breakups occurred before the boy was nine years old—which means the good parental relationship described above usually involved a stepparent.

About 64 per cent of the offenders vs. minors reported that between ages fourteen to seventeen they felt that their parents (genetic or surrogate) got along very well with one another; only one group reported a higher percentage. As in the case of the subject-parent relationship, the interparental relationship is best among sex offenders whose objects were twelve or older and who did not use force. It is interesting that parents of the heterosexual offenders vs. minors got along even slightly better than those of the average control-group individuals.

We are left, then, with a rather peculiar picture: breakup of the original family in half of the cases, usually through separation or divorce, followed by excellent parent-child and parent-parent adjustment.

It is also interesting that the offenders vs. minors tend to have spent fewer years in a home in which both a husband and wife were present than most of the other sex offenders and far fewer than the control group, although the same as the prison group. Almost 10 per cent had spent ten or more years in a household in which there was no husband; compared to other groups this is a high percentage.

Despite their ability to adjust well to their parents, the offenders vs. minors seem to have been somewhat inept at getting along with their contemporaries at ages ten to eleven. Over one third of them reported having had no girl companions during that age-period, and only about one fifth reported having had many. Nor did they seem to compensate for this by having more companions of their own sex; in this respect they were average. We shall subsequently see that this below-average situation regarding girl companions before puberty is later reversed, and that the offenders vs. minors were quite successful in establishing adult female relationships.

Their relative lack of friends, especially female friends, at ten to eleven is corroborated by the fact that they had remarkably little prepubertal sex play (47 per cent had none) either heterosexual or homosexual. The absence of sexual activity is rendered all the more striking by the fact that the offenders vs. minors tended to reach puberty at a later age than most other groups and had, in consequence, more eligible years in which to have had sex play. There was nothing unusual about the nature of what play there was or of the techniques employed. Of the small number who had prepubertal coitus a very large proportion, about three quarters, continued this activity without interruption into postpubertal life.

The offenders vs. minors are also noteworthy in that they experienced more prepubescent sexual contact with adult females than any other group. Furthermore, these contacts led to coitus in 5 per cent of die cases—a coital percentage exceeded only by one other group. Moreover, they are unique in being the only group in which the percentage that had experience with adult females (including solicitation as well as physical contact) exceeds the percentage that had experience with adult males. Ordinarily male children are approached by adult males far more often than they are approached by adult females. Excluding approaches not resulting in physical contact, the offenders vs. minors are one of the two groups who had more heterosexual than homosexual prepubertal physical contact with adults.

The high incidence of sexual relations with adult females may have predisposed this one seventh of the future offenders vs. minors to subsequent heterosexual activity with partners by far their juniors, but this hypothesis was not substantiated by the data on offenders vs. children. An alternative hypothesis—that the offenders vs. minors were, even in prepubescence, quite oriented toward heterosexual activity—is equally untenable in view of their relative lack of activity with female children their own age.

The heterosexual offenders vs. minors had, during childhood, better than average health, ranking fifth in this respect. For some unknown reason, the first five ranks are occupied by heterosexual sex offenders whose objects were aged twelve or more.

One curious feature of the heterosexual offenders vs. minors is that 22 per cent of them did not reach puberty until they were fifteen or older. This percentage, twice that of the prison group and nearly two and one-half times that of the control group, is exceeded by only two other groups. Their delayed adolescence may in part account for the high incidence of prepubescent contact with adult females (an adult female being defined as age sixteen or over and five or more years older than the prepubescent subject), since a prepubescent boy of fifteen may be following the sexual patterns of his postpubescent friends, and hence be more likely than the average prepubescent boy to be active with older females. Conversely, he could not associate with prepubescent girls, most of whom would be twelve or under, without lowering himself in the eyes of his male companions. Furthermore, parents and teachers discourage fifteen-year-old boys from associating with much younger girls. Technically his late adolescence gives the heterosexual offender vs. minors more years in which to have sex play with other prepubescents, but in actuality society tends to raise additional constraints on such play once he passes die average age of puberty.

A somewhat above-average number of heterosexual offenders vs. minors—nearly half—masturbated before puberty. This proportion far exceeds that of the control group and is near that of the prison group. Unlike the offenders vs. children, who began early, the offenders vs, minors began late: only 36 per cent of those with prepubertal masturbation started before age ten. This is the lowest percentage manifested by any group, and is in keeping with the delayed puberty typical of this group.