Assessment and Management of Internet Sex Offenders

1. Assessment and Management of Internet Sex Offenders Clinical Forum: Learning Disabilities COPINE Research

2. Should autism be a legitimate defence to hacking charges? • Last summer, Julian Assange was quoted in an unauthorised autobiography saying, “I am – like all hackers – a little bit autistic”. He coined the term “Hackers Disease” meaning a “bottomless curiosity, single-mindedness, and an obsession with precision” and notes its similarities with autistic spectrum disorders.

3. Gary McKinnon

4. Who are these offenders?

5. Meta-analysis of 27 samples - online offenders • Caucasian males, who are younger than the general population, and more likely to be unemployed. • Both online and offline offenders were more likely to have experienced physical and sexual abuse than the general population. • In comparison with offline offenders, online offenders had greater victim empathy, greater sexual deviancy, and lower impression management. • Babchishin, Hanson & Herman , SEX ABUSE, 2010, 23 (1).

6. Music teacher jailed for child porn By David Wilcock, Friday, 7 October 2011 ? The court heard that 320 images were found which were at level 5, the highest in terms of seriousness on the five-point scale use to rank child abuse images. It includes scenes of rape and bestiality.

7. Little Ted’s Nursery George, 39, and her co-defendants Angela Allen, 39, and Colin Blanchard, 38, pleaded guilty last month to a string of offences of assault and making and distributing indecent images. ?

8. Current status of research on autism spectrum disorders and offending • Currently still no body of evidence to suppose that people with ASD are more prone to commit offences than anyone else. • However, a small number of serious crimes can be linked to the core features of ASD • Offences typically connected with arson and sexual abuse • Mouridsen Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders 6 (2012) 79–86

9. Theory of Mind in Men Who Have Sexually Offended Against Children: A U.K. Comparison Study Between Child Sex Offenders and Nonoffender Controls • Offenders were significantly worse than controls at inferring the mental states of adults. In contrast, there were no differences between offenders and controls in their ability to infer the mental states of children. • Elsegood & Duff (2010)

10. The Unbelievable Truth About Child Pornography in the UK… • NSPCC sent out requests to all 43 local police forces in England and Wales concerning how many indecent photographs of children each of them had seized between March, 2010 and April 2012. Five forces replied. • The number was 26 million… This represents 7.25% of the entire population of England and Wales. • (Carr, 2012: Huff Post)

11. Sexual arousal to female children in gynephilic men? • Sexual arousal of 214 men based on self-report, offence history and phallometric responses. • Greater arousal to adult women, systematically decreasing arousal as female stimuli became younger and no arousal to males or non-erotic stimuli. • Lykins et al., (2010), Sexual Abuse, 22 (3), 279-289.

12. Numbers of offenders • Samples drawn from: • Criminal justice populations (prison and community) • Hotlines or tiplines from civil society • Blocking of attempts by ISPs • Accessing of legal but inappropriately used material • Self-help sites • Self-report agencies

13. What is the volume of traffic to sites with child abuse images? • International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE) • 33 hotlines in 29 countries • 2004 – 2010 • 1.9m reports • 60,200 unique reports per month • 66% of these contained child sexual abuse material • c.p. grew by 15% per yr • a.p. grew by 24% per yr • (source: www.inhope.org)

14. Quantifying Paedophile Activity in a Large P2P System • 1 query in 400 is paedophile in eDonkey (1 every 22 seconds - 2,600 paedophile queries per day (110 per hour) • More than 60 users per hour entered paedophile queries. • Latapy, Magnien & Fournier (2010) http://antipaedo.lip6.fr/

15. Level of convictions for Internet sex offending and all sexual offences in 2001 – 2007 in England & Wales All SO = all sexual offences resulting in convictions Internet = Take or make, possession and distribution of indecent photographs of children

16. 865 Source: Hansard 13th Oct 2009 C847W

17. Online Victimization (N-JOV) Study Arrests for child pornography possession across 2,500 USA Law enforcement agencies • Child Pornography Possessors: Trends in Offender and Case Characteristics, Wolak, Finkelhor, & Mitchell • SEX ABUSE 2011;23 22-42

18. Trends in USA 2000-2006 • In both 2006 and 2000, most offenders were • White, non-Hispanic males and socio-economically diverse. • Fewwere convicted of previous sex crimes. • Most had CP that depicted pre-teen children and serious sexualabuse. • By 2006, a higher proportion of offenders were18 to 25, used peer-to-peer (p2p) networks, had images ofchildren younger than three and CP videos. • P2p users had moreextreme images (e.g., younger victims, sexual violence) and largernumbers of images than those who did not use p2p networks. • Child Pornography Possessors: Trends in Offender and Case Characteristics • Janis Wolak, David Finkelhor, and Kimberly Mitchell • SEX ABUSE 2011;23 22-42

19. The Characteristics of Online Sex Offenders: A Meta-Analysis 27 online studies n = 4,844; 9 offline studies n = 1,342 Online SO Offline Normative Groups Age 38.6 43.6 46.6 Currently not married % 69.6 - 44.8 Racial 8.16 35.4 21.6 Minority Any childhood 24.4 40.8 8.36 physical abuse % Any childhood sexual abuse %21.1 33.5 8.49

20. Who should we be concerned about?

21. Contact offending histories of Internet offenders • Meta-analysis of 21 samples of online offenders regarding their contact sexual offending histories • 1 in 8 online offenders had an officially known history of contact sexual offending. • 50% of the online offenders acknowledged having committed a contact sexual offence • Seto et al., 2011.

22. Studies based on Official records examining prior contact sex offences among online offenders

23. Self Report studies Online offenders admitting to past contact offences About half admit to past offences

24. Polygraph and ISOs • Difference between disclosure in: • age acknowledged when masturbation to images began, • level of victimisation within chosen images and • in preference of images. • Buschman et al. (2010) Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol, 54, 395

25. Online escalating to offline? Seto & Eke (2005; 2006; 2008;) Criminal records of child pornography offenders listed on Ontario Sex Offender Registry n= 201 adult males 2.5 yr follow up 4% contact sexual offence 3.6 yr follow up 6.6% new contact sexual offence 5.9 yr follow up 8.5% new contact sexual offence BUT includes offenders who also committed contact offences Prior conviction for sex or violence was best predictor of new contact offence

26. Meta-Analysis of 9 studies with recidivism n = 2,630 • 4.6% committed a new sexual offence in 1.5 – 6 year follow up • 1,247 online offenders by type of new offence • 2% (n = 25) with contact sexual offence • 3.4% (n = 43) with new online offence Contact Sexual Offending by Men with Online Sexual Offences Seto, Hanson and Babchisin 2011 Sexual Abuse: 23(1) 124-145

27. “Our second meta-analysis found that online offenders rarely go on to commit detected sexual offences. During the follow-up period (up to 6 years) less than 5% of the online offenders were caught for a new sexual or violent offence” Contact Sexual Offending by Men with Online Sexual Offences (p 36) Seto, Hanson and Babchisin 2011 Sexual Abuse: 23(1) 124-145

28. Research on the offence histories of Internet offenders and the likelihood of future offending would suggest that with a longer period post offence more offenders are detected for new offences, with recidivism for contact sexual offences predicted by criminal history, and in particular violent offense history and the age of the offender at the time of their first conviction. Eke, Seto & Williams (2010).

29. Importantly, also examined failures on conditional release, in particular where offenders put themselves in ‘risky’ situations, such as being alone with children. • ¼ of the extended sample charged with failures - consistent with other sex offender groups. • Failures included breaches of conditions about being alone with children, accessing the Internet and contacting children and downloading child abuse materials, as well as other violations which were non-sexual or indicated non-compliance.

30. RM2000 & RM2000R (n=93) Candlish (2011) Examining the recidivism rates of Child Pornography-only offenders in Victoria

31. Comparing the Validity of the RM2000 Scales and OGRS3 for Predicting Recidivism by Internet Sexual Offenders • Rates of proven reoffending were examined at 1 year for the majority of the sample (n = 1,326), and 2 years (n = 994) for those for whom these data were available. Proven reoffending was defined as any caution or conviction for a new offense. Reoffending rates were very low among this sample, and three quarters of the sexual reoffending was Internet related (Wakeling et al, 2011)

32. Risk factors specific to child pornography? • Age at first offence (24 years and younger) • Any prior criminal history • Low education • Single • Sexual interest in children • Substance use problems • (Eke & Seto, 2012)

33. Hanson, (2009) + pedophilia + emotionally close to kids - views adult-child sex as wrong - Stake in conformity Attitude Intention Norms + Bad friends - Prosocial influences Perceived control + Knowledge of offending - Self-efficacy Actual Control + Access to victims - Surveillance Offence

34. Illegal images? UK Sentencing Advisory Panel Guidelines (SAP)

35. SAP Guidelines

36. 85% viewed all images including Level 4 & 5 36% viewed level 5 images Low risk 72.6% Medium risk 21.9% 15% viewed up to level 3 only High risk 5.5% No high risk offenders viewed level 5 images Very High risk 0% 25% of Medium risk and 35% of Low risk had level 5 images n = 70 Osborn, Elliott, Middleton & Beech 2010

37. Does age of child viewed tell us anything? Osborn, Elliott, Middleton & Beech, 2010

38. Additional factors in Australian sample (Candlish 2011) ? • Image collection size 50% (n=6) of recidivists had over 10,000 images compared to 15% (n=72) of non-recidivists • Age of victim in image Equal distribution of ages for non-recidivists and recidivists • Image severity 53% of non-recidivists possessed Level 9 and 88% had Level 7 upwards. 100% of recidivists had Level 9 or 10 (n= 5).

39. Long et al (2011) Kent Police files on 56 internet offenders divided between internet only (n=29) and dual offenders (n=27) – comparison of collections Quantity of images possessed Contact Internet only m = 3,629 m = 24,924 (p<.05) Level 1 = 1,155 Level 1 = 10,825 (p<.01) Level 2 = 256 Level 2 = 1,361 Contact offenders were more likely to have images which matched their victim (age & gender) and offence behaviour They were also more likely to have access to children (volunteering) and to have previous convictions Internet only were 11 times more likely to pay for images than contact offenders (p<.001)

40. A further challenge? (Long et al. in press). • High correlation between content of still and moving files. • With COs the more severe the offence the higher the SAP level collected - those who penetrated their victims more likely to possess Level 3 & 4 and gender and age directly associated with victim characteristics. • Contact offenders had smaller victim range and were polymorphic with regard to gender.

41. COPINE Research The School of Health in Social Science The University of Edinburgh Scotland Ethel.Quayle@ed.ac.uk www.childcentre.info/ROBERT