Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Disrupted Caregiving For Juvenile Sexual Offenders, Miranda Sitney, Keith L. Kaufman

Psychology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research that attempts to understand why young people commit sex crimes points to an array of family factors that may uniquely contribute to sexual offending over general juvenile delinquency. This study examines the potentially moderating role of disrupted caregiving in the relationship between offending and caregiver-child relationship quality. Two distinct moderators were tested: gender of caregiver and biological relationship between caregiver and child. Results indicate that juvenile sexual offenders have particularly poor relationships with their primary caregivers compared to incarcerated non-sexual offenders and community controls. Furthermore, sexual offenders with male caregivers were found to have lower relationship quality scores than …