Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Exploring Motivations Of Serial Sexual Offenders, Joan A. Reid, Eric Beauregard, Emily Frith, Karly Fedina

Joan A Reid, Ph.D.

A featured motivational hypothesis of sexual violence is that sex offenders are primarily driven by a need to gain power and control over victims with sexual gratification considered a secondary or possibly contrived motivation. The current study explored the motivations for sexual violence from a sample of 69 serial sex offenders reporting 347 offenses. Motivation was examined by identifying patterns within implicit measures of motivation for offending indicated by offenders’ descriptions of victims’ physical characteristics and presumed emotional responses, offenders’ rationale for committing the offense, offenders’ treatment of the victims, and offenders’ cognitive distortions related to the crime. The purpose …