Our Center utilizes a cognitive-behavioral approach to Sexual Offender treatment. Research has shown this strategy to be effective in decreasing the recidivism rate of sexual offenders.
It is our belief that understanding and treating sexual offenders requires specialized skills, experience and training. We attempt to create a strong, respectful therapeutic relationship. Due to client denial, distorted thinking patters, and suave rationalizations, our offender therapy is more confrontational, more closely monitored, more problem focused and directive than traditional cognitive behavioral therapy. Maintaining an awareness of risks and utilizing appropriate precautions to protect victims, we hold offenders to a strict standard of rules and expectations. If these are broken, the offender faces financial and possibly probationary consequences.
Offender clients frequently present with additional problems, including depression, suicide attempts, anger control problems, poor communication skills, poor conflict resolution skills, and dysfunctional thoughts that interfere with the client’s ability to live a happy, productive life. Utilizing both cognitive and behavior approaches, these problems are addressed in such a manner as to help clients learn how to effectively manage their emotions and their lives
Our model is taught within group psychotherapy in order that the offender can identify the sequence of events which comes prior to a typical offense (e.g. first having a deviant sexual thought or urge, then choosing to engage in deviant fantasizing, masturbating while further fantasizing, planning an offense, engaging in rationalizing and justifying the deviant behavior, choosing to put oneself in a sexually stimulating high risk situation, and finally reoffending).
The goal of treatment is to aid and support the offender while they try to analyze all of these factors and implement techniques and skills to change all of these factors so they will set themselves up for developing a healthy lifestyle.
It appears that sexual behaviors lie on a continuum: from non-problematic expression (hugging, kissing a child) to abusive or problematic expression (sexually molesting children). Therefore, the same principles can be used to understand how non-abusive as well as abusive behaviors are acquired and maintained.
By definition, abusive sexual behaviors are maladaptive responses for coping with life stressors or for gaining pleasure, and that means more adaptive coping or pleasurable responses are not used.
Since there are multiple causes starting early in childhood, and the sexual abusive behavior may be similar to a long ingrained habit, treatment needs to be comprehensive and long term. The goal is to help the sex offenders learn how to control their behavior using specific techniques for the rest of their life. Emphasis is on self-management including asking for and seeking help. Clients are not responsible for problem etiology but for problem solutions. Therefore, active client collaboration, involvement, and hard work are required.
