Female sexual-offenders: Personality pathology as a mediator of the

relationship between childhood sexual abuse history and sexual abuse

perpetration against others

Kelly Christopher,

Catherine J.Lutz-Zois,

Amanda R. Reinhardt

Reviewed by: Amy Offenbach, Caitlyn Shuy, and Tiera BellNovember 11, 2008

Psyc 308 UMBC

Doris Ellen Moore

Registered sex offender found on www.familywatchdog.us/Default.asp

Sex offense 3rd degree

Lives 1.42 miles from UMBC

Introduction

Designed to explore reasons for the possible link between childhood victimization and sexual abuse of children perpetrated by women.

Also to examine whether the nature of women’s own history of CSA (duration and relationship to the abuser) is associated with perpetration of sexual abuse of children

Intro and Background

Previous studies have been small and participants have been psychiatric patients or prisoners

Previous studies found most female sex offenders were victims of CSA.

Some common expressed motivation given in previous studies for the sexual offenses have been revenge, anger or jealously.

Intro and Background (cont.)

Previous studies have found subjects demonstrated PTSD, alcohol and substance abuse, self-injurious behaviors, border line personality disorders, Dissociative disorders and high rates of conduct disorder, ADD, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder

No studies to the researchers knowledge have examined psychopathy in female sex-offenders

Intro and Background (cont.)

Few studies have explored whether sexual-offenders suffered longer periods of sexual abuse than non-offenders with abuse histories, especially in an all-female sample.

The duration of abuse has only previously been hypothesized as an important factor in predicting later perpetration of sexual abuse

Intro and Background (cont.)

It has been found that duration of CSA is linked to a wide variety of other impairments in adult women such as physical health problems and more psychiatric symptoms.

“Scholars have proposed this as a mechanism for the abused-abuser cycle of some women and adolescent girls, this hypothesis has yet to be tested directly.”

Maidah Lorraine Amatullah

Registered sex offender found on www.familywatchdog.us/Default.asp

Rape 2nd degreeLives 2.6 miles from

UMBC

About the Study

Examine CSA personality traits and sexual abuse perpetration simultaneously instead of the relationship.

Examine a large sample of femalesInvestigate whether the nature of the

abuse endured by female sex-offenders as children is an important predictor of sexual abuse perpetration in adulthood.

About the Study (cont.)

Compare 2 groups

Female prisoners convicted of sexual offenses against children

Female prisoners convicted of other crimes

HypothesesH1 Women in the sexual offense group would be more likely to

report a history of CSA than those in the non-sex offender group

H2 Antisocial and Borderline Personality tendencies would be positively correlated with a history of CSA

H3 After statistical control, Antisocial and Borderline tendencies would predict sexual offender v. non-sex offender

H4 After statistical control, Antisocial and Borderline tendencies CSA would not predict sexual offender v. non-sex offender

H5 Women in the sexual offender group would report having suffered longer periods of CSA than those in non-sex offender

H6 Women in sexual offender group would be more likely to report having been sexually victimized as a child by a family member than the women in the non-sex offender group

H7 Women in sexual offender group would be more likely to have experiences a combination of sexual abuse and either physical or emotional abuse than those in the non-sex offender group

Methods

Eligible participants were all inmates residing in a women’s correctional facility in the Midwest at the time of study

There were 142 participants61 who had sexually victimized or aided in the

sexual victimization of another person81 who had committed crimes other than

sexual victimization (theft, drug offenses, or murder)

MethodsDemographics

Caucasian58%

AfricanAmerican 33%

Other RacialIdentities 9%

Methods Measures

History of childhood sexual abuse was measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire.28-item scale5 point Likert scale

Responses “never true” to “very often true”CTQ was modified by adding two follow up

questions that were fill in the blankIf yes then who?How long did this occur?

Methods Measures

Antisocial personality traits were measured by the Levenson’s Self-Report Psychopathy Scale.26 items4 point Likert scale

Responses “disagree strongly” to “agree strongly”2 subscales

Primary psychopathy subscale largely assesses selfishness and lack of concern for the well-being of others

Secondary psychopathy subscale was designed to assess impulsivity and a self-defeating lifestyle

Methods Measures

Borderline personality traits were measured by the Borderline subscale of the Schizotypal Traits Questionnaire.18 itemsYes/No format

MethodsMeasures

Social desirability is measured in order to assess the tendency of a person to present a favorable impression of themselves.

It is measured by The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR).

The BIDR measures two contructsSelf-deceptive enhancementImpression management

MethodsData Analyses

Women in the sexual offender group had:Less educationFewer prior convictionsLonger prison sentences

H1 ANCOVA was calculatedH2 evaluated by using partial correlationsH3 & H4 calculated a discriminant function

analysisH5 ANCOVA was calculatedH6 calculated chi-squareH7 two ANCOVA’s were calculated

Susan Ann Dezenzo

Registered sex offender found on www.familywatchdog.us/Default.asp

Aggravated indecent assault/ child endangerment

Lives 2.66 miles from UMBC

Result

Consistent with Hypotheses 1: sexual offenders group reported more frequent instances of CSA than non-sex offendersF(1,123)=4.7, p<.05

Consistent with Hypotheses 2: CSA was significantly positively associated with Borderline Personality tendencies (r =.36, p<.01); but not with primary (r = -.06, p>.05)or secondary psychopathy (r = .14, p>.05)

Results Cont.

There was no support for Hypotheses 3: there was no significant difference in the hypothesized mediators (Borderline Personality tendencies and primary and secondary psychopathy

Hypotheses 4 showed no support, because even with hypothesized mediators statically controlled, CSA still predicted sexual-offenders vs. non-sex offenders F(1,116)=9.9, p<.01

Results Cont.Hypotheses 5: significant difference found

between women of sexual-offenders and non-sex offenders, where sexual-offenders suffered from longer periods of CSA.F=(1,32)=4.6, p<.05

Hypotheses 6: no significant relationship between being in the sexual-offender or non-sex offender group and the type of relationship between the participant and their sexual abuser as a child.X²=.002, p<.05

Results Cont.

Hypotheses 7: of those who were sexually abused as a child there was no significant group difference in physical or emotional abuse F(1,63)=3.1, p>.05F(1.63)=.4, p>.05

Discussion

In one of the first studies of its kind we found:That female prisoners convicted of sexual

offenses against children reported more frequent instances of CSA than those not convicted

And in terms of nature of the CSA history women in the sexual-offender group experienced CSA for a greater duration of time than those in the non-sex offender group

Discussion

It has been assumed previously that CSA histories and sexual abuse perpetration in women are linked because the research has linked the two variables in men.

Personality disorder tendencies did not seem to distinguish between sexual and non-sexual offenders.

This may be in part because of a ceiling effect of female criminal behavior in general.

Discussion

Consistent with past research the results indicated that the experience of CSA was related to personality disorders

Duration of abuse appeared to be a much stronger predictor of sex-offending than the experience of abuse alone

Great exposure as a child to CSA the more likely they are to view sexual relationships with children as “normal” and later model these actions

DiscussionLimits

Only used prison populationReading comprehensionNot generalizeable resultsBecause of criminal history one might

expect more severe problems with personality pathology and history of sexual abuse

DisscussionIn the future

Research should also examine moderators of the relationship such as social support, coping skills, and involvement in early-intervention programs.

More attention should be paid to duration of CSA

Reference

Christopher, K., Lutz-Zois, C. J., & Reinhardt, A. R. (2007). Female sexual-offenders: Personality pathology as a mediator of the relationship between childhood sexual

abuse history and sexual abuse perpetration against others. Child Abuse & Neglect, 31, 871-883

Questions

What are some likely predictors of a female sex-offender?

What could be done to reduce/eliminate these predictors?

Any other questions or thoughts?

Individual, family, and neighborhood factors distinguish resilient from non-

resilient maltreated children: A cumulative stressor model

Sara R. Jaffee,

Avshalom Caspi,

Terrie E. Moffitt,

Monica Polo-Tomás,

Alan Taylor

Reviewed by: Amy Offenbach, Caitlyn Shuy, and Tiera BellNovember 11, 2008

Psyc 308 UMBC

Introduction

An estimated 906,000 children in the U.S were victims of abuse or neglect in 2003

Number of well-designed, prospective longitudinal studies have shown that children who are maltreated are at risk of a range of problems in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

Introduction cont.

Even though a lot of literature has identified multiple characteristics that are associated with resilience to maltreatment, this study contributes two things

1. Identify individual, family, and neighborhood characteristics that predict stable, positive adaptation over a 2-year period

2. Identify the interplay among risk and protective factors

Goals of Study and Hypotheses

Goal 1: to test whether children who were defined as resilient according to these criteria were also functioning successfully in other domains

Goal 2: to test whether individual, family and neighborhood characteristics would distinguish resilient from non-resilient maltreated children and whether the characteristics that were associated with resilience differed for girls and boys

Goals of Study and Hypotheses cont.

Goals 2, hypotheses: children who have the attribute and who were maltreated will be behaviorally indistinguishable from children who have the attribute and were not maltreated.

Also tested sex difference in the association since its not known whether resilience process differs between maltreated boys and girls

Goals of Study and Hypotheses cont.

Goal 3: to test the hypothesis that children’s strength would predict resilience to maltreatment only when children were exposed to relatively few family and neighborhood stressors

Comparing resilient to non-resilient allows them to test whether individual, family or neighborhood factors distinguished these two groups

Comparing resilient to maltreated children allowed them to test whether maltreated children were doing as well and non-maltreated children simply

Methods

Methods

Individual Characteristics:IQ scores were used and those who were at

least half a SD above the mean IQ were considered above-average IQ.

They also looked at temperament and children who were sociable and self controlled were said to have a well-adjusted temperament.They used the under-controlled temperament scale

and the shy temperament scale

Methods

Family Characteristics:Maternal Warmth Social DeprivationMothers’ Major Depressive Disorder Father’s and Mother’s History of

Antisocial BehaviorDrug and Alcohol ProblemsAdult Domestic ViolenceSibling WarmthSibling Conflict

Methods

Neighborhood Characteristics:Crime Informal Social ControlSocial Cohesion

Methods

Child Behavior:At ages 5 and 7 parents were asked for

permission to have their children’s teachers complete the Teacher Report Form.This assessed:Antisocial behaviorsEmotional problemsProsocial behavior

Reading ability was also assessed to test if children were reading at or above the median for the sample.

Methods

Maltreatment:At the age 5 assessment, mothers were interviewed to

assess if either child had ever been physically maltreated.

Interviewers probed the mothers and were careful to word questions so they did not seem to implicate the mother as the perpetrator.

The likelihood that the children were physically maltreated were categorized as: Not having been Possibly been Definitely been

Methods

86% of children experienced no physical maltreatment

They combined those who possibly experienced physical maltreatment and those who definitely experienced physical maltreatment so that 14% experienced some physical maltreatment.

They used a Multinomial logistic regression analyses estimated the relative risk of being in one category (e.g., non-resilient) relative to a reference category (e.g., resilient) as a function of individual, family, and neighborhood covariates.

Results

Results cont.

Results cont.

Results cont.

Discussion

Maltreated before 5yrs, individual, family and neighborhood characteristics were associated with behavioral resilience.

Boys with above average intelligence and whose parents had few symptoms of antisocial personality were more likely to be resilient.

Exposure to multiple family and neighborhood stressors severely compromised children’s resilience.

Discussion

¼ physically maltreated children were defined as resilient from teacher reports

Those resilient at 5 years old were much more likely to be resilient at 7 years old.

Persistent resilience, at least over 2 years can now be added to the literature.

Individual strengths distinguished resilient from non-resilient children under conditions of low, but not high stress.

Discussion

“Our findings suggest that children who possess individual strengths and who can be protected from significant ongoing family and neighborhood stressors stand a good chance of maintaining positive functioning in the long-term. This, however, is an empirical proposition that must be put to the test with longitudinal data.”

DiscussionLimits

Those children defined as resilient may have functioned well because of experiencing relatively less severe or chronic episodes of maltreatment

The proportion of children who were defined as resilient and the factors that distinguished resilient from non-resilient children might have varied depending on what type of abuse children experienced

Children were all twinsAdvantages/disadvantages of the researchers

creating an index of family and neighborhood factors.

Questions

Do individual, family, and neighborhood factors distinguish resilient children from non-resilient and non-maltreated children?

What increases you chances of being:Resilient?Non-resilient?

Other thoughts or questions?

Reference

Jaffee, S. R., Caspi, A., Moffitt, T. E., Polo- Tomás, M., & Taylor, A.(2007). Individual, family, and neighborhood factors distinguish resilient from non-resilient maltreated children: A cumulative stressor model. Child Abuse & Neglect, 31, 231-253

Christopher, Kelly; Lutz-Zois, Catherine J.; Reinhardt, Amanda R.; (2007) Female sexual-offenders: personality pathology as a mediator of the relationship between childhood sexual abuse history and sexual abuse perpetration against others.; Child Abuse & Neglect 31, 871-883