THUR, Oct 7 \ 17.00-19.00 \ Prevention Programs, II

061
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION PROGRAMMES: THE ROLE OF SCHOOLS

Julia Davidson, University Of Westminster, England
j.davidson03@westminster.ac.uk

There is little research addressing community safety issues and the extent to which children are informed about sexual abuse at school. Recent research in the UK demonstrates that approximately 40% of children using the internet have never been warned about the dangers or told about safe use (O'Connell, 2002). A recent survey of 2,300 11-18 year olds undertaken by Wiltshire Police (2003), suggests that 1 in 10 respondents had ‘felt uncomfortable' in chatrooms and suspected that they were speaking to an adult rather than a child. Such is the concern about the potential for sex offenders to use chat rooms and other interactive internet games, that Micro Soft has recently closed down all of its chatrooms. In London the Metropolitan Police Service has designed and developed an internet safety package (Safer Surfing On The Internet) to be used with year 7 pupils(age 11-12) in London secondary schools.
This is an important aspect of crime prevention, there are clearly enormous benefits to be gained from systematically informing all children about sexual abuse (how to recognize abusive behaviour; what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, and some basic information about keeping safe), and about safe internet usage.
This paper describes research undertaken to explore the extent to which schools in the UK(primary and secondary) do play such a role in educating children(aged 8-14), and their parents about sexual abuse and child safety, both in relation to communities and safe use of the internet.

062
CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ON THE INTERNET: POLICE STRATEGIES

Elena Martellozzo
University of Westminster, England
emartellozzo@yahoo.co.uk

There is no doubt that new information and communication technologies have opened up opportunities that can be defined as ‘truly magical' (Jewkes, 2003) but at the same time, as ‘sadly deviant'. It can be argued that cybercrime in general, and the distribution of child pornography on the Internet in particular fit more appropriately under the latter definition. Research suggests that child pornography is damaging to the victims involved in the production of such material (Williams, 2001). That is to say, every time pornography is viewed, those young people are being victimised and exploited repeatedly. Moreover, child pornography harms even the children who are not featured in the images in a way that “the images distort the child viewer's perception of love and sex” (www.pedowatch.org).
Research suggests that child pornography is a dangerous form of speech; it has in fact been linked to child molestation and abuse, paedophile stalking, child sex-tourism etc. While no link has been proven yet, there seems no doubt that, if someone has a predisposition towards sexually abusing a child, viewing child pornography will significantly increase their chances of sexually assaulting a child (Sullivan 2002). Sex offenders (as any other offender) distort reality and deny, minimise, or justify their behaviour. Making excuses enables the offender to abuse and to keep abusing. Additionally, it is vital to bear in mind that what child pornography advertises is not the way most children behave or want to behave. Child pornography demeans and degrades a child, stripping them of their self-esteem and self-respect.
This paper aims to critically analyse the seriousness of child pornography on the Internet and the Police response to this serious problem.

063
OUTPATIENT OFFENDER RISK ASSESSMENT: AN EVALUATION OF FOUR RISK ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENTS

Joan van Horn, PhD,
senior researcher, De Waag, Outpatient clinic for Forensic Psychiatry, Oudlaan 9, 3515 GA Utrecht, The Netherlands. j.e.vanhorn@wanadoo.nl
Jules Mulder,
Director of De Waag, Outpatient clinic for Forensic Psychiatry, Oudlaan 9, 3515 GA Utrecht, The Netherlands
Agnes Scholing, PhD,
Head of De Waag-Amsterdam, Outpatient clinic for Forensic Psychiatry, Maassluisstraat 256, 1062 GL Amsterdam, The Netherlands & Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Structured clinical risk assessments are incidentally applied in forensic psychiatric outpatient treatment centers. One of the reasons is that almost all of the available risk assessment tools are only validated for institutionalized sexual and violent offenders and that the procedures for risk assessments in outpatient centers are relatively time-consuming. To establish a reliable risk assessment, extended and collateral information resources, such as parole, police and/or psychological reports, are needed. In some cases, outpatient treatment is voluntary, and for quite a few patients the available information is limited. In addition, discharge assessments often can not be conducted, due to high drop-out percentages. As a consequence, structured clinical risk assessments are assumed to be less reliable and valid when conducted among outpatient offenders. However, this assumption has not been supported by empirical findings. In the present study, four risk assessment instruments (i.e., the Level of Service Inventory - revised (LSI-r), the Historical, Clinical, Riskmanagement-20 (HCR-20), Static-99 and the Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20)) were evaluated on their relevance and reliability in an outpatient center for forensic psychiatry. Intake and discharge risk assessments were conducted among 30 Dutch male adult sexual and violent offenders. Results are presented on the psychometric qualities (i.e., internal and interrater reliability) of the instruments and on short-term recidivism. Moreover, findings are discussed as to under which conditions the instruments can be used to conduct a reliable risk assessment among outpatients. Finally, implications are discussed for treatment effectiveness and future research.

064
CUMULATIVE DATA: ON RECIDIVISM POST TREATMENT IN THE PHOENIX PROGRAM

Lea H. Studer, A. Scott Aylwin, Stephen Hogan, David Lake, Shelly Takacs
Phoenix Program, Alberta Hospital Edmonton, Edmonton, Canada
lea.studer@amhb.ab.ca

The Phoenix Program at Alberta Hospital Edmonton has been in existence for over 17 years. During that time, we have had more than 500 sex offenders admitted to the program on a voluntary basis from the correctional system. Although the program has, of course, evolved and been modified over that time, some of the core philosophies have remained intact. In our own initial program evaluation effort, we demonstrated a significant difference between treatment completers and non-completers in terms of both sexual and non-sexual recidivism. We have continued to update these results with cumulative data and our most recent review has a mean length of time since discharge of 92.0 months (7.7 years). This data continues to show significant differences in recidivism rates for both sexual and non-sexual offences, between completers and non-completers of this program. We can also use some data from untreated populations with similar follow-up times as a further control group. We have also shown that for the initial cohort, the differences in recidivism rates have been maintained over time, with a current mean length of time since discharge of 156.5 months (13.0 years). The specific data will be presented as well as a discussion of why this program has shown this level of sustained success.