Child Abuse Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Child Abuse, including details on family violence, examinations, long-term effects, psychiatrics disorders.

Child care providers who commit sexual offences: a description of offender, offence, and victim characteristics.

Moulden HM, Firestone P, Wexler AF

University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

The aim of this investigation was to undertake an exploratory analysis of child care providers who sexually offend against children and adolescents and the circumstances related to these offences. Archival Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) reports were obtained from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and demographic and criminal characteristics for the offender, as well as information about the victim and offence, were selected for analyses. A descriptive approach was used to analyze the qualitative reports for a group of 305 Canadian sexual offenders between 1995 and 2002. Adult male (N = 163) and female ( N = 14), along with juvenile male (N = 100) and female (N = 28) child care providers who were involved in a sexual offence against a child or adolescent are described. This article provides unique information about the crimes committed by child care providers in that it is focused on crime characteristics, rather than on personality or treatment variables. Furthermore, it represents a comprehensive examination of this type of offender by including understudied groups, namely juvenile and female offenders.

Published 26 July 2007 in Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol, 51(4): 384-406.
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