Minor-Attracted Men's Lived Experiences of Romantic Attraction.

Studies of minor-attracted persons have mainly focused on their sexual attractions, and little is known about their romantic attractions. This online qualitative survey study collected 74 self-identified minor-attracted men's anonymous accounts of romantic attraction to minors. Using reflexive thematic analysis, three themes were identified and interpreted: (1) Falling in Love; (2) Recognizing Limitations to Attraction and Relationship Development; (3) Making Sense and Meaning of Romantic Attraction to Minors. Overall, romantic attraction to minors resembles romantic attraction to adults. Findings have implications for how conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of minor attraction may each consider both sexual and romantic domains.

Convergent and Divergent Validity of the Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT) in a Clinical Sample From California.

The Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT) is a seven-item actuarial risk assessment tool that is used to estimate the potential for sexual recidivism among men convicted of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM; legally referred to as child pornography) offenses. In the current study, we examined the convergent and divergent validity of the CPORT in a clinical sample of 224 men on federal probation in the United States who were convicted of at least one type of CSEM offense. CPORT scores were significantly, moderately, and positively correlated with scores on another sexual offense risk assessment tool, the Risk Matrix 2000 (RM2000/S), showing broad evidence of convergent validity, and was nonsignificantly associated with scores on a general offense risk assessment tool, the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (LS/CMI), showing evidence of divergent validity. There was also evidence of specific convergent validity; for example, the CPORT item reflecting prior criminal history was most strongly related to the Criminal History domain of the LS/CMI, and CPORT items reflecting sexual interest in children were significantly and strongly associated with self-reported sexual interest in children from the clinical evaluation. We also examined the impact of including clinical information in the scoring of the CPORT. Including this information reduced the amount of missing scores, but the impact on predictive accuracy is not yet known. Implications for clinical practices are discussed.

Validation of the Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) in Portugal.

The accurate assessment of pedophilic sexual interests is crucial for the treatment and management of individuals who have sexually offended children. This study aimed to validate the Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) in a Portuguese sample of 170 men convicted of sexual offenses against children, 104 serving sentences in the community, and 66 in prison. The findings indicated that SSPI-2 demonstrated good convergent validity, as evidenced by its significant and positive associations with the "sexual deviance" item of SVR-20, the number of previous convictions for sexual crimes against children, and having 3 or more child victims, which is associated with high sensitivity and specificity in distinguishing men who show greater sexual arousal to children than to adults. Furthermore, the SSPI-2 exhibited good divergent validity, with no significant correlations observed with a self-report measure of psychopathy or with a nonsexual criminal history.

Using reaction time procedures to assess implicit attitudes toward violence in a nonconvicted male sample.

In this study, we sought to capture implicit attitudes toward violence by administering response latency measures. We then examined their associations with explicit (e.g., assessed with self-report) attitudes toward violence and self-reported violent behavior in a combined sample of males from a Canadian university and males from the general community (N = 251; 156 students and 95 community members). To date, there have been mixed findings regarding these associations; some of this inconsistency may be due to the difficulty in accurately conceptualizing and assessing implicit attitudes toward violence. Therefore, we administered three response latency measures to assess this construct: a violence evaluation implicit association test (VE-IAT), a personalized VE-IAT (P-VE-IAT), and a violence evaluation relational responding task, along with three self-report measures of explicit attitudes toward violence and three self-report measures of violent behavior. More positive implicit attitudes toward violence were related to more positive explicit attitudes toward violence (for VE-IAT and P-VE-IAT; r = 0.18 to 0.22), greater likelihood of violence (for VE-IAT; r = 0.18 and for P-VE-IAT; r = 0.16), and greater propensity for violence (for the VE-IAT; r = 0.16). All measures of explicit attitudes toward violence and violent behavior were moderately to strongly associated with one another (r = 0.42 to 0.81). Furthermore, implicit attitudes toward violence explained additional variance in some violent outcomes above explicit attitudes alone. Our findings suggest that scores on certain reaction time measures are important for understanding likelihood and propensity for violence, especially when combined with explicit attitude measures.

Does the Paraphilia Scale Work for Everyone? Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Measurement Invariance Across Gender and Sexual Orientation Groups.

We conducted three studies to examine the factor structure and measurement invariance of the Paraphilia Scale, a measure of paraphilic interests used in multiple studies. In the first study, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) testing different a priori models with a community sample of 1,040 adults previously reported by Seto et al. (2021), and found support for a hierarchical four-factor model: An agonistic continuum involving coercion or physical pain (biastophilia, sexual sadism, masochism), chronophilias (pedophilia, hebephilia), courtship disorders (voyeurism, exhibitionism, and frotteurism), and fetishism (object fetishism, transvestic fetishism, urophilia-coprophilia). This factor structure was replicated in a second study comprising a combined sample of 400 mTurk participants and 870 university students. The third study analyzed the community sample and found evidence of configural invariance but not scalar or metric invariance across gender (man or woman) and sexual orientation for gender (heterosexual or other sexual orientation). This indicates that the factor structure of the Paraphilia Scale is robust for gender and sexual orientation for gender, but factor loadings differ across these groups, as do the loadings of individual items on the four factors. Implications for research on gender and sexual orientation differences in paraphilic interests are discussed.

Evaluating Child Sexual Abuse Perpetration Prevention Efforts: A Systematic Review.

Many child sexual abuse prevention efforts focus on the prevention of victimization, through education of children and parents, bystander training, and policies and practices in youth-serving organizations (e.g. requiring criminal record checks). However, there has been growing attention to child sexual abuse perpetration prevention, targeted at individuals who are at risk of perpetration. We conducted a systematic review of studies reporting outcomes for child sexual abuse perpetration prevention interventions. Only seven studies were identified in our review, with five intended for adults and two intended for children. Four of the five adult studies had significant methodological concerns, precluding strong conclusions from these studies. We concluded that higher-quality evaluations of perpetration prevention efforts are greatly needed. We also identified intrafamilial perpetration prevention, particularly interventions for parents or caregivers, as a critical gap in the literature. Suggestions for child sexual abuse perpetration intervention evaluation and delivery are discussed.