Assisting decisions in child protection service institutions with the RIC - The Risk Indication in Child sexual abuse.

BACKGROUND: The RIC (Risk Indication in Child sexual abuse) and its screening version (RIC:SV) are actuarial risk assessment instruments, developed at the Austrian Federal Evaluation Centre for Violent and Sexual Offenders and designed for child protection services to assess the likelihood of sexual recidivism in male contact child sexual abusers who still or again live within a family including children. OBJECTIVE: The RIC was designed to require a minimum of forensic information, with the RIC:SV completely waiving such information. PARTICIPANTS: Nine factors related to sexual recidivism could be identified by analyzing five-year follow-up data of N = 324 male contact child sexual abusers. SETTING: The data was collected retrospectively from files between the years 2002 and 2011. METHOD: Chi-Square Tests and ROC-analyses were calculated. RESULTS: The RIC and the RIC:SV were found to significantly predict sexual recidivism with AUC values of .84 (RIC) and .78 (RIC:SV). The items of the RIC are: (a) offender has never had a live-in relationship, (b) unstable family background of the offender, (c) impulsivity of the offender, (d) previous psychiatric treatment(s) of the offender, (e) offender has prior prison sentence/s, (f) problems of the offender to accept rules and norms, (g) offender was a stranger to his former victim(s), (h) offender had at least one male victim, and (i) offender has ever committed an extrafamilial contact child sexual abuse offense. CONCLUSION: The RIC and the RIC:SV need no extensive training to be used. The results may help CPS workers to justify risk related interventions.

Psychopathology and Quality of Life in Traumatized or Victimized Underage Individuals as Factors for Forensic Multilevel Assessment-A Pilot Investigation.

Background: Psychological sequels to criminal violence can be long lasting and severe. They are in many countries not sufficiently considered in court cases as an important circumstance that could be used to assess the severity of the crime, also guiding redress, compensation, and rehabilitation of the victim, and-in children-child custody considerations. So far, the focus of forensic assessment has often been limited to diagnostic categories, especially "posttraumatic stress disorder" (PTSD), a diagnosis that presently is subjected to rapidly changing definitions both in and between diagnostic systems. Other indicators such as quality of life (QoL) might be of equal importance as compared to clinical or research diagnostic categories to understand and evaluate the impact of a crime and the amount of help needed and, in the legal context, redress to be asked. Symptoms might differ depending on the crime encountered. Objective and Methods: QoL and general symptom patterns including a PTSD diagnosis were assessed in a group of 10- to 17-year-old minors with (n = 33) and without (n = 49) PTSD diagnosis who all had experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, death of a parent, or their parents' divorce, using standardized diagnostic instruments. Results: PTSD patients reported a significantly lower QoL than non-PTSD controls. Reported symptom patterns with potential impact on life, such as intrusive thoughts, differed between the victims of different crime types, with the highest rates of both intrusive symptoms and combined symptom profile in victims of sexual abuse. Data indicate that the changes between older and present criteria and between DSM and recently published ICD 11 might help identify different groups and symptom profiles. Conclusion: Specific trauma-related symptom profiles integrating the type of crime encountered and its individual impact on QoL may help improve future forensic assessment and guide compensation and rehabilitation plans. Carefully designed studies are now needed to further explore the use and forensic usability of complex indicators and the impact of violence in different forensic settings.

Sadism and Violent Reoffending in Sexual Offenders.

A diagnosis of sadism in sexual offenders is commonly regarded as indicative of high risk for violent reoffending. The purpose of the current two studies was to evaluate whether sadism is indeed associated with higher rates of violent (including sexual) reoffending. In Study 1 (meta-analysis), the rate of violent and sexual recidivism was assessed across seven samples of male sex offenders (total N = 2,169) as a function of diagnoses of sexual sadism. In Study 2 (N = 768) the outcome (violent recidivism yes/no) was regressed on sadism, along with behavioral indicators of sexually sadistic offending, and scores from violence risk assessment instruments. In Study 1 (meta-analysis), the overall risk of sadists compared with nonsadists with respect to violent (including sexual contact) reoffending was slightly elevated (by a factor of 1.18), yet not significantly increased. Similarly, the risk of sexual reoffending among sadists was slightly, but not significantly, higher than among nonsadists (factor 1.38). According to Study 2, only a measure of sadistic behavior, not the clinical diagnosis, was associated with violent reoffending. This association, however, was not present once age and customary risk assessment instruments for violence risk were included in the regression. A clinical diagnosis of sexual sadism and behavioral measures of sadism are related to the risk of violent reoffending in sexual offenders. These associations, however, are weak and do not hold once variables relevant for the prediction of violence are controlled for. At the individual level, the risk for future violence in sadists can therefore be adequately described by customary risk assessment instruments.