Women who sexually offend display three main offense styles: a reexamination of the descriptive model of female sexual offending.

This study examined a theory constructed to describe the offense process of women who sexually offend-the Descriptive Model of Female Sexual Offending (DMFSO). In particular, this report sets out to establish whether the original three pathways (or offending styles) identified within United Kingdom convicted female sexual offenders and described within the DMFSO (i.e., Explicit-Approach, Directed-Avoidant, Implicit-Disorganized) were applicable to a small sample (N = 36) of North American women convicted of sexual offending. Two independent raters examined the offense narratives of the sample and-using the DMFSO-coded each script according to whether it fitted one of the three original pathways. Results suggested that the three existing pathways of the DMFSO represented a reasonable description of offense pathways for a sample of North American women convicted of sexual offending. No new pathways were identified. A new "Offense Pathway Checklist" devised to aid raters' decision making is described and future research and treatment implications explored.

The development of the interest in child molestation scale.

Although numerous research studies have been conducted to investigate apprehended child molesters' sexual interest in children and associated concepts, very little research has been conducted to investigate community males' sexual interest in children. In this article, the authors describe the development and preliminary validation of a new measure--the Interest in Child Molestation Scale--to assess community male's sexual arousal, behavioral propensity toward, and enjoyment of child sexual abuse. Preliminary results show that the Interest in Child Molestation Scale holds some promising psychometric properties, representing a reasonably reliable measure of community males' sexual interest in children. Using this scale, the authors find that a good proportion of community males (57%) did not emphatically reject an interest in child sexual abuse. The authors also find that self-reported sexual arousal to child sexual abuse that is relatively low in forcefulness was significantly related to implicit child sexualization as measured via a pen-and-paper implicit association test. The authors discuss these results with reference to possible future uses of the measure for theory and research development.

Mentally Disordered Firesetters: An Examination of Risk Factors.

OBJECTIVE: In this study, we examined the risk-related characteristics of mentally disordered patients who had either been (1) involved in a firesetting incident or (2) involved in a nonfiresetting comparison incident while under the care of the National Health Service (NHS). METHOD: A total of 132 participants were recruited from an NHS Care Group in England (66 mentally disordered firesetters, 66 mentally disordered comparisons). Logistic regression was used to model the ability of static, dynamic, and incident-related factors in predicting whether a patient had set a fire (including gender-sensitive subanalyses), whether a patient firesetter was male or female, and a one-time or repeat firesetter. RESULTS: We identified a cluster of variables that predicted firesetting status. We also identified key factors that predicted female patient firesetters relative to female patient controls who engaged in other undesirable behaviors and male patient firesetters. A cluster of variables predictive of repeat versus one-time firesetting also emerged. CONCLUSIONS: Findings are discussed in relation to further development of risk-related firesetting theory.