story of physical or sexual abuse in their childhood, substance abuse and poor sexual relationships with adults. They may also have difficulties controlling their emotions. Some also suffer from mental illnesses (Prevent Child Abuse America, n. d.).
Female child sex offenders—the remaining ten percent of the child sex offender population—differ from their male counterparts in their use of persuasion, rather than force to commit sexual offenses against their victims. They also tend to target young boys, instead of girls (Prevent Child Abuse America, n. d.).
In order to better understand the diverse characteristics of sex offenders and the underlying reasons for their sexually offending behaviors, researchers in various fields have identified various explanations that can be classified under the following three categories: biological, psychological and environment. From a biological standpoint, the genetic components of sexual offenders, their physiological responses to their victims (Prentky, Knight & Lee, 1997) and even neurological damages to their brain (Langevin, 1990) may have led to their sexually deviant behavior.
Researchers with the psychological orientation attribute the sex offenders' behavior to their past history. As pointed out above, many sex offenders have histories of being emotionally and physically abused during their childhood. These abuses most likely led to their failure to develop appropriate attachments to others in adulthood, as well as social skills and psychosexual maturity (Marshall & Barbaree, 1990; Prentky et al., 1997). In fact, sexually abused boys often grow up to become child sexual abusers themselves by re-enacting the abuse they experienced as children (Holmes & Slap, 1998).
Apart from these internal reasons, some researchers also highlighted the possibility that circumstantial factors such as temporary stressful situations caused by marital problems and eruptions of an...