Based on the "cycle of violence" hypothesis proposed by Widom (1989a, 1989b), which refers to the phenomenon that child victims of abuse become offenders, many researchers and professionals hold the belief that child abusers were likely to victims of abuse themselves. This assumption certainly has many implications for professionals in the law and enforcement profession, as well as the counseling profession. If a clear relationship between child abusers and their being victimized by child abuse can be established, psychological interventions should be implemented for convicted child abusers to prevent them from repeating their patterns of deviant behavior (Weeks & Widom, 1998). In this paper, research studies conducted on this topic will be briefly described. Furthermore, whether the notion that child abusers were victimized themselves is oversimplified will be examined within the context of these findings.
The majority of the research studies on the relationship between childhood abuse and subsequent offending behavior towards children falls into the sexual realm. In other words, researchers have focused on the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and sexual offending. Studying a sample of sexually abuse boys, Burgess, Harman and McCormack (1987) found that all of them exhibited antisocial behavior including sexually offending behavior. Many other researchers have also shown that diverse populations of child molesters have been victims of childhood abuse themselves. They include male juvenile sex offenders (Benoit & Kennedy, 1992) and female child molesters (Green & Kaplan, 1994).
However, the findings of other researchers such as Scully (1990) and Widom (1996) did not support this relationship. In Widom's (1996) study, comparisons among abused children, neglected children and matched controls were conducted. Widom (1996) did not find that the sexually abused group was more likely to become sexual offenders ...