The purpose of this paper is to assess the efficacy of the different types of individual and group psychotherapeutic treatments used to treat male sexual offenders of young girls. The targeted group of sexual offenders is aged between 18 and 40. Consisting of seven sections, this paper begins the discussion by presenting background information about male sexual offenders in order to create a generic profile. First, it will consider the developmental characteristics of young people within this age range from various theoretical perspectives on human development. Information about this age group will be extracted from: Erik Erikson's (1968) psycho-theory on the eight stages of human development; Jean Piaget's (1947) cognitive-developmental theory and four major stages of development; and Albert Bandura's (1986) Social Learning Theory. Second, the characteristics of male sexual offenders of young girls will be identified (McGrath, Hoke, & Vojtisek, 1998; Cooney, 1999). Finally, the discussions on the human development of males within the aforementioned age range and sex offenders will be integrated to construct a comprehensive profile of these individuals (Miccio-Fonseca, 2001).
The second half of the paper focuses on the various types of individual and group therapies, which have been used effectively to treat this population of sexual offenders. According to Grossman, Martis and Fichtner (1999), psychological treatments that have been proven to be most effective in treating sexual offenders fall under the cognitive-behavioral model. Most of them can be used either in a group or individual setting, depending on the responsiveness of the patients. In addition, various treatment problems will typically combine two or more techniques to address the issues of sexual offenders (Johnston, Ward, & Hudson, 1997; Cooney, 1999). The cognitive behavioral techniques include:
"Aversion therapy and covert sensitization" that link ...