Offending Behaviour Theories

• Theories explaining the origins of the offending behaviour(s)

There is no one cause for paedophilia but there can be a number of factors that can contribute to this such as mental illness, brain dysfunctions or childhood abuse (Howitt;1995). The most common assumption of why people commit sexual offenses is that they had a traumatic childhood experience and yes this can be one part of the equation as there is a high percentage of sex offenders who have reported being abused as a child, but this is not the only reason of why people are sexually attracted to pubescent children, as Schiffer 2008 gives that there is a high level of evidence that specify abnormalities in the brain of sex offenders and that these occur when the brain is developing,

In some cases, they can have a history of sexual abuse within the family which is the cycle of abuse argument (Finklehor;1984), which can be the reason that leads to them re-enacting their childhood on another, the explanations suggest four various reasons being anger over the abuser, identification with them, career progression and psychological damage from previous abuse (Howitt;1995). With the cycle of abuse being rooted in the psychological development of the person due to their lack of empathy and their addiction to sexual deviant behaviour which plays a role in how the cycle is developed (Bagley et al;1994). Paedophilias use this cycle as an argument to explain their behaviour although there can be issues of how credible this is such as when it comes to female sex offenders when it comes to explaining them, as it is considered that females are more likely to be a victim of sexual abuse as there are more reported male sex offenders than females, which raises the issue of weather female offenders work the same way that males do or dose society see female sex offenders not as serious as a they perceive males