The relationship between maltreatment victimisation and sexual and violent offending: differences between adolescent offenders with and without intellectual disability.
Teen offenders with ID are more likely to have been abused, and that abuse fuels later sex crimes.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Van Hanegem et al. (2014) looked at youth offenders. Some had intellectual disability. Some did not.
The team asked: does past abuse link to later sex crimes? They compared the two groups.
What they found
Seven in ten offenders with ID had been hurt before. Only four in ten non-disabled offenders had.
The link between past abuse and sex offending was stronger for youth with ID.
How this fits with other research
Dion et al. (2018) backs this up. They found one in ten child-protection cases involves a child with ID. Abuse in these cases was more severe.
Falligant et al. (2020) shows what to do next. Their review says behavior-analytic lessons can curb inappropriate sexual behavior in clients with ID.
de Leeuw et al. (2024) zoom out. A new review says people with ID are both victims and offenders more often. The field still lacks studies on how to stop this cycle.
Why it matters
If you work with teens who have ID and a record, ask about maltreatment. A strong abuse history raises risk for sex offending. Pair your behavior plan with trauma checks. Teach safe boundaries and consent rules early. Track data so you can show the court, the family, and the client that skills are growing.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Juveniles with intellectual disabilities (ID) are more often victims of maltreatment and more often perpetrators of abuse than juveniles without ID. Because previous research on the relationship between maltreatment victimisation and subsequent offending behaviour was primarily performed in non-disabled samples, the present study aimed to examine differences between juvenile offenders with and without ID in the relationship between maltreatment victimisation and sexual and violent offending. METHOD: The sample consisted of juvenile offenders with ID (n = 102) and without ID (n = 526) who appeared before the courts for a criminal act and for whom the Washington State Juvenile Court Assessment (WSJCA) was completed. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the strength of the relationship between maltreatment and offending, Fisher's z tests were calculated to assess the significance of the differences between the two groups in the strength of the correlations, and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to examine the unique contribution of maltreatment victimisation to the prediction of violent and sexual offending. RESULTS: Seventy per cent of the juvenile offenders with ID and 42% of the juvenile offenders without ID had experienced abuse and/or neglect. Both sexual and violent offending were more common in juvenile offenders with ID than in juvenile offenders without ID. Moreover, the relationship between different forms of maltreatment and sexual offending was stronger in juvenile offenders with ID than in juvenile offenders without ID. CONCLUSIONS: Given the high rates of abuse and neglect victimisation and the strength of the association between victimisation and sexual offending, especially in juvenile offenders with ID, treatment should focus on potential trauma and other problems associated with the abuse.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2014 · doi:10.1111/jir.12031