Types of Sex Offenders: A Forensic Psychologist's Perspective. 2026 UPDATED

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]I'm Dr. Jeff Kelshesky, forensic psychologist. Welcome to my YouTube channel on forensic psychology.

[00:00:07]In this video, I'm going to discuss the science as well as my experiences to help define and describe different types of sex offenders.

[00:00:16]People often have strong reactions to the topic of sex offenders and sex crimes.

[00:00:20]There's a lot of misunderstanding. Uh there's also a lot of strong emotions frequently around this topic.

[00:00:26]And this topic bridges psychological science, the legal system, and many of our cultural institutions, and more recently even politics, right?

[00:00:35]Now, before I get into my discussion, uh a few warnings.

[00:00:40]Some of the things I talk about could be disturbing to hear, and uh especially if you have your own trauma history connected to this topic.

[00:00:49]So, uh please be forewarned.

[00:00:52]Also, uh if it seems like I'm talking about this topic rather casually, do not take this or interpret this as I do not take the topic of sexual abuse as a serious and ominous topic be- because I do.

[00:01:06]Uh as a practicing forensic psychologist, I've talked to plenty of victims of sexual abuse and read lots of victims' accounts uh and statements.

[00:01:15]Uh I know how devastating this can be to people. I know how this can affect people for their their entire lives.

[00:01:24]All right. So, questions people often have or ask when they hear about sex offenders or sex crimes.

[00:01:32]Why would someone do that to another person when they know it can cause so much harm?

[00:01:37]Why would someone be sexually aroused by this or that or whatever they do in their offending? Why would someone have sexual arousal towards children?

[00:01:45]Now, the first thing to understand about this population, the population of sex offenders, is that this is not a homogeneous group.

[00:01:52]All right? Uh within the population, there are definitely interact interacting complexities.

[00:02:00]However, we are able to define certain types of offenders.

[00:02:06]And by doing this, we can study the different types and use this research or apply this research to potential treatments and apply it to forensic risk assessment.

[00:02:18]Now, something I'm often hired to do is to conduct forensic sex offender risk assessments for the courts.

[00:02:26]And this can help the court decide sentencing.

[00:02:29]The court is often trying to understand is this particular type of offender at high risk to offend?

[00:02:35]And should this offender be incarcerated for a long period of time to protect the public?

[00:02:40]Or is this a type of offender that is amenable to treatment? And with good treatment, can he or she be supervised in the community and and not necessarily locked up for long periods of time?

[00:02:52]Or is this type of offender not amenable to treatment and we should lock them up for long period of time?

[00:02:59]Now, most of the discussion today will be centered on research conducted with male sex offenders.

[00:03:06]Obviously, there are female sex offenders, but they are a much smaller group. So, historically, the research has focused on male populations of sex offenders.

[00:03:17]All right. Now, historically, beginning in the 1950s and through the 1970s, we saw a lot of empirical or scientific research coming out that focused on identifying clinical profiles, mental health problems, or actually what sexual deviation is.

[00:03:35]This kind of moved moved us away or out of the kind of the psychoanalytic discussion and theorizing about sex offenders and started to establish a science behind our understanding.

[00:03:47]Now, moving into the 1990s, there was an increase there was increased research into sexual recidivism and risk prediction.

[00:03:55]So, in our discussion today, I'm going to break the population of sex offenders down into three broad groups.

[00:04:02]The first group is offenders of adults.

[00:04:06]The second group is offenders who offend against children.

[00:04:11]And uh the third group is what I call the paraphilia or fetish type offenders.

[00:04:19]So, when we talk about um sex offenders of adults, the first group I'm going to discuss today, we're really talking about offenders who sexually assault or most of the time rape other adults, or people who use their position of power or authority over others adults to sexually abuse them. Examples would be clergy, police officer, psychologist, and therapist.

[00:04:43]Now, under this um group that offends against adults, there seems to be a few different types.

[00:04:51]The first one is what I would call violent the violent forcible group. So, this group of offenders or this type of offender will often use more violence than is necessary in order to carry out the sexual assault.

[00:05:05]I have also seen this type referred to in the research literature as sadistic offenders.

[00:05:10]For this group, um part of sort of the payoff they get from this act is the pleasure of actually causing pain and fear in others. So, it's beyond just the sexual act.

[00:05:22]This group is very oriented towards com- combining combining the sexual act coupled with causing pain and coupled with the power and domination that they have over another person.

[00:05:35]This particular group tends to be at higher risk to re-offend. They often re-offend repeated- repeatedly or habitually.

[00:05:43]They more often offend against strangers.

[00:05:46]And this group is typically not very amenable to treatment.

[00:05:49]Now, the second subgroup within um the offenders who sexually offend against adults is the non-violent, non-forcible offender.

[00:05:58]An example would be an offender who would drug a victim, for example, with roofies in in someone's drink.

[00:06:04]Uh they um also will sexually assault victims that cannot give consent.

[00:06:08]Another example would be an offender who has sexual contact act with a victim who's passed out from uh drinking much alcohol.

[00:06:16]This category could also include what we might um describe as a date rape scenario, although this is arguable, given there might be force used in a date rape situation.

[00:06:27]But, if there is any force, typically, this is usually only enough force to move things into a sexual interaction, if that makes sense. It's different than the first group.

[00:06:38]So, I've seen a lot of offenders in this category. They tend to know their victim. Uh they can often be amenable to treatment. It really depends a lot on the crime, the details of the crime, and how it's carried out.

[00:06:50]Another group within this group um would be uh those who use their positions of potential power over someone to sexually take advantage of them.

[00:07:00]Now, we see this all over society, right? A boss who sexually harasses an employee, the casting couch idea in the entertainment industry.

[00:07:08]But, often times, this type of scenario might not even violate the law.

[00:07:13]However, there are laws that may define this type of sexual contact as sexual abuse and illegal based on a legal statute. For example, psychologists or therapists who have sexual contact with their patients can often be charged with uh a sexual abuse crime. And they can go to prison, and this is pretty standard across the states now.

[00:07:35]Clergy. That's an interesting one. In some states, it is illegal and considered sexual abuse for a clergy member who has sexual contact with someone from his or her congregation.

[00:07:48]It's called clergy sexual abuse. There's a whole research body on this.

[00:07:52]But the laws differ among states. In 2025, 14 states had laws on the books pertaining to clergy sexual abuse.

[00:08:02]So, what's going on in the other 36 states, right? So, if you do this behavior in California, it's illegal and you are a sex offender. But if you do this behavior in a different state, it's not illegal and then you're not considered a sex offender.

[00:08:17]All right, the second group I'm going to talk about is sex offenders of children.

[00:08:21]With this population of sex offenders, this group has probably been the most studied.

[00:08:28]First of all, let's take the [clears throat] group and divide it into two subgroups.

[00:08:33]Um two very important subgroups to understand and and how this pertains to risk level and treatment amenability.

[00:08:40]Okay, we have pedophilia and we have ephebophilia.

[00:08:46]Uh pedophilia involves having sexual attraction to prepubescent children, children who have not hit puberty yet.

[00:08:55]Uh ephebophilia involves having sexual attraction to children who are not prepubescent and frequently this is targeting teenagers that are under the age of consent.

[00:09:05]Now, this is often misunderstood or communicated incorrectly, particularly in the media.

[00:09:11]For example, uh the Epstein case that we hear a lot about. Uh this case looks to be more of a case that involves a lot more ephebophilia rather than pedophilia, although I know there are some allegations that may involve pedophilia as well.

[00:09:25]Now, um within the pedophile the pedophile group, there are often subgroups or a taxonomy based on a few important factors.

[00:09:34]Uh Uh, you can have pedophiles that are attracted to only the same sex or to the opposite sex or to both genders.

[00:09:42]You can have pedophiles that are called an exclusive pedophile.

[00:09:46]This is a person who is only sexually attracted to children and not adults.

[00:09:51]Versus what's called a non-exclusive pedophile who has sexual attraction to both children and adults.

[00:09:58]Uh, another factor is you have a group incest offenders versus non-incest offenders.

[00:10:05]Now, it's important to identify these types and factors. For example, if I'm going to do a risk a forensic sex offender risk assessment um, because what I have to look at is a um, combinations of factors to help me define and understand a specific type of offender and what the research says about their risk to re-offend or or their treatment amenability. For example, if I had to evaluate in a male, if I evaluate a male who is an exclusive pedophile only sexually attracted to children and he is a same-sex offender this particular subtype and specific type is at highest risk to re-offend.

[00:10:48]Now, compared to other types based on the research, they're higher risk so and and less amenable to treatment.

[00:10:57]Now, in the case of ephebophilia, based on the research, you may look at different factors to determine risk or amenability to treatment.

[00:11:06]Uh, for example, in this group, the factor of incest versus non-incest versus quote, stepdaughter, there's a whole body research on this offenders offers very different a very different risk profile and a very different amenability to treatment based on the research.

[00:11:25]Uh, the factor of same-sex or opposite-sex offender in ephebophilia really isn't a big salient factor in the research as compared to how you would apply it in the pedophile group for risk assessment.

[00:11:37]All right. Now, the third group I'm going to talk about is what I call the paraphilia or fetish type of offenders.

[00:11:43]This group tends to engage in their sex offending from a distance.

[00:11:48]This group often involves offenders that would like if for example expose themselves for sexual gratification. We used to call them flashers, right?

[00:11:57]>> [clears throat] >> The group would also include these more voyeuristic type of offenders. They used to be called window peepers. But now with technology, these are the guys, usually guys, who set up hidden cameras in locker rooms or bathrooms or there was a whole genre of under skirt photos that I've seen a bunch of guys too.

[00:12:20]And back before we had caller ID, we would have this group that would make obscene phone calls as their way to offend. They would call women up often randomly and talk in sexually explicit ways.

[00:12:31]And and to them this is what they got into. This is their thing. It was a fetish.

[00:12:37]Now, it turns out the example types I just presented in this third group are actually most of them are pretty amenable to treatment. And with good treatment, they're at lower risk to re-offend and can be managed in the community and that's a lot cheaper than locking them up for long periods of time.

[00:12:53]>> [clears throat] >> In this group, the paraphilia or fetish type of offenders, I guess you could also categorize child porn offenders as part of this group.

[00:13:02]However, they are a bit different.

[00:13:04]If you look at the channel, you see I did a whole video on child porn offenders.

[00:13:08]Now, with child porn offenders, there's very much more of a sexual addiction dynamic that frequently operates.

[00:13:15]And in my experience, as some of this group just stay in their consumption of child porn.

[00:13:21]But there's another group within that group that utilizes child porn but then sort of up the ante and starts reaching out online to children trying to get the child to expose himself or herself or so they can sort of get or collect their own exclusive child porn.

[00:13:39]Then there seems to be a group where they move from consuming child pornography to actually trying to abuse a child in the flesh.

[00:13:49]Research is still looking into these different types of offenders to understand them better.

[00:13:55]So as a forensic psychologist trying to understand offenders and specifically when conducting forensic sex offender risk assessments, you need to know the research behind these different types of offenders and you need to also examine a multitude of other factors sometimes specific to that particular type of offender in order to understand their risk or amenability to treatment.

[00:14:18]Other factors you might look at is age of victim, there's research on that. The specific sexual act.

[00:14:24]Any mechanisms for the abuse? Was the victim groomed?

[00:14:28]Was this a spontaneous act?

[00:14:30]Was this a offender against a stranger or did the person already have a relationship with the victim?

[00:14:36]There are a lot of variables to consider and they're weighted different based on the different subtypes and groups.

[00:14:41]Now, most of the time in my experience offenders will tend to fall in one of these three categories.

[00:14:47]And they don't really move out of the category except for the child porn offenders that I just talked about.

[00:14:52]However, you will sometimes get offenders that are in multiple groups.

[00:14:58]For example, you might have someone who has sexually assaulted adults and molested children.

[00:15:04]Now, in the older research they used to call that polymorphous perverse.

[00:15:12]And in the research people who met who fit the criteria for different types of offenders and different groups are at way more high risk to offend and um not as amenable to treatment most of the time.

[00:15:28]So, obviously this is a huge topic. I could probably do an 8-hour video on just the different types of sex offenders like we just covered.

[00:15:36]So, if this is a broad um the the this broad topic of psychologist sex offenders something that interests you, subscribe to this channel if you've not already. And sign up for notifications of new videos that I'll post on the channel. Like I said in my announcement video posted uh earlier today, this video is just the start of a series of videos that I'm going to do over the next several weeks where I will cover a variety of topics pertaining to understanding sex offenders uh and sex offending.

[00:16:08]Also, comment below. Let's start some discussions, but please be civil and understand that this is a topic that can elicit strong reactions in people and sometimes very personal reactions.

[00:16:21]Uh you can also find me on other social media outlets, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Everything's under Dr. Jeff Kielbasa. Forensic psychologist.

[00:16:30]Thanks.