Sex Offender Myths and Misinformation. #forensicpsychologist #forensicpsychology

Added: 2026-05-30

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

[00:00:07]Today, this will be the fourth video in my series that I'm doing about sex offenders.

[00:00:13]We did the first video earlier this month on a discussion of types of sex offenders. The second video in the series addressed the question, does sex offender treatment work? Last week I posted a video on the psychology of female sex offenders.

[00:00:31]Today we're going to talk about myths and misinformation about sex offenders.

[00:00:37]Uh we will cover what the research and the professional writings say about this topic and I will give give you uh my take based on my experience working as a forensic psychologist with this population for over 25 years.

[00:00:53]Okay, before we get into it, uh I expect I will get a lot of feedback and u maybe even some push back in the comment section about some of the things I might talk about in the video today because some of the things that I discuss here as myth and misinformation do indeed happen. And for viewers, some of the specific myths or misinformation I might talk about are maybe things that help explain the experiences that you've had. Now, so when I talk about myths and misinformation, it is important to recognize that we are talking about points or information or conclusions that are not supported in the research or in my experience. When we're looking at sex offenders, there are instances that a myth that I present was indeed true in a situation, maybe even in your situation.

[00:01:46]So then Dr. Jeff goes on here and tells you that your whole understanding or truth that you've accepted about your situation is not true. That's not what I'm doing here. I'm explaining how certain myths and misinformation tends to be erroneously overapplied to provide a simple understanding of a complicated population and phenomenon, sex offenders and sexual abuse. So why do we have these myths? Why do we grab on and apply misinformation?

[00:02:16]Well, it's often to try to provide an understanding of a phenomenon or an incident. And it's a way to provide a more simple or direct understanding as compared to the complexities that are often involved and inherent in a complicated situation. Myths and misinformation can also help us not pay attention to certain things or ignore aspects or concepts of the situation that we really don't want to recognize.

[00:02:43]What's the problem with applying myths and mis and misinformation? Well, uh they may provide a simple understanding of a phenomenon or an incident, but they may not uh be a full understanding or even an accurate understanding of what has happened and they may be erroneously applied to lead to conclusions that are not true or accurate. Okay, enough about the psychology behind myths and misinformation.

[00:03:11]So, by the way, uh there are several and many myths and misinformation we often apply pertaining to sex offenders. And I'm only going to highlight some of the main or more frequent ones that I see. And these are not in any particular order. And these are definitely not the entire list of myth and misinformation we'll see of sex offenders. The first one is most sex offenders are committed or most sex offenses are committed by strangers.

[00:03:39]This is simply not true. And there's a ton of research that indicates that most offenders know their victims. This is not only the case in child sex abuse cases, but also adultto adult sexual abuse. The concept of someone jumping out of the bush to sexually assault another person does occur, but it's more rare and the research often shows that perpetrators know their victims most of the time.

[00:04:05]The next myth that we will cover is this idea that the majority of sex offenders are caught. Nope, it's not true. There's research out there that suggests that only 12 to 30% of adultto adult sexual assaults are even reported. And after that, after they're reported, the portion the proportion of those that actually lead to prosecution and incarceration is even smaller. There is research to suggest that the number of reported cases is even smaller in proportion in child sex abuse case as compared to adult sex abuse. One study suggested that only 10% of sex offenses against children um could actually lead to legal issues. The next myth, gay men are at higher risk to sexually offend against children. Complete myth when you look at the data. In fact, men who identify themselves as homosexual actually at lower risk of sexually offending against children compared to men who identify themselves as heterosexual in their adult relationships. This finding has been replicated over and over in the research. So, this also fits into this myth of of gay men being more sexually aggressive and trying to recruit children into their sexual orientation.

[00:05:14]No, guess what? Gay men generally like gay men, not children are straight men.

[00:05:19]The next myth, sexual offending rates are even higher now and continuing to climb. There's no credible scientific evidence that rates of reported sexual abuse or sexual abuse legal cases are increasing. But I bet uh we as consumers of the news maybe get exposed to news coverage of these cases even more or maybe differently than we have in the past. uh maybe new articles or internet content about sex abuse cases is presented in a way to scare people so that these um can apply to um getting more clickbait in in our media landscape. Right. The next myth, it's a myth with a caveat. Most sex offenders reaffend. Well, there is research suggesting that recidivism rates for perpetrators of child sexual abuse can fall anywhere between 12 to 20% over 5 years. and that perpetrators of adult um recidivism rate of adult to adult offenses is 20 to 30%. But we know from the researcher that sex offenders usually do not perpetrate sexual abuse or sexual assault once and anecdotally in my experience when I evaluate sex offenders, they don't usually like to talk about how many other kids or people they offended against and they were never caught. And recidivism rates are reported are based on reported crimes.

[00:06:40]We already talked about how many sex offenses are not even reported. So if someone reaffends and is never caught, they're not they are not included in these statistics. And maybe once getting caught and maybe once getting caught once makes them more able to avoid being caught a second time. That's just my anecdotal observation. Now the last myth I'm going to present. Sex offenders offend against others because they were sexually abused themselves. This assumes there's a causal relationship that being sexually abused causes someone to be an abuser. Let me ask you this. If you're watching this yourself and you were sexually abused, do you believe that that implanted an experience in you that makes you desire to sexually offend against others? Probably not. Now, in the research, there are studies that show sample sizes of convicted sex offenders who report they were sexually abused can vary widely. Some studies show only 1% of the sample said they were abused. Others say 67%.

[00:07:42]There was a metaanalysis that found that an average of 28% reported they were abused. And that's crunching the data across several studies. So this idea of whether or not the perpetrator was abused raises a serious reliability and validity concern in the research. Now in my dissertation where I had a sample of 306 sex offenders of children, 23% said they were sexually abused as a child.

[00:08:08]Now when we look at the epidemiology studies of sexual abuse, the National Institute of Health sites a meta analysis claiming anywhere from 20 to 30% of women, roughly one out of four women experienced sexual abuse in childhood. These same studies um of self-reported childhood sexual abuse for men can range between anywhere from 8 to 12% roughly one out of eight one out of 10 men say they have been sexually abused as a child. And I've seen these numbers thrown around a lot in the literature. One out of every four girls will experience sexual abuse. One out of every eight boys, which is about 15% will experience sexual abuse. Now, uh I'm just giving you the overall cited statistics. I'm sure you can find studies here and there that may have different numbers, but if we believe that one out of every eight men in our society were sexually abused as a child and that one out of every four women were sexually abused as a child, um that this myth that being sexually abused causes you to abuse is probably the one that I hear the most.

[00:09:14]Yeah, maybe an offender was abused, but using this as a causal relationship is simplistic and just not supported in the data. Most people who were sexually abused in childhood do not go out and sexually abuse children. All right, one last one. our the myth that our behavioral science research has made an in made us have an in-depth understanding of the population of sex offenders and this phenomenon of sexual abuse with high degrees of scientific certainty. And that's my attempt at a buzzer sound. If you've been watching the videos in this series, you know that conducting research on this population uh and this problem is fraught with all kinds of challenges. Just defining what sexual abuse is can vary between studies. Recid recidivism rates like we talked about are only based on who gets caught. These are not true reaffending rates. Most of the studies with this population are with samples of male offenders. We know that se females sexually offend as well. That was last week's video.

[00:10:20]Now, one area of research with sex offenders, it does have a robust science and a and a good solid scientific basis for conclusions is the um research on risk to sexually offend. We know particularly when looking at static or unchanging variables that there are certain variables that are more or less present in the research in samples of offenders who have been reoffended and caught. For example, exclusive same-sex pedophiles. that's a type of sex offender. These are offenders who are only attracted to prepodesscent children of the same gender and not adults at all. Uh they're seen in um reoffending samples at a much higher um proportion.

[00:11:03]So they're at higher risk to offend.

[00:11:06]Antisocial personality diagnosis and adult adult to adult offending rape.

[00:11:12]We've seen higher rates of antisocial personality disorder in these samples.

[00:11:16]So they're at higher risks.

[00:11:18]people expose themselves for sexual gratification flashers. Well, once they're in treatment, they're lower in these reaffending samples. So, with treatment, they're at lower risk.

[00:11:30]So, again, myths and misinformation about sex offenders exist because it's it's sort of human nature to in our mind to try to find a shortcut or provide a simple explanation for a complicated phenomenon. And sometimes myths and misinformation are perpetuated to meet people's agenda. Maybe someone has disgust over sexual abuse or a myth that children's disclosure of sexual abuse is often fabricated and false. That's a myth. Um, we didn't cover it, but when you look in to the research, you find out that's not true. This is often an argument used by people who abuse children or someone who buys into an ideology that adult men are being victimized in our culture. Again, in the comments and discussion, please be civil. Let's try to learn from each other. And if you're having any type of reaction to the things that I talk about today because uh these things are not consistent with your experience. Take a step back, take a breath, and realize this is the discussion of generalities around offenders as a group, not intended to discount your experience.

[00:12:37]So, I hope I don't lose too many subscribers because of this video.

[00:12:42]Anyway, if you have an interest in uh forensic psychology, psychology, des subscribe to the channel, like, comment, pass this link along to others. I'm also on other social media outlets, Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Everything's under Dr. Jeff Kelski, forensic psychologist. Thanks.