Community Update

John DeFrancesco, Ph.D., of Windsor, a professor at American International College (AIC), recently presented research on the treatment of juvenile sex offenders to the 121st Annual American Psychological Association Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii

Candice Waltrip, a 2007 graduate of the AIC Forensic Psychology program, and a current doctoral student at Asuza Pacific University, was the lead author, while DeFrancesco, chair of the AIC Graduate Studies program, was one of three co-authors of the study.

The authors said the treatment of juvenile sex offenders (JSO’s) is a rapidly growing area of research and practice. However, one category of JSO’s that have received less attention is that of the cognitively-impaired juvenile sex offender (CI-JSO). "This unique group of youth poses special challenges to traditional forms of treatment due to their cognitive limitations, academic status and developmental immaturity," they said.

In the presentation, a myriad of assessment tools were discussed and evaluated, including general and sexual risk assessments, intelligence measures, personality measures and ways in which clinicians can interpret feigning cognitive impairments from these different tests in an attempt to properly intervene with the JSO and CI-JSO populations.

The authors produced a manual to provide clinicians with a clearer understanding for treating CI-JSO’s through effective evaluation of feigning cognitive impairments. They said, "Clinicians will have the ability to evaluate and refer for appropriate treatment interventions, thus, assisting with the reduction of recidivism rates and treatment attrition. This manual will provide a general overview of JSO’s and CI-JSO’s, specific assessment instruments utilized with JSO’s and CI-JSO’s, an in depth overview of malingering in children and adolescents to aid in assessment approaches, and information on current treatment options, barriers to treatment and resources useful for following trends in JSO statistics and research."

Twenty-five experts in the field were asked to evaluate the manual on its appropriateness, usefulness, and applicability. Overall, the manual was well received. Experts appreciated the attention to detail regarding the assessment and malingering sections of the manual. Experts also agreed that this manual is a much needed therapeutic tool for sex offender treatment providers but that it needs to be developed further and expanded upon to include specific interventions, examples of assessment tools and more differentiation between cognitively impaired juvenile sex offenders and their non-impaired counterparts.

In the future, this manual could be beneficial to clinicians and may be better geared toward training clinicians or newly practicing clinicians.