Sexual Deviance: Issues and Controversies

Why do men rape women? What causes an adult to sexually molest a child? Understanding why sexual deviance occurs, how it develops, and how it changes over time is essential in preventing sexual predation and designing intervention programs for relapse prevention.

Sexual Deviance: Issues and Controversies addresses the biological, developmental, cultural, and learning factors in the genesis of sexual deviancy and links those theories to interventions with sex offenders. Edited by renowned sexual behavior experts Tony Ward, D. Richard Laws, and Stephen M. Hudson, this exceptional volume is divided into two sections. The first section covers explanations for sexual deviance, including ethical issues and classification systems for sexually deviant disorders. The second section addresses responses to sexual deviance, including traditional and modern intervention approaches.

An eminent group of scholars, researchers, and clinicians examine

• The "whys" behind sexual deviance
• Controversies surrounding offender rehabilitation
• The relationship between theory and practice
• All paraphilias including molestation and sexual assault
• Cutting edge developments in etiology, rehabilitation, and practice

Sexual Deviance: Issues and Controversies provides a comprehensive view of the psychological, biological, cultural, and situational factors that predispose sex offenders. Some of the world′s leading authorities in the area of understanding and treating sex offenders discuss, debate, and review the ideas and values underpinning research and treatment of sexual deviance.

Tailored for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in courses on abnormal psychology, psychopathology, forensic psychology, and criminology, Sexual Deviance: Issues and Controversies is also essential reading for psychologists, criminal justice professionals, and policy makers.

Tony Ward, PhD, DipClinPsyc, is the Director of the Forensic Psychology Programme at the University of Melbourne. He was previously director of the Kia Marama Programme for sexual offenders at Rolleston Prison, Christchurch, New Zealand. His research interests include the offense process in offenders, cognitive distortions and models of rehabilitation. He has published over 110 research articles, chapters and books. These include Remaking relapse prevention, Sage, (with D.R Laws and S. M. Hudson, 2000) and the Sourcebook of treatment programs for sexual offenders, Plenum (with W. L. Marshall, Y. A. Fernandez, and S. M. Hudson, 1998). He is currently working on a book on theories of sexual offending and rehabilitation (Wiley).

D.Richard Laws, PhD, was the director of the Sexual Behavior Laboratory at Atascadero State Hospital in California from 1970-1985; project director at the Florida Mental Health Institute, Tampa, from 1985-1989; manager of forensic psychology at Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta from 1989-1994; and most recently a psychologist with Adult Forensic Psychiatric Services in Victoria, British Columbia from 1994 until his retirement in 1999. Dr. Laws is known in the field of sexual deviation as a developer of assessment procedures and in program development and evaluation. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters in this area and serves on the editorial board of several journals. He is the editor of Relapse Prevention with Sex Offenders (1989), co-editor with W.L. Marshall and H.E. Barbaree of Handbook of Sexual Assault (1990), co-editor with W.T. O’Donohue of Sexual Deviance (1997), and co-editor with S.M. Hudson and T. Ward of Remaking Relapse Prevention with Sex Offenders (2000). He is past president of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers. He is adjunct faculty at the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and is Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham (UK) and Cardiff University (UK). 

Stephen M Hudson, PhD, DipClinPsyc, was Director of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He was instrumental in the establishment of New Zealand’s first specialized treatment unit for child molesters at Rolleston Prison, Kia Marama, in 1989. His research work was grouped into three major areas: intimacy and attachment style, cognitive distortions, and offence pathways/relapse prevention models. The results of these research projects were published in more than 80 books, book chapters and scholarly articles. He co edited a number of important books in the sexual offending area, including Remaking relapse prevention, Sage, (with D.R Laws and T. Ward, 2000), the Sourcebook of treatment programs for sexual offenders, Plenum (with W. L. Marshall, Y. A. Fernandez, and S. M. Hudson, 1998), and The juvenile sex offender, Guilford (with H. E. Barbaree, and W. L. Marshall). Dr Hudson died after a short battle with cancer on 1 November 2001.