The profile of sexual abusers of minors: A forensic-psychiatric study

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO, 2006) defines sexual abuse as the involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend, being unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared, or else that violates the laws or social taboos of society. In Portugal, the law that regulates the sexual abuse of underage people (minors) is enclosed in crimes of sexual auto-determination, which are described as child sexual abuse (article 171°) and sexual acts with a teenager (article 172°), and those are applied to the person that has copulation, anal intercourse and oral intercourse with underage abusing from their inexperience. Our objective is to investigate the profile of sexual abusers of minors, namely, the socio-demographic features, clinical correlations, and the level of penal responsibility of sexual offenders who were referred by court to forensic psychiatric assessment in the Institute of Legal Medicine of the City of Coimbra. Moreover, verify if these individuals present mental disorders at the time of the offence. The present study is of descriptive nature, being based on the observation and consultation of 30 clinical processes of sexual abusers. All written reports were obtained from 2005 to 2015 by court-appointed psychiatric experts on individuals that have been charged of committing sexual crimes against minors and referred to the main forensic institute in the city of Coimbra. This study will contribute to the increase of more information on these offenders, promoting the development of more adequate contingency plans for this population.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.