Sex offenders and intellectual disability

Abstract

Ethical controversies in patients with intellectual disability who are sex offenders.

Patients with an intellectual disability (ID) have a disorder with onset during the developmental period that includes both intellectual and adaptive functioning deficits in conceptual, social, and practical domains (according to the DSM-5). These deficits in adaptive functioning result in failure to meet developmental and sociocultural standards for personal independence and social responsibility. Without ongoing support, the adaptive deficits limit functioning in one or more activities of daily life. Therefore, it is not surprising that these patients cross physical/sexual boundaries quite often. Above that, a proportion of all sex offenders have an intellectual disability.

The treatment of these sex offenders with an ID has to focus on protective factors, next to risk factors in order to decrease the risk of recidivism. Due to the chronicity of their disorder, quality of life is an important issue in these patients.

In this paper, we want to address some ethical controversies:

– hormonal treatment in patients with ID who are sex offenders;

– the right to have a ‘normal’ sexual life in these ID offenders, and the Dutch experience of the Stichting Alternatieve Relatiebemiddeling (SAR, that can be translated as foundation of alternative relationship mediation).

The SAR is an alternative dating service, giving information about the sexuality of physically or mentally disabled people and organizing sexual encounters for them.

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.