Citation

Ward T, Keenan T, Hudson SM. Aggress. Violent Behav. 2000; 5(1): 41-62.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Factors, such as intimacy deficits, problems empathizing with victims, and cognitive distortions, have all been associated with the genesis of sexual abuse. Importantly, they all point to a lack of awareness of other peoples' beliefs, desires, perspectives, and needs. We argue that sexual offenders' problems in these domains can be viewed as partially arising from deficits in one central mechanism: the ability to infer mental states. Following a review of the above three areas, we discuss the developmental literature on children's theory of mind and develop a model informed by this work. We apply this model to sexual offenders and discuss its research and clinical implications.