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Child Pornography Offenders & Contact Sexual Offenses

January 24, 2012
Seto is considered the guru in the field of child pornography research. He recently published "Contact Sexual Offending by Men With Online Sexual Offenses" (2011), a meta-analysis of 24 previous studies, one of which is the Butner Study. Results are as follows:
 
- 1 in 8 online offenders (12%) have a known contact sexual offense at the time of their index offense
- 1 in 2 (55%) online offenders admitted to a contact sexual offense in the six (of 24) studies that had self-report data
- 4.6% of online offenders committed a new sexual offense of some nature during a 1.5 to 6 year follow-up period
 
- 2% committed a contact sexual offense
-3.4% committed a new child pornography offense
 
- Seto, Hanson, & Babchishin (2011) concluded that there may be a distinct subgroup of online only offenders who pose a low risk of committing future contact sexual offenses. These authors acknowledge limitations to this study and that future research is needed. 
 
The following are the 6 studies included in Seto's meta-analysis (2011) which include the percentages of contact sexual offenses based on self-reports by online offenders:
 
1.  Bourke & Hernandez (2009) - The Butner Study Redux = 84.5%
2.  Buschman & Bobaerts (2009) = 55.3%
3.  Coward, Gabriel, Schuler, & Prentky (2009) = 32.8%
4.  Neutze, Seto, Schaefer, Mundt, &Beier (in press) = 57.4%
5.  Quayle & Taylor (2003) = 47.8%
6.  Wood, Seto, Flynn, Wilson-Cotton, & Dedmon (2009) = 32.3%
 
- The percentages range from 32.3% - 84.5%

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