Associations Between Trauma History and Juvenile Sexual Offending

Abstract

Over the past two decades, researchers and clinicians have become increasingly interested in understanding the sexually delinquent behavior of juveniles [1]. Investigations have documented the high rates of histories of interpersonal trauma in juvenile sex offenders [2,3], as well as their high prevalence of mental health problems [4]. Exposure to interpersonal traumatic events is consistently associated with multiple mental health problems for justice system youths, regardless of the presence/absence of a history of sexual offending [5-9].