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A sex offender is a person who has been criminally charged and convicted of a sexual offence. The word is also widely used in public discourse to describe any person, (whether or not they were charged and convicted), who is accused of partaking in sexually offensive behavior.

Violent Sex Offender

Violent sex offenders are people who have been charged and convicted of forcing another party into a sexual act against their will; a direct form of sex abuse

Exhibitionism

Exposing ones genitals in public.

Child Sex Offender

Child sex offenders are people who have been charged and convicted of sex with pre-pubescent minors in jurisdictions and situations where it is illegal to do so. Most offenders are male; the number of female offenders is usually reported to be between 10% and 20%, although in some studies it was found to be as high as 70%.

Typology

There are three categorizations of child sex offenders studied in the field of criminal psychology. The first two are major while the third is minor.

Regressed offenders

Regressed offenders are primarily attracted to their own age group but are passively aroused by minors (pseudo-pedophiles).

• The sexual attraction in children is not manifested until adulthood.
• Their sexual conduct until adulthood is aligned with that of their own age group. *Their interest in children is either not cognatively realized until well into adulthood or it was recognized early on and simply suppressed due to social taboo.

Other scenarios may include:

• Not associating their attractions as pedosexual in nature due to cultural differences.
• Age of consent laws were raised in their jurisdiction but mainstream views toward sex with that age group remained the same, were acted upon, then they were charged with a crime.
• The person's passive interest in children is manifested temporarily upon the consumption of alchohol and acted upon while inhibitions were low.

Some view regressed offenders as people who are unable to maintain adult sexual relationships and so the offender substitutes an adult with a child. This appears to be a flawed concept since it would suggest the offender was primarily pedosexual and they would thus fit into the fixated category.

Fixated offenders

Fixated offenders are most often adult pedosexuals who are maladaptive to accepted social norms. They develop compatibility and self-esteem issues, stunting their social growth. This is commonly characterized amongst psychologists as a "lack of maturity".

"This offender identifies with children, in other words considers him or herself to be like a child and thus seeks sexual relationships with what the offender perceives to be other children".

Such offenders often resort to collecting personal articles related to minors (clothing, childrens' books) as an outlet for their repressed desires. Most fixated offenders prefer members of the same sex. This would inherantly be defined as homosexuality if it weren't for the age gap. The sexual acts are typically preconceived and are not alcohol or drug related.

Sadistic offenders

Sadistic offenders are very rare and inherantly violent criminals. They primarily use sexuality as a tool of sadistic suppression and not for sexual satisfaction. For this reason they do not fit within the classification of pedophilia.

The great majority of offenders fit into the regressed category. Only between 2-10% percent of all offenders are fixated.

These categories, (primarily the first two), are based on the assumption that the offender suffers from an irreversable mental illness. A few have noted that the primary division between "regressed" or "fixated" offenders seems to rest on two criteria: the offending person's ability to successfully live a socially acceptable lifestyle before committing the crime and the person's primary sexual preference. These categorizations also assume the act is a crime in the jurisdiction they preside in.

These terms generally do not encompass the full range of possible scenarios and merely attempt to label easily identifyable situations. A growing number of pedosexuals feel that the two main classifications are a direct result from the lack of understanding and/or bias in the mainstream regarding pedosexuality in western society and thus are categorically flawed.

"Children who molest"

Some therapists noticed that many adult sex offenders showed what they considered deviant sexual behavior in their childhood already. So they promoted early treatment of deviant minors as a preventive measure. However there is still little known about normal as opposed to deviant child sexuality. It is also unknown whether so called deviant minors have a higher risk of becoming an adult sex offender than anybody else.

The US started to focus on juvenile sex offenders or even children for therapy or detention perhaps in the early 1990s. The label "juvenile sex offender" is controversial because it is not only used to describe acts of violence, but also consensual acts that violate statutory rape laws; critics of this trend view many such children as simply engaging in sexual experimentation. They also criticize the law for forcing arbitrary classification of such pairs of offenders into victim and perpetrator.

Therapies used on children have included controversial methods historically used in the "treatment" of homosexuals such as aversion therapy, where children are, for example, forced to smell ammonia while looking at nude pictures or to listen to audio tapes describing sexual situations. In order to measure sexual response, devices like penile plethysmographs and vaginal photoplethysmographs are sometimes used on these children.

• Sex Abuse