The Cycle Of Sexual Offenders By Karen Terry

The Cycle Of Sexual Offending
Sexual offenses are considered to be one of society’s gravest issues. Like all crime, it is a complicated issue to solve. It is an issue that is even harder to understand. Legislators and researchers have spent countless resources trying to discover the underlying cause of why sex offenders first commit the offense and continue to reoffend. Researchers and professionals of the judicial system have begun to understand sexual offenders and their motives through the sexual offense cycle. As described in chapter four of Sexual Offenses and Offenders by Karen Terry (2006), the sexual offender cycle purpose is to demonstrate how the interaction of the offender’s thought, feelings, and behavior allow the offender to

commit the offense.
Offenders generally make a series of decisions before committing a sexual offense, this decision-making process is commonly referred as seemingly irrelevant decisions or SIDs (2006). SIDs enables the offender to be in or create an environment that is ideal to commit the sexual offense. In addition to SIDs the sexual offending cycle can also include determinants, which may be situational in nature, involve negative affective states, their acts can be learned through past learning or can be reinforced through their life experience which commonly leads to the offender committing the sexual offense.
Using the life of Robert Hansen, who in short was convicted of four murders, as the primary example this essay will demonstrate how sexual offenders go through the cycle of sexual offending. Steps that are part of this cycle may include negative thoughts that the offender has about himself, having strange inappropriate thoughts or fantasies, grooming their victim, committing the crime, rationalizing their behavior, and eventually reoffending (2006).