Child sex tourism: extending the borders of sexual offender legislation

Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism Perpetration: An Expansion of the Ecosystem Model

The sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT), also referred to as child sex tourism, involves engaging in sexual activity with someone under the age of 18 in the context of travel and/or tourism. Research on the perpetration of SECTT is vastly underdeveloped. The present review considers the operationalization of SECTT, its prevalence, and existing theoretical models. Existing theory on SECTT provides a good overview of environmental factors that contribute to SECTT, but the model is insufficient in fully accounting for individual-level risk factors related to sexual offending against children. The present paper expands an existing theoretical model of SECTT, the ecosystem model, to account for these individual risk factors and considers their interaction with environmental factors. The paper concludes by highlighting different avenues for future research.

Transnational Child Sexual Abuse: Outcomes from a Roundtable Discussion

The phenomenon of men who travel across international borders to engage in child sexual abuse presents significant public health, legal, diplomatic, cultural, and research challenges. Briefed in the current scope of this issue by relevant stakeholders across legislation, research, and social policy, a roundtable discussion held in London aimed to synthesise plenary discussions from multidisciplinary attendees across law enforcement, academia, non-profit, and industry sectors with direct relevance to the UK. Specifically, the roundtable discussions aimed to gather the central themes relating to attendee discussions on the key challenges, affected countries, response strategies, and knowledge gaps. Four key themes were identified from the data, relating to the definition of Transnational Child Sexual Abuse (TCSA), criminal justice, geographical considerations, and issues surrounding tourism/hospitality. The data highlighted four priorities for future development and research, namely developing offender typologies, victim-centric investigative practice, prevalence and definitions, and collaborations. These themes provide insight into the issue of transnational child sexual abuse from the perspective of different disciplines and offer a strategy to prioritise, and collaborate, in the efforts against transnational child sexual abuse.

Sexual disorders and crime

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Highlighting the relationship between sexual disorders and crime, reviewing and summarizing the articles published throughout 2011 which add to the current knowledge on this subject.

RECENT FINDINGS

Studies on specific populations confirm the association between sexual disorders and crime, particularly between paraphilias and sexual crimes regarding male offenders. Female offenders are less likely to be diagnosed with a sexual disorder. Some case reports focus on unusual paraphilias and lead us to question the vast possibilities of paraphilic contents and sexual arousal patterns. The variations of paraphilic-associated sexual arousal patterns, unconventional sex behaviors or paraphilic disorders are constantly changing. In this sense, the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 current proposals for a sexual dysfunction diagnostic category are under intense discussion because of their important clinical and forensic consequences.

SUMMARY

Sexual violence is a theme not well understood yet. Because of its nature, researching it can raise many ethical problems. There is no possibility of clinical trials and of case-control studies. Even cohort studies may be problematic in themselves. So, most of the research involves biased samples or case reports, or is merely theoretical. Further research is needed to improve our understanding of the subject, so that preventive and rehabilitative measures can be taken.