The role of denial in adolescent sex offenders who were sexually victimized as children as measured by the Rorschach

摘要

The present study explored denial as facilitating sexually victimized children who become sex offenders in adolescence. It was hypothesized that the trauma of sexual victimization would be manifested in denial of feelings, flight into fantasy, daydreaming, perceptual distortions, negative perception of self, and lack of empathy. It was also hypothesized that adolescent sex offenders would reenact their childhood trauma and would choose victims of the age at which they were victimized. One hundred and seventeen male adolescents composed four groups: normal (n = 30), general offender (n = 29), nonvictimized sex offender (n = 30), and victimized sex offender (n = 28) adolescents. Sex offenders were placed in their respective groups on the basis of their admitting sexual victimization in childhood.;Subjects were tested with the Rorschach by a single examiner. Interscorer reliability ranged from 87.4% (determinants) to 97.7% (location) across the scoring categories. The Rorschach reflects a relationship between personality as manifested in ego functions and perception. The present research attempted to measure denial, an observable behavior, by an empirical tool. Although the Rorschach measures denial independently by color projections, it was expected that the Rorschach would also measure denial as an effort to not show a behavior. Discriminant function analysis differentiated between the normal, nonsex offender, and sex offender groups, utilizing two functions: perception control and perception distortion. The normal adolescents scored high on perception control, the nonsex offenders scored low on perception distortions, and the sex offenders scored high on perception distortions. Differentiation between nonvictimized and victimized sex offenders was not significant by either discriminant analysis or by MANOVA. The findings do not support the hypothesis that sex offenders choose as victims children at an age in which they were victimized. The findings in this study suggest that transformation of nonlinear measurement rather than descriptive analysis is responsible for the limit to measure denial, still an observable phenomenon.