PATTERNED OFFENDERS: PREPUBERTAL SEX LIFE
Another aspect of the early lives of these sex offenders that must be examined is the whole complex of early sexual experience. Since puberty sets the terminal date for such experience, it is advisable to examine this variable first. It becomes immediately apparent that the patterned offenders attained puberty before the incidental offenders by a margin of from a few months to a full year. The patterned offenders all reached puberty after their thirteenth but before their fourteenth birthday, whereas this was true of only one group of incidental offenders. This earlier puberty may indicate, as we have suspected, a more imperative sex drive among the patterned offenders.
Despite their earlier age at puberty, which suggests a well-nourished organism, the patterned offenders were, as children, less healthy than the incidental offenders. About three fifths to four fifths of the incidental offenders had enjoyed good health. The differences in those reporting good childhood health ranged up to as much as 19 percentage points, but were generally nearer ten.
In five of our six groups, considerably more of the patterned than incidental offenders engaged in prepubertal sex play, the difference being as much as 35 percentage. Dividing this play into homosexual and heterosexual, one finds that except for the incest offenders substantially more of the patterned offenders had homosexual activity before puberty. No consistent trends were found in a study of the techniques employed in this homosexual play, except that more patterned offenders had actual, or attempted, anal coitus.
Again with the exception of the incest offenders, more patterned offenders had prepubertal heterosexual play, the proportions ranging roughly from three fifths to three quarters as opposed to one third to one half for the incidental offenders. Aside from a small tendency for more of the patterned offenders to have had coitus, the techniques of the heterosexual activity show no significant differences.
Setting aside the aberrant incest offenders, it would appear in summary that a greater incidence of prepubertal sex play with both boys and girls is associated with patterned sex-offense behavior in adult life.
The percentages of those who, when they were children, had sexual contact with adults show no consistent differences between the incidental and patterned offenders. In only one instance does their contact with adults seem significant: among the homosexual offenders vs. children only 20 per cent of the incidental offenders, when they themselves were children, had sexual experience with an adult male, whereas 45 per cent of the patterned offenders did. Here one may rightfully suspect some causal relationship.
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