Understanding and preventing relapse in sex offenders

There are few problem behaviours in which a relapse episode is as devastating as it is in the case of child molesting and rape. A treatment failure in a sex offender programme means not only that the problem persists for the client, but that at least one innocent victim has been harmed. This grim consequence, along with the often discouraging evidence regarding the frequency of recidivism among these offenders, makes the prevention of relapse in this population an important goal. In this chapter, we will describe the problem of relapse among sex offenders, and will discuss how the field of sexual aggression can benefit from concepts and techniques borrowed or adapted from the area of addictive behaviours. We will also present a treatment model which focuses on training sex offenders to anticipate and cope with the problem of relapse.