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Asperger Syndrome: A Case Study

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1. Aims & Objectives The purpose of the project is to investigate the social impairments inherent in ASDs and the relevance of these in offences of sexual nature. Case studies have previously reported that an association between sexual offending and specific Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) features such as naiveté, sexual frustration, difficulty in developing appropriate, consenting sexual relationships as a result of impaired social cognition, circumscribed interests, and impaired ability to appropriately interpret the victim’s negative reactions contributed to the sexual offending (Ian Freckelton & List, 2009; Higgs & Carter, 2015). Therefore, the present research will aim to empirically investigate in a larger scale whether any of these ASD features results in increased risk of sexual offending and sexual inappropriate behaviour in individuals with ASD. In the first instance, it will evaluate current and past body of research which has looked at sexual offending in individuals with ASD, in order to understand whether studies have found innate vulnerabilities which potentially may increase the risk of an individual with ASD finding themselves involved with the criminal justice system as a result of being charged with …show more content…

Thus suggesting an association between Asperger syndrome and criminality. This notion has been highly simultaneously supported and criticised throughout literature (Bjorkly, 2009). The present project aims to understand if individuals with Asperger Syndrome are more prone to commit crimes of sexual nature and demonstrate inappropriate sexual behaviour in comparison to individuals with diagnoses from other categories or sub-types of ASD (e.g. childhood autism (CA), atypical autism (AT)). When doing so, it will examine the possible AS specific and AS inferred elements that appear to have influenced

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