Social Dominance Theory

Many reported offenders are male, with a history of abuse and a troubled childhood. Men are child molesters in at least ninety-seven percent of reported cases (Sanford, 83). One investigation noted eighty percent of sexual offenders had committed their first crime by age of thirty with all by the age of forty. Between 200 and 300 men are prosecuted to every one woman (Sanford, 83). Research has uncovered repeated drug and/or alcohol abuse issues among convicted predators. Lastly, sexual offenders suffer from deviant sexual behavior and attitudes (Henderson, 39).

Many etiological theories exist attempting to explain the root causes of sexual offending. Although few provide substantial evidence and no definitive conclusions have been made, the social learning theory has been proposed to account for sex offending behaviors. Specifically, the social learning theory, or victim-to-victimizer theory, suggests sexually abused children learn these behaviors and are much more likely to perpetrate abuse when they’re older (Seto & Lalumiere, 2010). The following studies have provided substantial support for the social learning etiology. Through the use of a meta-analysis, Seto and Lalumiere (2010) concluded that sexual offending is tied to prior sexual abuse. Burton, Miller, and Shill (2002) discovered

Sexual abuse is a heinous act that causes extreme suffering for a victim while providing pleasure for a perpetrator. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, approximately 1 in 6 boys and 1 in 4 girls are abused sexually before the age of 18 (n.d.). The question of why an individual would commit such a heinous act has various answers, almost all of which depend on the background of the individual. A common speculation is that abusers themselves were once abused by someone else. This idea branches off of the Positivist Theory of crime. The theory basically states that prior influences or experiences in life will ultimately decide how people will act in the future (C. Bartol & A. Bartol, 2017). Their history of abuse influenced them to become abusers. While this may be one viable explanation to this behavior, there are many other answers that are just as feasible in explaining this behavior. This includes the topic of serious mental illnesses and other behavioral disorders. Regardless of background influences, the true intent of the abusive individuals may be almost impossible to draw out, especially since most guilty individuals want to escape from the consequences associated with the crime that they commit (Inbau, Reid, Buckley, & Jayne, 2013). Unless a perpetrator admits to committing the crime, piecing the story together and understanding the influences that played a role in the actions committed by them is more feasible in terms of learning the truth. Whatever the

Many experts agree that pedophiles develop a sexual interest over a long period of time. Most commonly pedophiles are subject to some form of sexual abuse or trauma at a young age. Other common reasons are abuse or some other related problem during sexual development, as a result they develop an interest in children as sexual objects. According to some of the pedophiles arrested they stated that they developed an interest in children as sexual objects as a result of seeing such images over the internet

Some children are left to be watched by another family member or a friend of the family and get sexually abused by them. Sometimes children are forced to have sexual activities going on with an adult without the parents knowledge. That leaves the child to think that their parents really do not care for them. Children get scared when sexual abuse happens. Some will not tell, because they think they will get in trouble. Sexual abuse can hurt the child's as they get older in life.

With the development of this theory by Ressler et al. (1988), it highlights numerous elements that form a serial sexual killer. Similarly, to Hickey’s trauma control model, Ressler et al (1988) acknowledges that an ineffective social environment exacerbates the child’s future. This is aimed at parents who do not provide appropriate emotional support or display little to no form of discipline. In addition to normative events such as illness, a child may be subject to non-normative crises such as child abuse; subsequently the child retreats into “Aggressive fantasies, aimed at achieving dominance and control” (p.71). A strength of the motivational model therefore, shows that even children who engage in ‘not-uncommon’ social processes. However, the weakness to this model is that it collapses when trying to explain serial killers who have had normal upbringings and a secure name in society. Both these theories highlight characteristics of a lust murderer, Peter Dupas is one of many killers who match this

The children educated on sexual abuse often only imagine molesters as creepy strangers, while the majority of molesters are already known and trusted by the adult community. Therefore, even with sexual abuse education, children often don’t know what to do when they are put into situations in which their molester is trusted by their community and/or threatens them not to tell others. When they do tell adults about their abuse, moreover, their

Child molestation is the most horrible crime an adult can commit. I believe this type of crime does more psychological damage to its victims than any other type of crime. Who are child sex offenders? Do they look like monsters? The fact is a child sex offender can be anyone. A child molester is often a person the victim's parents or the victims think they can trust. The devastation these people cause their victims is tragic. Their victims are certain to suffer a lifetime of emotional trauma. Child sex offenders should not get a second chance. They should get life in prison for their first offense.

The real question is why did those people or children focus someone or a child in a sexual without content? Studies and different theories have proven that experience from poor parenting, inconsistent, hard discipline and also physical sexual abuse contributes to the person to becoming a sex offender for instance if a young boy got physically and sexually abused as a child,

Researchers point out that child sexual abusers are driven by motives that are not the same as a pedophile. These motives can include stress, marital troubles, anti-social tendencies, or drug and alcohol abuse (Lanning, 2010). The sexual abuse of a child is not an indicator that the perpetrator is a pedophile. Sex offenders can be separated into two types: preferential and situational. The preferential is a true pedophile, only having a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. According to a study on over 2400 adult male sex offenders who had been categorized as pedophiles, only 7% of the men identified themselves as exclusively preferring children. This is an indication that most child sexual abusers fall into the non-exclusive or situational category (Hall, 2007).

In this essay, two theories specifically focusing on sexual offending against children are compared and critical evaluated. Finkelhor’s (1984) Precondition model integrates four underlying factors that might explain the occurrence of child sexual abuse and categorizes them into four preconditions: motivation to offend, overcoming internal inhibitors, overcoming external inhibitors and overcoming child’s resistance that occur in a temporal sequence where each is necessary for the other to develop. The Precondition model provides a framework for assessment of child molesters but is criticized for a lack of aetiological explanations and for paying to little attention to cognitive factors. Ward’s (2003) Pathways model suggest that clinical

     Cohen, Seghorn, and Calmas (1969) described three types of child molesters derived from their clinical studies. One type had a history of relatively normal functioning and the incident of molestation appears to reflect a reaction to a severe threat to their sense of sexual adequacy. Another type had a history of poor social-sexual functioning and is regarded as primitive and immature in terms of social-sexual skills. The last type they found in their study had offenses involving cruel and vicious assaults on children and the act of molestation is regarded as more aggressive then sexual. (Mc Creary, 1975)

. Crawford analyzes that social class dominance can be observed by having the people with power or money do anything to survive, and leave the poor to their death.

Children advance through a series of life changing events while growing up. Plenty of them are cheerful milestones that are celebrated for instance a birthday or an accomplishment, and then there are those children who are neglected and abused by another family member. When a child is abused or neglected, it not only affects them when they are children, but also affects them when they become functioning adults in society. A sociological social psychology perspective that can be applied to explain why child abuse happens which is the social structure and personality perspective. This perspective can also find a way to solve child abuse in the home. Child abuse is a social problem that has been happening for plenty of decades in our society and with the social structure and personality perspective, one is able to help explain why it happens and how the problem can be solved.

(1)Social Dominance Orientation is a trait that can determine how people view themselves or their in-group in comparison to other groups. People who are high in Social Dominance Orientation believe that their in-group is somehow superior to other groups. They are hierarchical in the sense that they believe that groups belong in a class system, where one group is above the rest, and the others are somehow at a lesser level than their group. Men also tend to test higher in Social Dominance Orientation than women do, as well as take on careers where they will have some sort of power over the public, such as police officers.