1. Introduction to Contact Offenses
This introductory handout defines child sexual abuse and contact offenses, describes forms of abuse and common relationships between offenders and children, and summarizes reported impacts on victims. It also reviews statutory sexual-offense research, including age differences, acquaintanceship, and arrest patterns, while presenting the figures as findings from cited studies.
2. Online versus Contact Offense
This research summary compares characteristics reported for online child pornography or solicitation offenders and contact sexual offenders. Across the studies it reviews, the groups differ on average in age, criminal history, sexual interests, and antisocial traits, while findings vary across measures and do not establish that every individual in a group shares those characteristics.
3. Grooming Tactics
This handout summarizes research on tactics reported in contact sexual offenses against children, including differences described for related and unrelated victims. It notes that studies often report nonviolent approaches such as gifts or shared activities, and raises a validity problem: behaviors that may occur in ordinary parenting can also be interpreted as grooming without sufficient distinguishing evidence.
4. Pathways Model to Contact Offending
This resource presents four proposed explanatory approaches to online sexual offending and summarizes a pathway model applied to contact sexual offending. It describes four pathways—intimacy deficits, distorted sexual scripts, emotional dysregulation, and multiple dysfunctions—and briefly reports findings from studies of pathway membership and self-reported motivations among people who offended online.