Child molester profile: Theories and interventions based on an Italian case report

Risk and protective factors characterizing child molesters are heterogeneous. However, there are common elements among people who commit sex crimes. The aim of this chapter is to show the main characteristics of a male Italian child molester, aged 50 years old, through a semi-structured interview based on the main child molester theories and the possible intervention solutions based on the etiology. The first section will be characterized by the interview; while the main theories on child molesters will be discussed in the second section. The interview investigates the following areas: relationship with his parents, infancy, his sexual education, self-image, criminal onset and his perceptions about the offence and of children. Qualitative analysis shows specific core categories: mother, father, sexual education, self-perception, sexual offending and children. A detailed study of these categories shows that the participant perceives his mother as sadistic, while his father as submissive and repressed. He reports to have suffered from psychological abuse from his mother and repressive sexual education from his father, who forbade him to masturbate. As an adolescent, he experienced social difficulties with his peers, and he began to show sexual interest in children, until his first offence and arrest in adulthood. He perceives adults as sexually terrifying and he wants to save children from adults' sexual repression. The categories emerged represent some of the main common characteristics of child molesters and may be useful for future interventions on this category of offender. The last section will be dedicated to the interventions.