Intra- and extra-familial child sexual abusers and recidivism in Sweden: a 10- to 15-year follow-up study.

Rates of recidivism and types of recidivist crime have varied greatly in follow-up studies of child sexual abusers. In this long-term study of a population-based cohort (n = 193) and a nationwide clinic-referred study group (n = 166) of child sexual abusers, rates of recidivism and associations between index descriptors and outcomes were compared between intra-familial offenders and extra-familial offenders. Overall, 9.8% relapsed into sexual offence, 12.4% relapsed into violence and 2.6% relapsed into both types of offences in the population-based cohort. Corresponding numbers for the clinic-referred group were 13.9, 10.8 and 4.2%. Extra-familial offenders at index were significantly more likely to relapse into both sexual and violent criminality than intra-familial offenders, but no differences were found in rates of hands-off and hands-on crimes. Analysis of receiver operating characteristics showed that age at first conviction predicted sexual, violent and any criminality, with areas under the curve ranging from .67 to .80. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]