Suicide Among Child Sex Offenders

Introduction.- General Suicide Research.- Literature on Suicide Notes.- Literature on Child Sex Offender Dynamics.- Research on Child Sex Offenders and Suicide.- Methdology and Results.- child Sex Offender Characteristics.- Child Sex Crime Investigation Characteristics.- Suicide Characteristics.- Suicide notes.- Application of Interpersonal Psychological Theory to child Sex Offender Suicide.- Analysis of Suicide Notes left by Child Sex Offenders.- Multidisciplinary Considerations.- Considerations for Law Enforcement.- Considerations for Prosecutors.- Considerations for Mental Health and Community Service Providers.- Conslusion.- Future Research Directions.- Limitations of the Study.

"Suicide Among Child Sex Offenders addresses an issue which presents unique challenges to those responding to child abuse allegations. The child sexual abuse field is still quite new within the context issues intersecting criminal justice, child protective services, medical professionals, and mental health professionals. Subsequently, the rapidity of research in all areas of this field has increased dramatically over the past twenty years. Within this scope is a relatively more obscure issue which affects all of the professionals and familial individuals involved in these cases - the suicide of child sex offenders. Almost every professional involved in this work has, at one time or another, had one or maybe a limited number of cases where the alleged offender committed suicide. However, given the relatively low incidence of this response by offenders, almost all information gleaned in these cases is anecdotal, and thusly of little use in understanding the true scope of the issue. This extremely informative book, written by highly qualified professionals from the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, provides a comprehensive review of child sexual offender and suicidal behavior information. This provides a great context for the reader to understand the nexus of these domains and the informative findings which have come about as a result of this work. This book is a thought provoking and fairly easy read for professionals working within this field - providing interesting findings from this population and suggesting meaningful responses for both criminal justice and multidisciplinary team members involved in child sexual abuse cases."
Chris Newlin, MS, LPC
Executive Director
National Children's Advocacy Center
Huntsville, AL

"Suicide Among Child Sex Offenders: The title alone is attention grabbing. Separately, the topics should be interesting to a wide audience, and combining the two has rarely been done, which is exceedingly clear from the authors' review of