Preventing Sexual Misconduct by People with Intellectual Disabilities

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sexual abuse is a significant yet often hidden public health issue. The economic burden place on society by sex offenders has been estimated to be $2,055,528,000. Most of these costs are related to incarceration of offenders, while prevention of sexual abuse and efficacious treatment of sex offenders, particularly those with intellectual disablities (i.e., mental retardation), remain low priorities. There are approximately 7.5 million people with ID in the United States, 90% of whom are mildly impaired (i.e., mild mental retardation). The incidence of sex offending by people with intellectual disabilities has been estimated to range from 15 to 40%, with sex offenses accounting for 12 to 46% of convictions of in this population. Most sex offenders with intellectual disabilities are never adjudicated, but are diverted into supervised community-based programs such as group homes. This Phase I project will develop an interactive multi-media (IMM) CD-ROM training program designed to prevent sexual misconduct and opportunistic sexual offending by males and females with intellectual disabilities. The program will teach adults with intellectual disabilities to recognize interpersonal physical boundaries, to identify and assess risk variables that could lead to opportunistic sex offending, and develop a set of risk-reduction strategies that when employed, will prevent the occurrence of sexual misconduct or opportunistic sexual offending. The program will be designed for use in educational, vocational, social, rehabilitative, and residential environments. Novice computer users will be able to use the interactive mouse-driven Phase I CD-ROM program with no prior computer experience. Using a randomized control trial pre-test post-test group design with 20 subjects per group, the prototype CD-ROM program will be evaluated by adults with moderate to borderline intelligence (IQ range 50 through 80). As part of the Phase I evaluation, we will also begin to assess the impact of the prototype program on learning transfer and generalization. Phase II will create a set of 4 interactive CD-ROM programs tailored by age, sex, and knowledge. During Phase II, 2 DVD companion programs designed for use in group discussion or treatment environments will also be developed. Phase II will evaluate the efficacy of both CD-ROM and DVD technology for reducing the likelihood of sexual misconduct and opportunistic sex offending by adult males and adult females; and teen males and teen females with intellectual disabilities.