ANN ARBOR—Sexually abused youths who are serving time for their crimes are more likely to repeat assaults done to them unless they get psychological counseling during incarceration, according to a University of Michigan professor.

In David Burton’s study, “Male Adolescents: Sexual victimization and subsequent sexual abuse,” he collected data from nearly 180 adolescent sexual abusers in four Michigan detention centers. His research supports that providing treatment for youths is one answer to prevent future assaults. The problem is that jails, prisons and detention centers don’t have the funding to offer treatment, in part, because many counties and states have trimmed their budgets, he said.

Based on a national survey in 2000 by Burton and Joanne Smith-Darden, a student in U-M’s School of Social Work’s joint doctoral program, treatment for adolescents takes about 1.5 years and is usually cognitive-behavioral in nature: it works towards changing thoughts, feelings, behaviors and childhood events that cause sexual aggression.

“As a society, we don’t deal well with sexual abuse. Rather, due to the difficulty people have with abuse as a subject, we tend to ignore it. Given that approximately 1/4 women and 1/10 men are sexually abused by age 18, we must treat this as a public health problem and we must treat offenders to stop them from reoffending,” said Burton, who teaches in the School of Social Work. “Locking up offenders will not stop the problem; we must provide psychological treatment, which has been quite successful and is increasing in effectiveness according to study after study.”

The study found that indeed many youths repeated what was done to them. For example, a youth that was sexually abused by a male was six times more likely to sexually abuse a male than a youth who was not sexually abused by a male. A youth who was sexually abused with direct force was nearly four times more likely to sexually abuse using direct force than a youth who was not sexually abused in this manner.

These results support the idea that sexually abusive youths who have been victimized were learning from and repeating their own victimization. This finding will assist in treatment designs for programs to serve these youth, he said.

Burton’s research will appear in the August issue of Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal.

For Burton’s bio: http://www.ssw.umich.edu/faculty/profile-burtond.html

The research can be found at http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0738-0151/contents