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YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME for juvenile sex offenders
The benefits of this programme for juvenile participants, children in society, and society in general, are enormous. The programme focuses on a number of issues such as anger management, taking responsibility for one’s actions, sex and sexuality education, impulse control, victim empathy, problem solving, etc.
The group is conducted in a manner whereby each child becomes empowered and accepted, and an increase in the offender’s self esteem soon becomes evident. The child perpetrator no longer feels the need to abuse other children, or participate in behaviour which is detrimental to his/her own wellbeing, or the wellbeing of others.
The most immediate benefit is the reduction or prevention of innocent children from falling victim to the offender. The programme, therefore, breaks the cycle of abuse and protects children from future abuse. By putting juvenile offenders through the programme, countless numbers of children will escape the perils of abuse at the hands of these individuals.
Current statistics show that if children are not helped in this manner, there is a distinct possibility that their behaviour will continue into adulthood, and could become pathological. When one considers that pathological paedophiles in this country each abuse between 200 and 400 children in their lifetimes, the true benefits of this preventative programme become evident.
Children learn abusive behaviour either by falling victim to abuse themselves, or from witnessing abuse or other inappropriate behaviour. Thus they emerge from being victims into offenders, and again begin a never-ending cycle of abuse. Research shows that when children have had the opportunity to process abuse they have experienced, the chances of them abusing again are diminished. This usually takes place in, but is not limited to, a therapeutic environment.
Even females, who seldom become sex offenders, tend to neglect their children emotionally and physically, and can create the opportunity for someone else to abuse their children. This programme is one of the most direct and powerful weapons in the fight to break the cycle of abuse.
Research shows that :
- adult perpetrators of child abuse are lost causes who would prefer to remain behind bars; and
- 80% of them began to abuse others when they themselves were still children.
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