Identifying Cognitive Distortions from Confessions: A Comparison of Child and Adult Sexual Offenders

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-460-0_26How to use a DOI?

Keywords

cognitive distortions; cognitive dissonance; child sexual abuse; adult sexual assault; transgression severity; double transgression

Abstract

This study explores the role of cognitive distortions in sexual offending, focusing on how offenders use distorted thinking to justify their actions and reduce cognitive dissonance. Cognitive distortions are maladaptive attitudes and beliefs, that are crucial in terms of understanding the psychological mechanisms that enable offenders to minimize harm, externalize blame, and rationalize their behavior. This paper examines how the severity of a transgression influence the complexity of cognitive distortions needed for the offender when rationalizing rather than just the pedophilic and non-pedophilic factor, using a comparative analysis of three cases: Chongqing (a high-severity child sexual abuse involving penetration and child prostitution), Neighbor (a low-severity child sexual abuse involving non-penetrative acts), and Brock Turner (a high-severity adult sexual assault involving penetration of an unconscious victim). Other papers have suggested that child sexual offenders tend to employ more enduring cognitive distortions rooted in their moral disengagement and problematic thinking styles, such as perceiving children as sexual beings or minimizing harm caused by abuse. In contrast, ordinary rape offenders rely more on situational blame attributions, such as alcohol intoxication or social norms. For example, the Brock Turner case highlights how externalizing responsibility to party culture and framing the assault as a “drunken mistake” can mitigate guilt and normalize harmful behavior. This comparative analysis of three different cases reveals that transgression severity rather than simply CSA influences the level of cognitive dissonance, necessitating layered rationalizations to reconcile actions with self-concept.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ching Wun Vong
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/08/31
TI  - Identifying Cognitive Distortions from Confessions: A Comparison of Child and Adult Sexual Offenders
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 6th International Conference on Mental Health, Education and Human Development (MHEHD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 225
EP  - 235
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-460-0_26
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-460-0_26
ID  - Vong2025
ER  -