When Delmas Wood got a call asking for help from a friend whose adopted son was exhibiting signs of disturbing sexual behavior, he identified a hole in the system he works for.  Wood, an Area Director for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, was aware of options for serious juvenile sex offenders but none for children or adolescents at the other end of the spectrum, with early signs of a problem.  But now the state is making an effort to bridge that gap.

Working together with the National Center on Sexual Behavior of Youth (NCSBY), the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services is making an effort to better understand juvenile sex offenders and how to treat and assess them.  Thanks to NCSBY, the state is well on its way to revamping its protocols to better serve this population of offenders.

"I don't think a lot of us are familiar with the research in this area," Wood said.  "I thought we had real gaps in dealing with juvenile sex offenders.  It became glaring when I reviewed our residential placements."

According to Wood, when he took a hard look at the juveniles who had been in residential placement for a year or longer, he discovered that most of them were juvenile sex offenders who had typically offended against someone they were living with, making it more difficult to send them back home.

"There's a strong tendency--an understandable tendency--to want to play it very safe with these kids, remove them from the home, put them in residential placement and then be very, very careful about letting them return to the community," said Wood.

But, still, he had a hunch that sending these kids to residential facilities wasn't necessarily the best way to treat them.  His suspicion was confirmed when he discovered NCSBY's website, loaded with accurate and current information about adolescent sex offenders.

"It was like a research based affirmation of my gut feelings," Wood said.  "Most of these kids were very treatable in the community."

Turning to NCSBY for the Facts

As it turns out, the majority of adolescent sex offenders can remain safely in the community during treatment and do not need to be placed in residential homes, according to NCSBY.  In addition, they respond better to short, less intense, out patient treatment sessions, NCBSY says. 

Realizing that the information circulating in Maryland about juvenile sex offenders was sparse and outdated, Wood contacted Barbara Bonner, a Professor of Pediatrics with the University of Oklahoma-based NCSBY.  He arranged for her to conduct a training in Maryland for various juvenile justice professionals and clinicians.

Helping to educate state officials, like those in Maryland, about juvenile sex offenders is NCSBY's mission, according to Bonner.  Since the training and technical assistance center was developed in 2000 by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Center on Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Bonner has given many presentations in different states about how to assess and effectively treat this adolescent sex offender population.

"[We] attempt to shift practices to more appropriate interventions," said Bonner, noting that a lot of the information and ideas that are out there about adolescent sex offenders are outdated or incorrect.  "[Many states] simply have not updated the basic information about this population and that's what we're hoping to do."

According to Bonner, there are several common misconceptions about adolescent sex offenders that NCSBY strives to change.  For one, people typically believe that mostly adolescent males commit sex offenses.  According to NCSBY, however, females account for seven percent of juvenile arrests for sex offenses, making it an issue for both sexes.

Also, it is widely believed that juveniles sex offender high recidivism rates, like adult offenders do, Bonner said.  But, in reality, only between five and 14 percent of juvenile sex offenders re-offend, NCSBY estimates, as compared to nearly 40 percent of adults, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

This tendency to equate adolescent sex offenders with adults is common, according to Wood, who belongs to a task force in Maryland, which is focused on improving services for juvenile sex offenders and was created after Bonner's visit. 

"I think there's a carry-over in our minds from the adult system where we know that, [with] pedophiles [and] serious adult sex offenders, their likelihood of being successfully treated is not that high," Wood said. 

The mission of this new task force is to develop procedures that are specific to juvenile sex offenders and are based on research about the best way to assess, supervise and treat them.  Bonner and NCSBY's expertise is integral to this process. 

Making Changes in Maryland

With NCSBY's guidance, the task force has already completed standards regarding supervision, but the "most critical" policies concerning assessment and treatment will be hammered out by the end of the summer, Wood anticipates.  With these in place, the state will be able to redirect the resources it spends on this group of offenders.

"We spend a lot of money on these kids [already] because they're going to residential treatment centers and spending a year or two years," Wood said.  "We're talking well over a hundred thousand dollars a year for these placements."

According to Wood, re-channeling funds towards the types of supervision, assessment and treatment that these kids really need, will be more effective for both the state, in terms of cost expenditures, and the juveniles, as far as their rehabilitation.

"As we become more educated, we can tailor our [spending] in a more intentional way to get things that are really going to be helpful for us," Wood said.

Aside from helping the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services to develop programs and tweak existing ones to better serve adolescent sex offenders, NCSBY will also help to put various state agencies on the same page about how to handle these kids.

"One of the goals of what we're doing is to have all the different parts of the system across the state speak in the same language about these kids [and] look at these kids through the same lens," Wood said.  "We're creating a network--now we're talking to each other."

As the conversations continue between the various agencies, Bonner and NCSBY will act as a consultant to them, helping them to create effective policies to ensure that juvenile sex offenders receive the help they need to prevent them from carrying this problem with them into adulthood.

"There's just very little for kids like this [right now]," Wood said.  "I think [NCSBY] is critical to us.  [It's] someone with a lot of expertise and credibility to lean on."

Resources:

To learn more about NCSBY, to www.ncsby.org or call (405) 271-8858

To contact Wood, call (301) 279-1753 ext. 342