Michael C. Seto

University of Ottawa · Institute of Mental Health Research (IMHR)

Pedophilia is defined as a sexual interest in prepubescent children. It is empirically linked with sexual offending against children: Child pornography offenders and sex offenders with child victims are more likely to be pedophiles based on self-report or objective measures of sexual interests. At the same time, some pedophiles have not had any kno...

We tested special and general explanations of male adolescent sexual offending by conducting a meta-analysis of 59 independent studies comparing male adolescent sex offenders (n = 3,855) with male adolescent non-sex offenders (n = 13,393) on theoretically derived variables reflecting general delinquency risk factors (antisocial tendencies), childho...

There is much concern about the likelihood that online sexual offenders (particularly online child pornography offenders) have either committed or will commit offline sexual offenses involving contact with a victim. This study addresses this question in two meta-analyses: the first examined the contact sexual offense histories of online offenders,...

This chapter describes a motivation-facilitation model to understanding the psychology of adult male sexual offending. Motivations are factors that create the desire or intent to sexually offend, while facilitators are factors that increase the likelihood that a sexual offense will occur, given the presence of a motivator as well. We discuss releva...

In this article, I return to the idea that pedophilia, a sexual interest in prepubescent children, can be considered a sexual orientation for age, in conjunction with the much more widely acknowledged and discussed sexual orientation for gender. Here, I broaden the scope to consider other chronophilias, referring to paraphilias for age/maturity cat...

Sibling sexual behaviour, despite historical and cross-cultural incest taboos and biologically driven incest avoidance, poses a persistent problem. We tested factors theorized to be associated with sibling incest in a cross-sectional online survey of 1,863 respondents with siblings mainly from North America and Germany. We found that 13% of partici...

Stigma-related stress may contribute to increased risk in individuals who are sexually attracted to children. Further, certain subgroups of people attracted to children may be more stigmatized than others; this has important implications for prevention programs. We conducted a vignette study to examine whether public stigma toward people attracted...

While a few studies have investigated the sexual fantasies of minor attracted persons (MAPs), none, to the best of our knowledge, have focused on the specific types of content of these fantasies. In this qualitative study, we conducted content and thematic analyses of the sexual fantasies reported by an international sample of 112 MAPs recruited on...

Given low community base rates and associated stigma, researchers use online forums to recruit child attracted persons (CAPs) for studies. While convenient, researchers should consider how these studies are being conducted and which forums are being selected for recruitment. Researchers have relied on several forums that tend to promote norms and v...

This study examined the characteristics and healthcare service trajectories of 98 men and 29 women found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) for a homicide in Canada using data from Criminal Review Boards and police reports, as well as health administrative databases for a subsample in Québec ( n = 51). Three quarters o...

The Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT) is a seven-item actuarial risk assessment tool that is used to estimate the potential for sexual recidivism among men convicted of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM; legally referred to as child pornography) offenses. In the current study, we examined the convergent and divergent validity of t...

The accurate assessment of pedophilic sexual interests is crucial for the treatment and management of individuals who have sexually offended children. This study aimed to validate the Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) in a Portuguese sample of 170 men convicted of sexual offenses against children, 104 serving sentences in th...

We conducted three studies to examine the factor structure and measurement invariance of the Paraphilia Scale, a measure of paraphilic interests used in multiple studies. In the first study, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) testing different a priori models with a community sample of 1,040 adults previously reported by Seto et al....

In this study, we sought to capture implicit attitudes toward violence by administering response latency measures. We then examined their associations with explicit (e.g., assessed with self‐report) attitudes toward violence and self‐reported violent behavior in a combined sample of males from a Canadian university and males from the general commun...

Objective: Review current research on risk assessment tools with individuals convicted of child sexual exploitation materials (CSEM) offenses with recommendations for use in forensic, correctional, and legal settings. Hypotheses: Multiple tools would be defensible to use with individuals convicted of CSEM offenses. Methods: We discuss a minimum...

There is demand for valid risk assessment of individuals with child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) offenses. We compared the predictive performance of the Risk Matrix 2000/Sex (RM2000/S) and the Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT) among 365 men convicted of CSEM offenses. In fixed 5-year follow-up analyses, the CPORT (area under the c...

Recent research suggests that empirically validated risk factors for persons found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) are rarely mentioned by clinicians in reports for Review Boards in Canada. This study aims to better understand this observation by examining the styles of clinical reports (i.e., types of report accord...

Suicide is a leading cause of death within correctional institutions (Katsman & Jeglic, 2019), with men convicted of a sexual offence over-represented among those who have attempted suicide (Ramesh, 2018). To date, only a single study that we are aware of (Jeglic et al., 2013) has examined the relationship between risk level on the Static-99R and a...

Using archival data from the National Trajectory Project-Community (NTP-C), the psychosocio-criminological characteristics of 1,468 individuals found NCRMD were examined.

In this article, we describe a qualitative study in which we examined perceived effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on help-seeking individuals who access child sexual abuse material (CSAM, legally referred to as child pornography). The study recruited 18 participants who were part of the internet based Prevent It Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) clin...

Background Sexual stimuli, such as sexual videos, images, and narratives describing sexual interactions, are one of many tools used by clinicians and researchers to elicit or augment sexual response. Given the wide variability within sexual stimuli and their effects on sexual response, we provide guidance on when and how to use sexual stimuli, sele...

Dans cette FAQ, nous apportons des réponses aux questions que nous avons reçues concernant le CPORT et le CASIC. Les questions sont regroupées par thèmes. Les questions à plusieurs parties ont été séparées, celles qui comportaient des éléments d'identification ont été rendues anonymes et nous avons parfois édité le texte pour en faciliter la lectur...

Guide de cotation pour l’Instrument d’évaluation du risque de récidive des auteurs d’infractions en matière de pornographie juvénile (Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool − CPORT) et des facteurs associés au dévoilement de l’intérêt sexuel envers les enfants (Correlates ofAdmission of Sexual Interest in Children − CASIC) - Version 2, traduction fra...

Although mental illness has a demonstrated link with violence, the prevalence of targeted (planned and goal‐directed) violence perpetrated by individuals with mental illness and its association with psychiatric symptoms is relatively unexplored. File information was compared for all 293 individuals found not criminally responsible due to mental ill...

Visual attention plays a central role in current theories of sexual information processing and is key to informing the use of eye-tracking techniques in the study of typical sexual preferences and more recently, in the study of atypical preferences such as pedophilia (prepubescent children) and hebephilia (pubescent children). The aim of this theor...

Introduction There is growing evidence about the prevalence of sending, receiving, or resharing nude images by youth (sexting). Less is known about the demographic, technology use, and social context correlates of sexting. Using logistic regression, we looked at predictors of sexting behaviors in minors. Methods Participants were a market panel sa...

Indigenous people are vastly over-represented among people incarcerated in Canada. We collected extensive clinical information and outcome data from RB files and obtained lifetime criminal records for 1800 individuals found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD) in BC (n = 222), ON (n = 484), and QC (n = 1094). Indigenous...

The Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) is a five-item measure that assesses for pedohebephilia (sexual attraction to prepubescent and pubescent children) based on child victim characteristics. We aimed to replicate findings by Seto, Sandler et al. (2017) by examining the predictive validity of the SSPI-2 in an independent sam...

The current study examined the extent to which the temporal order of sexual offending may be risk-relevant for men with Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSEM; also referred to as child pornography) offences. We categorized 85 men who had committed two distinct sexual offences (CSEM or contact sexual offence) into three groups: (1) 47% (n = 40) f...

Background The verdict of Not Criminally Responsible on account of a Mental Disorder (NCRMD) is increasingly used to access specialized mental health services in Canada and elsewhere. This situation highlights the importance of ensuring timely access to services in the community to prevent violence and justice involvement. The objective of the pres...

Social support for child-attracted persons (CAPs) may be important for increasing well-being, thereby reducing the risk of committing child sexual abuse. Unfortunately, in-person social support may be difficult to obtain because of stigma. CAPs may instead turn to online forums for people who are sexually attracted to children. The present study lo...

In this article, we explore which configurations of risk and protective factors explain recovery in a sample of 60 forensic psychiatric patients 6 months after they have been discharged from a psychiatric institution. In line with the recovery-oriented paradigm that emerged in psychiatry, we focus on the role dynamic risk factors and dynamic protec...

Despite a multitude of theoretical views, it is still unclear how individuals develop and sustain paraphilic interests (e.g., sexual attraction to children, interest in non-consensual violence). It is also not clear from these views why many paraphilic interests, and especially many paraphilias and paraphilic disorders, are much more common in men...

Relative viewing times (VTs)—time required to view and evaluate sexually salient images—discriminate individuals with a sexual interest in children, as indirectly indexed by their history of sexual offending against children, from those without such history. In an online sample of 652 fathers, we measured VTs and sexual attraction ratings to child...

Parents and other adult caregivers of biologically or sociolegally related children (hereafter, “parents”) can play an important role in the online behavior of children in their care. In this study, we examined parental correlates of three outcomes— talking to their child about image sharing (66% yes); expecting their child had shared sexually expl...

Reactive aggression in response to perceived threat or provocation is part of humans' adaptive behavioral repertoire. However, high levels of aggression can lead to the violation of social and legal norms. Understanding brain function in individuals with high levels of aggression as they process anger- and aggression-eliciting stimuli is critical f...

Phallometric assessment is used to assess men’s sexual interest in children and to assist in risk assessment and treatment planning. A common response pattern, especially when the assessment is conducted in a forensic context, is an indiscriminate pattern of penile responses: No sexual stimulus seems to produce a substantially higher response than...

Poster presented at July 2022 International Academy of Sex Research conference

Accessing child sexual exploitation material (CSEM; child pornography in legal statutes) can indicate sexual interest in children. It logically follows then that the age and gender of the depicted children may reflect specific interests in those age/gender groups, and if so, may correspond to age and genders of any known contact offending victims....

Background. Social support for child-attracted persons (CAPs) may be important for increasing well-being and thereby reducing risk of committing child sexual abuse. Unfortunately, in-person social support may be difficult to obtain because of stigma (Imhoff, 2015; Jahnke, 2018). CAPs may instead turn to online forums for people who are sexually att...

Critical workplace events (e.g., assaults), chronic stressors, burnout, and work conditions all affect nurse well‐being. The present study investigated associations among these sources of stress and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in psychiatric nurses, hypothesizing that burnout would mediate the paths between workplace stressors and...

Guidelines for the pharmacological treatment of paraphilic disorders have historically been based on data from forensic settings and on risk levels for sexual crime. However, emerging treatment options are being evaluated for individuals experiencing distress because of their sexual urges and preferences, targeting both paraphilic disorders such as...

Invited Commentary on DSM-5-TR text for Pedophilic Disorder. To appear in journal Archives of Sexual Behavior

Background The public often perceives the insanity defense as a “get out of jail free card”. Conversely, several studies demonstrate the substantial control imposed upon these defendants. This study compares Review Boards decisions regarding people found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) to criminal courts decisions r...

Background: While reactive aggression (in response to a perceived threat or provocation) is part of humans' adaptive behavioral repertoire, it can violate social and legal norms. Understanding brain function in individuals with high levels of reactive aggression as they process anger- and aggression-eliciting stimuli is critical for refining interv...

There have been few studies examining the impact of sentencing decisions on recidivism in individuals who commit sexual offences, which is important as this population may face more stigma, and different conditions in the community, than individuals who have committed non-sexual offences. The present study examined how sentence type and custodial s...

Background Hypersexuality has been posited as the central defining feature of Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder, and although the acceptance and inclusion of this construct in psychiatric nosologies provides some legitimacy, concerns surrounding terminology, assessment, and diagnosis remain. Aim The present study was an independent psychometric...

The effects of pornography are hotly debated in the scientific literature, especially its potentially negative influence on sexual offending. While studies do not support direct effects of pornography use on sexual offending, pornography is hypothesized to have a catalytic effect among men who are predisposed to sexually offend due to the presence...

Legally mandated treatment is common in the criminal justice system, for example, for anger management, substance misuse, and intimate partner violence. Past studies have compared voluntary and legally mandated treatment participants but have not distinguished a third, in-between group that is formally pressured to participate in treatment, but not...

We applied offending trajectory analyses to 387 men adjudicated for child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) offenses. After an average of 20 years, we found two trajectories of sexual offending and violent offending: one that peaked in late adolescence and was associated with higher rates of crimes, and one that peaked in the 30s and was associat...

In an online survey of 274 self-identified child-attracted persons (CAPs), we examined the attraction ratings given to sets of 9 physical and 12 psychological features of children, and asked CAPs to identify additional features that were not listed. We also examined the relationships between these attraction ratings and attraction to children dimen...

Aim To explore psychiatric nurses’ and other psychiatric workers’ understanding of trauma in the context of their relationships with the people they care for, and the effects on their mental health. Background Workplace violence in psychiatric hospitals can lead to mental health problems, including posttraumatic stress disorder. Professional relat...

Introduction Psychiatric nurses are at risk of workplace violence and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There is limited understanding of pre-trauma and post-trauma risk factors. Aim To review factors associated with workplace PTSD in psychiatric nurses. Method We searched quantitative and qualitative studies from 1980-2019 in 23 databases pl...

In this chapter, I provide a brief overview of what we know scientifically about online sexual offending, focusing on prevalence, perpetrator characteristics, recidivism rates, and risk assessment. For perpetrator characteristics, I focus on factors that distinguish online from contact offenders, and for risk assessment, I describe the development...

Il y a eu d’importantes avancées dans trois domaines de la psychologie médicolégale — le traitement en justice de personnes atteintes de troubles mentaux ayant commis des actes criminels, l’évaluation du risque et les théories concernant les différences individuelles sur le plan des comportements criminels — dont a traité Quinsey (Canadian Psycholo...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among psychiatric workers is related to workplace violence and work-specific stress. We used quantitative and qualitative approaches to survey PTSD symptoms, critical events, chronic exposures, and occupational stress in 84 psychiatric workers. All but three had directly experienced critical events, over half ex...

This study examined whether men who committed undetected sexual offenses would show more evidence of sexual interest in children than their detected counterparts. It also considered whether denial or minimization of offending history explained observed differences between undetected and detected men. In an archival database of 2,236 men, 96 were un...

The consequences of workplace trauma among mental health staff can include physical injuries and somatic disorders, professional exhaustion and burnout, depression, anxiety, and other occupational stress injuries. For the well‐being of staff and patients, there is a need to understand mental health workers’ experiences following exposure to workpla...

Corrigendum to "The Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) May Be a Measure of Pedohebephilia"

The knowledge–practice gap remains a challenge in many fields. Health research has shown that professional networks influence various aspects of patient care, including diffusion of innovative practices. In the current study, we examined the potential utility of professional networks to spread the use of violence-risk-assessment tools in forensic p...

The knowledge-practice gap remains a challenge in many fields. Health research has shown that professional networks influence various aspects of patient care, including diffusion of innovative practices. In the current study, we examined the potential utility of professional networks to spread the use of violence-risk-assessment tools in forensic p...