Michael C Seto

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

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 pane...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This meta-analysis examined whether theoretically and clinically relevant differences exist between male adolescents who have sexually offended against intrafamilial victims (AIV) and male adolescents who have sexually offended against extrafamilial victims (AEV). A total of 26 independent samples (8 published and 18 unpublished) that compared a to...

We examined the concordance of paraphilic interests and behaviors across 13 themes in an online sample of 1,036 men and women. Paraphilic interests were significantly and positively correlated with behaviors across all 13 themes. Associations were strongest for masochism and sadism, and weakest for pedohebephilia and frotteurism. Paraphilic interes...

Objectives: Individuals with pedophilic disorder (PD) experience personal and interpersonal difficulties and are at risk of sexually offending against children. As such, innovative and empirically validated treatments are needed. Recent studies have indicated that men who have sexually offended against children (SOC) with PD display an automatic a...

The current article aims to examine the performance of two brief, dynamic risk measures – the Brockville Risk Checklist (BRC4) and one of two versions of the Hamilton Anatomy of Risk Management [HARM‐FV and electronic HARM‐FV (eHARM‐FV)] – scored at regular clinical case conferences for forensic psychiatric patients in two different settings. The e...

While military veterans have a lower overall rate of incarceration for criminal offenses than civilians, they have a higher rate of incarceration for violent sexual offenses. Despite military veteran overrepresentation among individuals adjudicated for violent sexual offenses, little is known about their risk factors for sexual offending. This stud...

This study identified factors that predicted which of 713 clinically documented incidents of aggression—threats to kill, assault, or sexual assault—committed by 404 forensic psychiatric patients were linked to court findings of guilt. Individuals had, on average, 1.7 aggressive incidents and were found guilty of an average of 0.3 offenses against p...

SSPI-2 är en reviderad version av den ursprungliga screeningskalan för pedofila intressen (SSPI: Seto & Lalumière, 2001) och är, likt SSPI, framtagen för att bedöma pedofila intressen hos män (18 år eller äldre) som har begått minst ett sexualbrott mot ett barn (någon som är under 15 år, baserat på självrapportering eller polisanmälan). Sexualbrott...

Previous research has demonstrated that women who sell sex (women sex workers [WSWs]) consistently report high levels of posttraumatic stress symptoms. The present study explores multiple factors that may contribute to the variation in WSWs' experiences of posttraumatic stress symptoms, including workers' racial identity, experiences of discriminat...

Few studies of pedophilia or hebephilia have included questions about romantic attraction. We conducted an anonymous online survey of 306 men who self-reported as sexually attracted to children. The majority (72%) of participants reported they had fallen in love with a child in their lifetime. Participants reported greater feelings of attachment to...

A history of childhood sexual victimization (CSV) is one of the most commonly examined factors in research on male adolescent sexual offending. Although CSV has been extensively researched in relation to the onset and maintenance of adolescent sexual offending, few studies have investigated the association of CSV with domains of adolescent sexualit...

Background And Methods In this study, we surveyed 761 psychiatric hospital staff (69% women, 71% full-time, 56% nursing) regarding their exposure to trauma in the workplace; symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety; help seeking; and perceived barriers for help seeking. Results Significant proportions of staff met...

We examined the prevalence of hypersexuality in two combined Canadian adult community samples totalling 1,857 respondents (female n = 960, male n = 835, other n = 60, missing n = 2). Participants were recruited from social media to complete an online sexual behaviour survey that included two measures of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder— the Sex...

In Canada, Review Boards (RBs) determine dispositions for individuals found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD; equivalent to NGRI). These tribunals rely on expert reports that should address risk by using empirically-supported factors. However, previous research concluded few HCR-20 items were mentioned in reports subm...

Workplace factors associated with the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in inpatient psychiatric settings have received limited attention. In this study, we examined critical exposures, patient care stressors, and aspects of workplace environment that are potentially associated with PTSD symptoms in a sample of 633 clinical staff...

Objectives: Individuals with pedophilic disorder (PD) experience personal and interpersonal difficulties and are at risk of sexually offending against children. As such, innovative and empirically validated treatments are needed. Recent studies have indicated that men who have sexually offended against children (SOC) with PD display an automatic at...

Objective: Psychiatric staff are exposed to critical events (e.g., violence, physical threats) in the workplace and thus are at risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The authors examined the prevalence of PTSD symptoms among psychiatric hospital staff in Canada and the role of potentially traumatic critical events and chronic stressors (e....

Gender differences in anger and aggression are disputed in the literature. This study examined self-reported gender differences in a clinical sample of individuals referred for concerns about dysfunctional anger on measures of anger and aggression. The sample consisted of adults aged 18 years or over (N = 543; 90 [17%] women and 453 [83%] men) who...

Introduction: The Revised Screening Scale for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI-2) was developed as a screening measure for pedophilia (sexual interest in prepubescent children), but the SSPI-2 items reflect offending against both prepubescent and pubescent children, roughly corresponding to victims under age 15. Aim: We examined whether the SSPI-2 is...

Forensic patients found Not Criminally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCR) in Ontario are managed by Ontario Review Boards (ORB) that render and review annual dispositions. Similar to other major life decisions, ORB hearings can adversely impact forensic patients because they are stressful and decisions can greatly limit freedoms. Very...

• Violence in the workplace is ubiquitous, esp. in health care settings like hospitals and psychiatric institutions. • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur after exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury or sexual violation. • PTSD in health care workers can lead to compassion fatigue, lower healthcare quality, and lost work...

We examined the associations between childhood sexual abuse (CSA), childhood physical abuse (CPA), sexual domain variables, antisocial tendencies, and sexually coercive behaviour in a non-forensic sample of 173 heterosexual men. CSA was associated with paraphilic interests and experiences, a more extensive sexual life history, and early antisocial...

This study provides the first examination of the Childhood and Adolescent Taxon Scale – Self-report (CATS-SR) proxy measure of the persistent antisocial behavior dimension of psychopathy, based on childhood and adolescent history, in a European context and with female youth. The CATS-SR is evaluated in a sample of 1,134 male and female youth recrui...

Purpose To quantify the demand for forensic psychiatric services in Ontario over the past 25 years and investigate whether the sociodemographic, clinical and offense-based characteristics of forensic patients have changed over time. Methods We investigated all forensic admissions from 1987 to 2012 resulting in a disposition of Not Criminally Respo...

The present study examines the utility of three self-report measures of psychopathic traits in predicting recidivism among a sample of incarcerated male juvenile offenders. Participants (N=214, M=16.40 years, SD=1.29 years) from seven Portuguese juvenile detention centers were followed and prospectively classified as recidivists versus non-recidivi...

From an evolutionary perspective, incestuous behavior is puzzling. The goal of this study was to assess the tenability of the Westermarck hypothesis (1891,1921) – that people who live in close physical proximity with one another during childhood will develop a sexual indifference or aversion toward one another – and the mediating role of disgust as...

Letter to Editor, Archives of Sexual Behavior, responding to Guest Editorial by Herbenick et al. regarding sexual harassment in the sexuality research field

Seclusion is used in psychiatric care to protect patients and staff or to manage aggression but may have adverse effects. The ability to identify at-risk patients could help reduce seclusion. This study tested the Risk of Administrative Segregation Tool’s (RAST) ability to predict any seclusions among 229 male forensic inpatients followed for up to...

Men, whether gynephilic or androphilic, show both early and late attention toward adults and not toward children. We examined early and late visual attention to sexually mature versus immature stimuli in four groups of heterosexual men: sexual offenders against children (SOAC = 18), sexual offenders against adults (SOAA = 16), nonsexual offenders (...

Although prior research suggests associations between parental characteristics and later sexual offending in offspring, possible links between early pregnancy-related factors and sexual offending remain unclear. Early risk markers unique to sexual offending, however, may be more prominent among sexual offenders with atypical sexual interests, such...

There have been few evaluations of substance use interventions for forensic psychiatric patients. In this study, we evaluated a manualized substance use treatment for forensic inpatients by comparing 35 treatment completers (who attended 75% or more of their sessions) and 30 non-completers (less than 75%) on self-report and urinalysis measures. The...

The biological costs of inbreeding are expected to have shaped human incest aversion. These costs depend on biological sex, relatedness, and age. Whereas previous studies have focused on investigating how these factors modulate incest aversion in siblings and cousins—family members of the same generation—here we examined relatives of different gene...

The biological costs of inbreeding are expected to have shaped human incest aversion. These costs depend on biological sex, relatedness, and age. Whereas previous studies have focused on investigating how these factors modulate incest aversion in siblings and cousins—family members of the same generation— we examined relatives of different generati...

Using data from the National Trajectory Project, we compared 50 individuals found Not Criminally Responsible on account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD) for sexual offences with 50 age- and gender-matched individuals found NCRMD for nonsexually violent offences. We also described the concurrent offenses, the symptoms at the time of the offense and the ch...

In 2014, the Canadian government amended the Criminal Code, allowing courts to designate some individuals found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder (NCRMD) as high-risk accused (HRA). As a result, individuals found HRA face significant new restrictions for transitioning through the forensic system. This study examined the relev...

We examined the predictive validity of individual, service, and neighborhood factors for aggression by 1,491 forensic clients found Not Criminally Responsible on account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD), under the jurisdiction of a Review Board, and thus subject to supervision conditions. Younger patient age and personality disorder diagnosis were associ...

Victim choice polymorphism refers to victim inconsistency in a series of offenses by the same perpetrator, such as in the domains of victim age, victim gender, and victim-offender relationship. Past studies have found that victim age polymorphic offenders have higher rates of sexual recidivism than offenders against adults only and offenders agains...