Prof. Benoit Leclerc1, A/Prof Jesse Cale, Dr Tyson Whitten, Dr Francisco Perales, Dr Dustin O’Shannessy
1Griffith Youth Forensic Service (Griffith University), Mount Gravatt, Australia
Biography:
Dr Benoit Leclerc has been working in the field of sexual offenders since 1999. In a maximum-security psychiatric institution, he was involved in sexual offenders’ treatment programs where he was responsible for conducting risk and phallometric (i.e., sexual deviance) assessments of adolescent and adult sexual offenders. In research, he led several research projects conducting interviews with individuals who committed sexual offences and published extensively in the area. He is an editorial board member of the journal, Sexual Abuse, published by the Association for Treatment of Sexual Abusers in the USA. He is also Director of GYFS (Griffith Youth Forensic Service).
There is currently limited empirical evidence to suggest that specialized services for youth who commit sexual offences are more effective in reducing sexual recidivism than general interventions. This study presents a quasi-experimental evaluation of a specialized treatment program for youth in Australia who have committed sexual offences (i.e. Griffith Youth Forensic Service). Using administrative data from Queensland’s Department of Youth Justice and Victim Support, the study examined 1489 youth processed for sexual offences between 2010 and 2024, 286 of whom were referred to and received treatment at a specialized service in the state. Covariate-adjusted and propensity score-based methods, along with Cox regression analysis, were used to assess treatment effects on violent, non-violent, and sexual reoffending for 144 youth who received treatment from the service and 303 who did not. Results indicate that treatment reduced overall recidivism by 34%–44%, with the greatest reductions observed in sexual reoffending (78%–90%). These findings provide evidence that the GYFS treatment program is an effective tertiary prevention approach for reducing sexual reoffending. The nature and characteristics of the treatment program are discussed.