The Alcohols/Drug Scale Identifies Use in Youth

The alcohol/drug use scale has 8 questions identify significant drug/alcohol use in youth; and the angry-irritable scale has 9 items that identify feelings of anger, frustration, irritability, etc., and a high score indicates at risk for impulsive behavior (Roe-Sepowitz and Krysik, 2008). The depressed-anxious scale has 9 items and focus on depression and anxiety symptoms; and somatic complaints scale contains 6 items about bodily aches and pains and physical manifestations of anxiety which might indicate a disorder or physical illness injury (Roe-Sepowitz and Krysik, 2008). The suicide ideation scale consists of 5 questions which address suicidal thoughts, self-mutilation, and depressive symptoms; and the final scale, traumatic experiences intends to discover prior history of trauma in the youth (Roe-Sepowitz and Krysik, 2008).

Chi-square and t- tests were used to investigate differences between maltreated and non-maltreated female juvenile offenders (Roe-Sepowitz and Krysik, 2008). The results indicate that a majority of 118 female juvenile sex offenders had many environmental stressors in their childhood. The environmental stressor include poor household conditions, broken and messy families, low parental care or contact, substance and alcohol use, and severe school and psychological issues, etc. Female juvenile sex offenders who were maltreated as children were more likely to have a psychological disorder and to develop anger, irritability depression and anxiety symptoms than those that were not maltreated (Roe-Sepowitz and Krysik, 2008). The use of force or encouragement was significant in that it correlated with the age of onset of sexual abuse in the female juvenile sex offender’s prior maltreatment history (Roe-Sepowit...

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...on-repeat sex offenders in that they were more sexually abused during childhood, and committed more inappropriate acts compared to one time offenders (Dennison and Leclerc, 2011). Also, repeat sex offenders with childhood sexual abuse history did not disclose inappropriate sex acts, low parental care and supervision, or parental behavior issues than the other groups, and they were more likely to repeat offenses when they were victimized during childhood and only when parents weren’t caring or supervising them or inappropriate sex acts (Dennison and Leclerc, 2011). The study helped to explore a gap in research towards sexually abused children and adolescent sex offending behaviors. However, further research in the field needs to be done to compare the developmental risk factors associated with physical and sexually abused individuals and future sex offending behavior.