Frank C. DiCataldo: The Perversion of Youth: Controversies in the Assessment and Treatment of Juvenile Sex Offenders

Excerpt

In The Perversion of Youth, Frank C. DiCataldo describes the faults in our current legal responses to adolescents viewed as juvenile sex offenders. He further discusses and illustrates that the central dilemma rests not with these youth but rather with society’s unsupportable assumptions regarding the true, not so stereotypical identity of these offenders. DiCataldo presents an analysis differentiating between qualities of sexual deviance in order to delineate the distinctive consequence of either juvenile court or adult court, the label “juvenile sex offender,” or simply being referred to as a “juvenile delinquent.” He also presents an examination concerning the “area of adolescent sexual misbehaviors between the two extremes of major sexual assault and minor sexual assault” (DiCataldo 2009, p. 18). He further discusses how these distinct categories are constructed and maintained, along with questioning whether empirical evidence exists to support the conceptualization of adolescent sex offenders in our society. In conjunction, he questions the availability of inclusive alternatives for the treatment of juvenile sex offenders that are less potentially harmful, yet simultaneously meet the goal of protecting the community (DiCataldo 2009, p. 2). One of DiCataldo’s significant questions is why juvenile sex offenders have been separated out of the heterogeneous mixture of “troubling or troublesome children” served by protective systems such as the child welfare, mental health, or the juvenile justice system. In writing The Perversion of Youth, DiCataldo sought to expunge the homogeneous view that all juvenile sex offenders are sexual deviants only fit for strict judgment and harsh incarceration. …