One in three women will be physically molested, says expert

One in four female children and almost one in three adult women will be physically molested in some way during their lives, a leading authority on the subject said last night.

Prof William Marshall told an audience at University College Dublin that the statistics were "remarkably similar" in all the countries where studies had been done, from the US to New Zealand. The proportion of boys molested was between one in six and one in eight, he added.

Prof Marshall, who is attached to Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, also said the proper treatment of paedophiles and other sex offenders could reduce the likelihood of reoffending by more than two-thirds.

Without psychological treatment, 35 per cent of offenders would commit new sex crimes upon release from prison. With adequate treatment, he said, the figure fell to under 10 per cent.

In Dublin to help launch a special edition of the Irish Journal of Psychology, entitled "Understanding, assessing and treating juveniles and adult sex offenders", Prof Marshall said there was a "prevailing myth" in psychology that paedophiles were untreatable.

"That's just flat-out not true and I don't know where the idea came from. Of course, there are some people who will reoffend no matter what. But it's a behavioural problem . . ." One of a small number of experts in the US and Canada who have pioneered a comprehensive treatment programme for offenders, he said the treatment not only reduced the number of victims of abuse, but could also dramatically reduce the cost of dealing with the problem.

"In Canada, the cost of processing each offender through the police, courts and prison systems is about $200,000, and it's a very similar figure in the US and UK. The cost of a comprehensive treatment programme for 100 offenders is $600,000. So I tell the government: every time you treat 100 offenders, you're saving $4 million. And only 10 of those 100 will reoffend."

Prof Marshall said offenders were "not happy people. They're dysfunctional in some way and it's often because of experiences in their own childhood." But he cautioned against the belief that abused people were the most likely to become abusers: "If that were true, the majority of abusers would be women. And anyway, by far the majority of those abused do not become offenders."

Prof Ciaran Benson, head of UCD's psychology department, said treating offenders was "one step towards making Ireland a safer place for children" and his department was committed to supporting research on such treatment.