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Self help modules:

Taking responsibility of your sexual behaviour

This module aims to help you explore and gain understanding of:

  • Immediate changes to help you take control of your behaviour
  • How you may have used justifications to allow your problematic behaviour(s) to continue

Module chapters

Making changes
Change can be hard and take time. It is important that you have strategies to manage your behaviour in the short term whilst you work through the modules
Minimising or excusing behaviour
If you do something that you know is wrong and does not fit with your values and beliefs such as harming a child, then people will often use excuses, justifications or minimise the impact of their behaviour

Making changes

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Change can be hard and take time. It is important that you have strategies to manage your behaviour in the short term whilst you work through the modules. Some practical things that can help you to do this are:

  • changing your route to or from places if you know it is likely to bring you into contact with children coming out of school;
  • moving your computer to a high traffic more public area of the home to make it less likely that you will access anything inappropriate;
  • changing your employment if your current job brings you into contact with children;
  • don’t take your dog for a walk at school drop off or pick up times.
  • use techniques to manage any inappropriate sexual thoughts, such as distracting yourself;
  • try and spend more time with others, giving you less time to spend on inappropriate thoughts;
  • put things in place to avoid having unsupervised contact with children if you are concerned about your thoughts and behaviour;
  • contact a support person if you are finding it difficult to manage your thoughts, or call the Stop it Now helpline
  • having security software installed on your laptop so that you cannot access pornography;
  • set your password to be a reminder of something you would lose if you offend
  • only use computer when others are in the room or in public places where you would not access the material;
  • only use the computer for specific purposes such as internet banking, do not allow yourself to ‘browse’;
  • unplug your wireless router at night so you have to make more effort to go on-line and therefore have more time to think about and stop what you are doing.

Exercise:

Make a list of three things you can do to immediately reduce your risk of sexual offending. For example, someone concerned about online and offline offending who engages in part-time work and enjoys participating in swimming might make the following changes:

  1. Install security software on computer
  2. Leave work later to avoid coinciding with school run
  3. Change to adults-only swimming evenings

Minimising or excusing behaviour

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If you do something that you know is wrong and does not fit with your values and beliefs such as harming a child, then people will often use excuses, justifications or minimise the impact of their behaviour. This makes it easier to continue the behaviour.

Here are some examples. As you read through the list, make a note of any that sound familiar to you.

  • “It was only once in a while.”
  • “I needed to get my needs met somewhere.”
  • “They are very mature for their age.”
  • “It was just looking.”
  • “At least I’m not as bad as so-and-so.”
  • “My situation is different from everybody else’s.”
  • “Just this one last time and then stop.”
  • “Just this second time more and then stop.”
  • “Well, I’ve already started so what the hell.”
  • “My wife (husband or partner) isn’t responsive to my sexual needs.”
  • “It doesn’t hurt anyone because…”
  • “It’s just my way of relaxing.”
  • “I only do this in private so it isn’t affecting anybody.”
  • “They are already sexually experienced.”
  • “They are not like other children their age.”
  • “They were flirting.”
  • “I’m helping them explore their sexuality.”

If you identify with the statements in the list then denial could be helping you to keep doing a behaviour (whether this is indulging in sexual fantasies about children, masturbating to sexual thoughts of children, or sexually touching a child) that you know is harmful. It is important that you challenge these thoughts if you recognise them.

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