Can the Abel Assessment tell if you're a potential child-molester?
D. Gene G. Abel, one of America’s foremost researchers on child molestation, has cultivated an aura of eccentric brilliance. His hair, a tangle of white curls, forks into ample sideburns. He favors loud ties, suspenders, and frumpy little one-liners. “You know,” he said recently, sitting in his Atlanta office, “I’m much more handsome than I appear.”
At 76, Abel has devoted the majority of his psychiatric career to the minds of those whom many consider the least redeemable. He has interviewed thousands of child molesters and run federally funded research projects on how to identify them. He has taught at Columbia and Emory Universities, authored two books and more than 100 articles in scientific journals on child molestation, and testified before the United States Sentencing Commission on the subject of child pornography. But he is best known for the Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest, a test he has refined over the last two decades. When people are accused of sexually abusing children, this computerized test can help to decide their fates—in decisions about probation and parole, in custody battles, and even in criminal trials.
Mental health professionals often spend hours interviewing convicted and alleged child molesters and other sex offenders, but they also rely on measurement tools to gather psychological information that a patient might not want to share: Does he have an innate attraction to children? Is it an exclusive attraction or is he also attracted to adults? Does he have other problematic sexual interests that must also be addressed in therapy?
