Les adolescents transgresseurs sexuels: De la violence de l'interprétation au risque de la stigmatisation. Évaluation et traitement

Adolescence as a psychopathological problematic is increasingly described in scientific literature, especially in psychology or education journals and books. Attention is now focusing on adolescents with multiple problems or on prepubescent children who seem to be psychosocially handicapped and/or potential (physical or sexual) aggressors. The most marginalized of these are those that sexually abuse younger children. They appear to some as 'sexual abusers' at the same level as adult sexual delinquents. Following a very linear reasoning of cause to effect, some professionals believe that all minors perpetuating sexual abuses risk becoming adult abusers and that they must be re-educated in the most efficient way possible. Thus, and at the risk of radicalisation and an abusive interpretative and systematic stigmatisation, clinicians in Anglo-Saxon countries are increasingly using treatment programmes adapted to this problematic. To avoid this, a fine and rigorous clinical evaluation should be able to orient decision-taking in a better adapted manner. The personality profiles of sexually transgressing adolescents must undergo a multidisciplinary diagnostic evaluation and the circumstances leading to their taking action - the characteristics of their victim(s) and the nature of their offence(s) - lead to a better understanding of this problematic. The therapeutic orientation of these adolescent 'sexual transgressors' should be developed from a complete and specific medico-psychosocial examination carried out in an institutional setting based on solid ethical and judicial premises. © 2001 Éditions scientifiques et médicales Elsevier SAS.SCOPUS: re.j