Sex Offender Treatment Program
Health Connect America’s Sex Offender Treatment Program works with adolescents who have been charged with, or suspected of, sexually inappropriate behaviors. We work with the children, their families, and any extended support group that plays a significant role in the child’s life.
Services
We provide therapeutic and educational services that address: safety planning, relapse prevention, cognitive restructuring, victim empathy, and stress management. We also educate family members of perpetrators regarding safety plans, accountability measures relapse risks, consequences, and triggers that lead to re-offending. Services can last from three months to over a year.
Health Connect America caseworkers will create safety plans and monitor its effectiveness to prevent risk to other victims in their family, social and educational environments.
Random drug testing and polygraph testing are conducted to minimize risk of continued offenses.
Approaches Used
Health Connect America abides specifically by the ethical guidelines of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers and the rules of the Sex Offender Treatment Board.
Initial assessments are provided on each offender and used to help determine the risk of re-offending. We, then, develop the safety plan to minimize any risk as well as to educate the family regarding minimization of the availability of potential victims.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is then used as the core approach to challenge faulty belief systems that can lead to re-offending. Victim empathy is taught to raise the awareness to the offender of the harm that is caused to the victim.
Sex offenders are required to take monthly polygraph and alcohol and drugs screens. These tests are used to maintain accountability with the safety plans and relapse prevention plans, in general.
Relapse Prevention
Relapse prevention is designed to help the offender identify his personal triggers and cycles regarding the onset of offender thinking and behavior. Once identified, the offender develops specific behaviors for coping with these triggers and behaviors in a positive, healthy manner. Each offender’s relapse prevention plan is unique to that individual and attempts to encompass all of the risk factors involved with the potential for that offender to re-offend.
Safety Planning
Although individual acts of sexual offending is very similar in their patterns and victim impact, every offender is different and requires specific safety planning to prevent re-offending. The safety plan is tailored to the offender’s personal patterns and encompasses many facets of the relapse prevention plan.
Challenging Belief Systems
Most experts believe that an offender’s faulty belief system is most responsible for their sexual crimes. Our goal is to challenge those belief systems that objectify victims and attempts to justify the offender’s behaviors.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Thoughts create beliefs which are followed by actions, or behaviors. By changing the thought processes of the offender, we attempt to prevent unhealthy beliefs from developing.
Victim Empathy
The offender’s beliefs and attitudes are developed in such a way as to see the victims as objects. The offender is forced to look at the damage they have done to their victim(s) in order to generate a feeling of understanding. Our goal is to humanize the victims in the eyes of the offender with the hope that the offender will experience emotional empathy for their fellow human beings.
Stress Management
Stress is very often a trigger for sex offenders. Offenders utilize inappropriate coping methods to deal with this stress. Our goal is to teach offenders healthy and effective coping responses that reduce the risk of re-offending.
Alcohol & Drug Testing
Use of drugs and alcohol are considered a major precursor to offending. While mood altering substances can not be considered an excuse for offending, it is well documented that the presence of these substances are extremely common during the offense. Therefore, most adult offenders have orders preventing them from frequenting establishments whose majority source of commerce is related to alcohol. We test every month for these substances.
Polygraph Testing
Polygraphs are widely considered standard practice in the treatment of sex offenders. Polygraphs are used to determine that the offender is not in denial of the crime they have committed, that they are maintaining adherence to their safety plan and relapse prevention plan.
Staff Competency
Therapists assigned to perform these assessments are qualified sex offender treatment providers as mandated by the Tennessee Sex Offender Treatment Board and hold a master’s degree. Each sex offender therapist is supervised by a licensed therapist.
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