How strong is the empirical evidence for the hypothesis of a victim-to-victimizer-cycle? A meta-analysis of studies exploring socio-biographical determinants of pedosexual delinquency.

This paper presents some results of a meta-analysis of studies researching the so-called "pedosexual victim-to-victimizer transition". This transition relates to persons having been victims of pedosexual abuse and becoming adult pedosexual offenders (child molesters). Our meta-analysis is based on a total of 26 studies investigating the victim-to-victimizer transition with the data of 3781 observed and questioned persons. The results verify the transition hypothesis impressively. In addition, a large amount of the effect variance can be statistically explained by estimating multi-level models with various moderator variables, although each single moderator variable has only a small influence on the size of the transition effect. A publication bias potentially that is distorting the results of meta-analyses could not be detected.