Last week (6-10th Sept), FCRG members Hannah Merdian and Ross Bartels attended and presented at the 14th conference of the International Association for the Treatment of Sexual Offenders (IATSO) in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Hannah gave two presentations. One was alongside Prof. Derek Perkins and centred on describing the new ‘Merdian-Perkins Pathways Model’ of Child Sexual Exploitation Material (CSEM) use. Here, Hannah discussed the numerous factors that interact to influence CSEM offending. Prof. Perkins showed how the model can be applied to a real-world case. The second talk was about findings from a study conducted by PhD student Danielle Kettleborough contrasting CSEM users with a community members on various psychological factors.
Ross also gave two presentations. In the first, Ross reported findings from two studies that explored the use of mousetracking to assess sexual interest in community males. In the second, results from an interview study aimed at identifying CSEM-related implicit theories were reported.
In addition, Hannah was voted in as a new member of IATSO board, which is great news. Overall, the IATSO 2016 conference was full of exciting and insightful talks, with the bonus of being set in a lovely city.
Looking forward to the next one in 2018 in Lithuania.