Contemporary Risk Assessment Tools: Should We Use Them for Sexually Abusive Children Ages 4 to 12 Years?

Empirical findings are reported on an age group of sexually abusive youth (4-12 years) not commonly studied. Findings are from major studies employing the ecologically framed risk assessment tool: ( 3901 [1979-2017] (Miccio-Fonseca , 2018a, , 2018b) and ( 2717). Samples consisted of male, female, and transgender-female, ages 4-19 with coarse sexual improprieties and/or sexually abusive youth, including youth with low intellectual functioning. Findings provided normative data, with cut-off scores according to age and gender, establishing four (calibrated) risk levels: and . The fourth risk level, sets apart from other risk assessment tools by the ability to assess those few most seriously concerning and/or dangerous youth, whereas other risk tools (with three risk levels) do not make this differentiation.