Délinquance sexuelle des adolescents : sexualisation de leur délinquance ou délinquance de leur sexualité ?

For a few years, the transgressive and deviant sexual behaviour of adolescents has raised many questions in Belgium in order to understand why these young people are led to crime, how they function psychologically and what legal and therapeutic measures to take. All authors (WORLING, 2001, BARBAREE and MARSHALL, 2006, MALAMUTH and Al, 2003...) agree on the fact that these adolescentrs, who have this sexual offence in common in the course of their adolescence, form, nevertheless, a very heterogeneous group. Research (VAN WIJK and Al. 2005, 2007; JACOBS 1997, FORD and Al 1995, LEBLANC M. 1999,..) has raised the question whether these adolescents who commit sexual aggressions are delinquents like the others. In the line of this research, we undertook a comparative study of the psychosocial and criminological functioning of 67 delinquent adolescentrs including 47 sexual delinquents. On the basis of the assumption that the functioning of the adolescents who attack younger children differs from that of the adolescents who attack other adolescents, we carried out a comparative analysis of three sub-groups: adolescent sexual delinquents-children (N=26)/ adolescent sexual delinquents -peers (N=21)/ adolescent nonsexual delinquents (N=20). Based on data from the clinical interviews, the study of files, a scale of self-acknowledged delinquency, and scales of clinical syndromes of the personality inventory of MILLON (MILLON Adolescent Clinical Inventory - MACI), we analyzed the delinquent and sexual behaviour of adolescents according to the nature of their offence, and highlighted the clinical problems and syndromes of the adolescents of the three sub-groups. The results suggest a mode of sexual behaviour which is specific to the adolescent sexual delinquents, but a synchronous delinquent behaviour of comparable nature for the adolescent nonsexual delinquents and the adolescent sexual delinquents-peers, who present mixed delinquent trajectories (sexual and nonsexual delinquency) that are more diversified and charged than the adolescent sexual delinquents-children.