Preventing sexual violence and abuse
Research
Griffith's research into preventing sexual violence and abuse provides a model that sucessfully bridges the gap between the traditional academic research and clinical practice dichotomy in Australia to offer a new model for research practice that ensures the research impact is directly relevant to the client.
Professor Mark Dadds, School of Psychology, University of New South Wales
Through a combination of developmental, situational, clinical, and justice systems approaches, the innovative team-based research being conducted at Griffith into the prevention of sexual violence and abuse is forging new directions in Australia and internationally.
This program aims to understand how potential offenders can be prevented from committing sexual offences in the first place, as well as how systems and society can deal effectively with the impact of these offences. It draws upon theoretical, empirical and applied knowledge from developmental psychology, environmental criminology, criminal careers research, and clinical forensic psychology.
Applied research activities include investigations of developmental pathways of adolescent and adult sexual offenders; onset, progression and desistance among offenders; risk prediction; situational prevention; and clinical forensic interventions with adolescent and adult offenders.
Policy
Public policy responses to sexual violence and abuse are preoccupied with efforts directed at trying to "fix the problem" after it has already occurred, for example by punishing and incapacitating the offender and ameliorating the impact on the victim. Griffith Research seeks to ensure that prevention policy and practice are informed by an understanding of the best available evidence, theory, and practice standards.
Practice
Griffith has brought together a team of cutting-edge researchers and practitioners to focus on sexual violence and abuse. A notable example is the Griffith Youth Forensic Service (GYFS), a university-based program funded by the Queensland Department of Communities (Youth Justice Branch) since April 2001, with in-kind support from Griffith University, to provide specialist forensic psychological assessment and treatment services to youth who are sentenced in courts in relation to sexual offence matters. GYFS has a primary office at Griffith University in Brisbane, as well as a satellite office in Cairns.
In response to the state-wide nature of the work, GYFS has developed an innovative, field-based, collaborative assessment and treatment model, tailored for the Queensland context, where the client population is culturally diverse and geographically dispersed. The model is designed to provide equitable access to high-quality services regardless of location.
GYFS clinical staff travel throughout the state, including to regional and remote locations, to conduct comprehensive assessments, prepare pre-sentence psychological assessment reports for the courts, and to deliver specialised and individualised treatment interventions in collaboration with local community partners. Fundamental to GYFS service delivery model is the need to understand people who commit sexual offences in the context of their development, their natural ecosystem, and the immediate environment in which the offence/s occurred.
GYFS is now widely recognised by the courts, police, youth justice and child safety, and has been formally recognised with an Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Award (2003), a Queensland Child Protection Award (2003), a Ministers Award for Excellence in Culturally Inclusive Practice (2006), and a Ministers Award for Excellence in Collaborative Practice (2007). Recent publications have also established GYFS reputation within the international literature.
Evaluations of GYFS work have demonstrated the effectiveness of its formal training programs (Dadds, Smallbone, Nisbet, & Dombrowski, 2003), professional capacity building through collaborative partnerships (Smallbone, Rayment-McHugh, Crissman & Shumack, 2008), and therapeutic engagement with high risk and Indigenous sexual offenders (Smallbone, Crissman, & Rayment-McHugh, 2009).