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As a part of that evaluation, he took the Abel Assessment. Rich maintained his innocence, passed a polygraph, and was never charged in a criminal court, but the divorce judge ordered him to undergo an evaluation to determine whether he might be a sexual threat to his daughter.

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(The two men in this story who were ordered by courts to take the Abel Assessment asked that I withhold their last names to preserve their privacy.) In the midst of a messy divorce, Rich’s daughter told a counselor that Rich had “felt under her shorts.” Such accusations are not uncommon in custody battles, and psychiatrists tend to be cautious about them since children can be swayed to make such accusations by a parent desperate to win full custody. One of those times, 10 years ago, the test was given to Rich B. Over the last 20 years, Abel estimates his assessment has been administered more than 170,000 times. With the information it provides in the form of percentages and graphs, clinicians can make more informed decisions about the best course of treatment.

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Both of those tests are invasive and hard to administer taking the Abel Assessment simply involves answering a questionnaire and viewing a series of pictures on a computer screen. To answer these questions, clinicians have used a variety of tools, including the polygraph, as well as the penile plethysmograph, a device attached directly to the penis that measures arousal. Mental health professionals often spend hours interviewing convicted and alleged child molesters and other sex offenders, but they also rely on measurement tools to gather psychological information that a patient might not want to share: Does he have an innate attraction to children? Is it an exclusive attraction or is he also attracted to adults? Does he have other problematic sexual interests that must also be addressed in therapy?ĭr. When people are accused of sexually abusing children, this computerized test can help to decide their fates-in decisions about probation and parole, in custody battles, and even in criminal trials. But he is best known for the Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest, a test he has refined over the last two decades. He has taught at Columbia and Emory Universities, authored two books and more than 100 articles in scientific journals on child molestation, and testified before the United States Sentencing Commission on the subject of child pornography.

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He has interviewed thousands of child molesters and run federally funded research projects on how to identify them.

This story was produced in collaboration with The Atlantic.Īt 76, Abel has devoted the majority of his psychiatric career to the minds of those whom many consider the least redeemable.

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