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Abstracts

Abstract Submission is closed! Thank you for your numerous contributions! 

The deadline for abstract submission is April 30^th, 2025.

The official language of the conference is English and abstracts have to be submitted in English. 

Abstracts will be reviewed by members of the IATSO Organizing Committee. Authors will be informed about the decision of this committee not later than May 31^st, 2025. The committee reserves the right to allocate papers either for oral or poster presentation. 

The author giving the free communication is required to register and pay for an on-site attendance not later than June 15^th, 2025. If registration and payment is not made by the deadline, the abstract cannot appear in the abstract book or in the conference schedule. 

In case your abstract is not accepted and you are already registered, we will contact you regarding a refund of the registration fee. 

If registration and payment is made, your abstract will be published in the Official Book of Abstracts (Zeitschrift für Forensische Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie). There will be no proofreading or editing by IATSO, so any error in the submitted abstract will appear in print. Authors transfer the copyright to IATSO.

Authors agree that their free communications may be stored in our video gallery and if so, will be accessible for three months (until November 29^th, 2025) to all registered participants of the 18^th IATSO conference, 2025. IATSO does not provide any option for downloading and distributing them. However, it is obvious that IATSO cannot completely rule out abuse or fraud.

Original papers written in English and presented at the conference may be submitted for possible publication in the IATSO e-Journal (Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention; https://sotrap.psychopen.eu)

General Guidelines:

Please check all the guidelines before submitting the abstract. If guidelines are not followed, we may not be able to take your abstract into account for our upcoming conference. 

• Use the template for your abstract: Click HERE to download the template! Please, do NOT change font or font size of the template but use it exactly as it is!

• For an easier identification of the abstract-file during the process,the filename should include the author's name and an abbreviation of the title (e.g. Eberhaut, S._Cognitive Disortions).

• Abstracts should be written double-spaced and not exceed 200 words in length. 

• The title of your abstract should not exceed 25 words in length. Except for proper nouns, only the first word and the first word after a colon should be written in capital letters.

• Add the affiliation of EVERY author and co-author (see template)

• Add the email address of the first author (see template).

• The name of the authors in the template should be "first name last name" and NOT "last name, first letter of the first name" (see template)

• Submit astracts by filling out this form and uploading your WORD file. 

Note that all the authors will be mentioned in the abstract book but only the speaker will be mentioned in the program! 

Guidelines Oral presentations: 

Speaking time is presumably between 15 and 20 minutes (depending on the final number of presentations per session). Standard power point projection will be provided in all lecture halls.

Guidelines Symposium:

It is essential to enter the title of the symposium. We need an abstract for each talk of the symposioum. An abstract of the whole symposium is not required. 

Guidelines Posters: 

The posters selected for presentation will be exhibited throughout the conference. The posters should be in A0 (90cm x 120) format.

Poster Award: 

Students (including graduate or Ph.D. students) presenting outstanding posters can be awarded the IATSO Poster Award. All first-author students presenting a poster at the 18^th IATSO conference in Poznań, Poland are eligible to compete for this award. If you hand in an abstract for a poster and want to be compete for the poster award, please tick the box. Successful students will be awarded financial support (1^st place: 500 € and 2^nd place: 250 €).

During the poster session at the conference, a scientific jury will select the winning posters. The decision of the jury will be based on scientific excellence of the abstract and on the presentation of the scientific information on the poster.

(Possible) Contents of free communications and posters: 

• Sexual offender treatment effectiveness
• Meta-analyses in sexual offender treatment
• Internet sexual offending
• Diagnosis of sex offence related disorders
• Comparing different methods in sexual offender treatment
• National programs of sexual offender treatment
• Risk assessment, risk calculation and risk communication
• Measuring change of risk
• Reducing risk by other means than by treatment
• The management of sexual offences in a context of cultural diversity
• The effectiveness of restorative justice systems
• Substance abuse and sexual violence
• Rehabilitation and treatment of young sexual offenders
• Sexual offending prevention policies
• Measurement of sexual deviance
• Neuroscience and sexual offenses
• Problematic and harmful sexual behaviour among children and adolescents (both online and offline behaviour)
• Multisystemic work in prevention and treatment of harmful sexual behaviour (both offline and online behaviour
• Policing sexual abuse online
• Online child abuse – new trends and challenges from a policing and treatment perspective
• Perceptions and stereotypes towards online and offline child sexual offending and offenders

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hypersexuality and Sexual Offending

Michal Lew-Starowicz

When the concept of Hypersexual Disorder (Kafka, 2010) was rejected by the American Psychiatric Association from DSM-5, one of the pronounced legal concerns was the risk of misapplication of the diagnosis as mitigating factor in cases of sexual violence or use of illicit pornographic content. More recently, when Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder was introduced as a new diagnostic entity to the ICD-11, a possible co-occurence with paraphilic disorder has been acknowledged (WHO, 2022). The aim of this presentation is to discuss partially overlaping concepts of CSBD and paraphilic disorders, their comorbidity, diagnostic and treatment challenges especially in cases of actual or at-risk-of sexual offending.  

Michal Lew Starowicz MD, PhD, FECSM is an Associate Professor and a Head of Department of Psychiatry at the Centre of Postgraduate Medical Education in Warsaw, Poland as well as Director of the Bielanski Mental Health Centre (Warsaw, Poland). He is a Vice President of the Polish Sexological Society and Executive Committee Member of the European Society for Sexual Medicine. Engaged in inderdisciplinary studies on mental health and sexuality, especially research on Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder. Author and co-author of >100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.

Treatment for Men who have Sexually Offended: Tips for Success

Theresa A. Gannon

Those who work with individuals who offend sexually are engaged in a challenging yet vitally important role. In this talk, I will combine research evidence and clinical experience to discuss the elements required to ensure treatment for men who have sexually offended is as successful as possible. The focus will be on treatment for men who have engaged in at least one contact offence against a child or an adult. This talk will include an examination of theory, meta-analyses, as well as therapist factors important for treatment of these individuals. The key factors for improving treatment success will be presented as best practice “tips”. Key areas for future research will also be highlighted with some outlined as being an urgent priority.

Theresa A. Gannon, DPhil, CPsychol (Forensic) is Professor of Forensic Psychology and Director of the Centre for Research and Education in Forensic Psychology (CORE-FP) at the University of Kent, UK. Theresa has also worked as a Practitioner Consultant Forensic Psychologist specialising in sexual offending and firesetting for the Forensic and Specialist Care Group, Kent and Medway Partnership Trust for over 15 years.

Theresa has published over 150 chapters, articles, books, and other scholarly works in the areas of male and female-perpetrated sexual offending. She is particularly interested in research relating to both the treatment needs and overall supervision of individuals who have sexually offended. This includes offence-related cognition and emotion, rehabilitation models (i.e., the Good Lives Model), offense-process models of offending behavior, polygraph-assisted supervision and truth facilitation, and attitudes towards individuals who have offended. Theresa is lead editor of several books including Sexual Offending: Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation (Wiley-Blackwell) along with Tony Ward, Aggressive Offenders’ Cognition: Theory, Research, and Treatment (John Wiley) along with Tony Ward, Anthony Beech, and Dawn Fisher, and Female Sexual Offenders: Theory, Assessment, and Treatment (Wiley-Blackwell) along with Dr Franca Cortoni. Theresa is also co-editor of several books that discuss or integrate sexual offending with other forensic topics and psychological factors.

In 2019, Theresa was awarded the Lifetime Significant Achievement Award by the British Psychological Society for her services to forensic psychology. More recently, she was also Nominated Fellow of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, USA.

Changing the paradigm? Exploring implications of recent findings on treatment and assessment of adolescent males

Michael H. Miner

This interactive workshop will explore changes in conceptualizing treatment and assessment needs of adolescent males who have been adjudicated for harmful sexual behavior.  We will start from assumptions made in a 1993 taskforce, some of which appear to still drive treatment and assessment today, and from IATSO’s Guidelines for Treatment of Juvenile Sex Offenders, which were adopted in the early 2000’s.  This workshop will explore research findings from studies of etiology, assessment and treatment outcome and their implications for how we view youth who have committed sexual harm, whether models being promulgated address the needs of youths, and how accumulated knowledge of the risks posed by youth affect how we conceptualize treatment and supervision needs. Discussion of how treatment, assessment, and supervision are informed by differing conceptions across countries will form a major emphasis of this workshop.

Michael H. Miner, Ph.D., L.P. is Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine and Community Health and the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health (formally the Program in Human Sexuality) at the University of Minnesota.  He began his work in sex offender research as the experimental psychologist for California’s Sex Offender Treatment and Evaluation Project and since joining the Program in Human Sexuality (PHS); his research has focused on the etiology of sexual abuse perpetration in adolescence, risk assessment, and sexual compulsivity. Dr. Miner coordinated adult sex offender treatment at PHS until 2008 and coordinated forensic assessment services until 2021. He is Past President of the Association for the Treatment and Prevention of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) and past Vice President of the International Association for the Treatment of Sexual Offenders.  Dr. Miner was on the editorial boards of Sexual Abuse, Archives of Sexual Behavior, and the International Journal of Sexual Health until his retirement in 2022.  He is a past Associate Editor of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.  Dr. Miner has published over 100 articles and book chapters on sex offender treatment, forensic assessment, instrument development, sexual and sexual offending behavior, and evaluation methodology.  He is recipient of the Professional Service Award from the Minnesota Chapter of ATSA and the Lifetime Significant Achievement Award from ATSA.