Estimating the age of sex offenders

A James Cook University researcher has been examining how accurately victims of sexual assault are able to estimate an offender’s age when that offender is a stranger, and what factors affect those age estimations.

Dr Craig Thorley, who is a Psychology Lecturer at JCU, led the study comparing 546 sexual assault victims’ age estimations during their initial police interviews to the convicted offender’s actual age when the assault occurred.

“Age estimations are helpful to the police when trying to identify an unknown offender as they can focus their investigation on potential suspects close to this age. It is therefore important to know how accurate these age estimations are,” he said.

Dr Thorley said few studies had examined the accuracy of these estimates.

For the full story see
https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2018/august/estimating-the-age-of-sex-offenders

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