Cognitive distortions in child molesters: Theoretical and research developments over the past two decades

Cognitive distortions have become an important focus for professionals working with child molesters since the early 1980s. In this paper, we describe and discuss both the theoretical and methodological developments of child molester's cognitive distortions that have evolved over the past two decades. We conclude that although theory and research development has been a little slow in this topic, several interesting theoretical and methodological developments have been made in recent years. We describe how we believe such developments will further increase the conceptual clarity of cognitive distortions and provide some suggestions for other future developments in this field.