Committed as a Violent Sexual Predator in His 10th Decade: A Case Study

We report a case study of Atypical Offender (AO), a man who was civilly committed as a sexually violent person several years after his 90th birthday. In this article, we review the factors that usually contribute to virtually zero rates of sexual crime among nonagenarians for clues as to why these protective factors did not apply to this exceptional case. Psychological assessments and court records portrayed AO as having many of the features expected of persistent sexual offenders against children (e.g., pedophilic interests, child-oriented lifestyle). What was unusual, however, was AO's exceptional good health and vigor, which was maintained well into his tenth decade. Consequently, we recommend that forensic evaluators of older sexual offenders systematically consider the offenders' health as part of the overall risk assessment.