New article alert: The Effect of Sexual Victimization on Juvenile Probation Officers’ Perceptions of Justice-Involved Girls’ Personality

Dr. Cavanagh's latest article, The Effect of Sexual Victimization on Juvenile Probation Officers’ Perceptions of Justice-Involved Girls’ Personality, is out now in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

This study looks at whether girls in the juvenile justice system who have experienced sexual victimization are judged differently by probation officers, especially depending on whether the officer is male or female.

Overall, girls who reported sexual victimization were not rated as having worse personality problems once other factors (like family issues or peer problems) were taken into account. However, a noteworthy pattern emerged: male probation officers tended to rate sexually victimized girls as having more serious personality concerns than girls without sexual victimization histories. Importantly, female officers did not show this difference.

Although this pattern was not statistically significant—largely because few victimized girls were supervised by male officers—it was consistent and raises concerns that trauma-related, defensive behaviors may be misinterpreted as “aggression,” particularly by male officers.

The results suggest that standardized juvenile risk assessments may reflect assessor bias, as officer characteristics like gender may be a source of variation for how trauma-exposed girls are evaluated in the justice system. This finding underscores the need for trauma-informed training and safeguards to prevent defensive, trauma-related behaviors from being misclassified as criminogenic risk.