When people are accused of sexually abusing children, this computerized test can help to decide their fates-in decisions about probation and parole, in custody battles, and even in criminal trials. But he is best known for the Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest, a test he has refined over the last two decades. He has taught at Columbia and Emory Universities, authored two books and more than 100 articles in scientific journals on child molestation, and testified before the United States Sentencing Commission on the subject of child pornography. He has interviewed thousands of child molesters and run federally funded research projects on how to identify them.
“You know,” he said recently, sitting in his Atlanta office, “I’m much more handsome than I appear.”Īt 76, Abel has devoted the majority of his psychiatric career to the minds of those whom many consider the least redeemable. He favors loud ties, suspenders, and frumpy little one-liners. His hair, a tangle of white curls, forks into ample sideburns. Abel, one of America’s foremost researchers on child molestation, has cultivated an aura of eccentric brilliance. This piece was reported through The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the U.S.
