Abstract
Sex robots may present an opportunity for the case-management of individuals with problematic sexual interests (PSI). In our study, we aimed to ascertain how many of the individuals with PSI would desire to have a real experience with a sex robot.
Targeted individuals were recruited from an online representative national panel of volunteers using several screening questions. The final sample consisted of a) 57 male subjects who were interested in sexual violence against adults, b) 48 male subjects who were sexually interested in minors (children younger than 15 years) and, c) 30 male subjects who endorsed both, a sexual interest in violence against adults and a sexual interest in minors.
Sexual contacts with a robot were desired by 26% of the sexual-violence sample, 37% of the sexual interest in minors sample and 43% of the combined-interest sample. In addition, we also disseminated our questionnaire to the Czech self-help community for paedophiles (N=67). 37 out of 67 community members responded (response rate of 65%).
Almost half of the self-help-community responders indicated a desire for an interaction with sex robots (49%). Our study indicates that individuals with PSI are presently only partially open towards the sex robot interactions.
Research implications of our exploratory findings will be further discussed.