It is often claimed that sex offenders usually deny their crimes. While there will always be guilty people who deny, there is no evidence that sex offenders are more likely to deny than others.
Research figures from the early 1980s suggested that sex offenders were far more likely to admit offences than other groups. The figures were around 90 per cent of admissions in two separate studies – sex offenders as a whole and incest offenders.( Mitchell B. (1983) Confessions and police interrogation of suspects. Crim Law Rev Sept 596-604; Manchester A. Incest and the Law in Family Violence (1978)).
These figures were gathered at a time when there were comparatively few prosecutions with few child and historical cases. So it might be said that there are particular characteristics of these types of offenders lending themselves towards denial. However the ‘theory of denial’ as it is sometimes called is prefaced on the presumption of guilt, so rates of denial among genuine offenders as opposed to the falsely accused, are not differentiated.
There is no sound evidence to believe that sex offenders are more likely to deny offences than any other offender, and where people are of good character, having no previous criminal convictions, denial and consistency may be, depending on the evidence, an arbiter of comparative reliability.