A controversial method of testing sexual arousal in young offenders should not be reinstated, says B.C.'s representative for children and youth.

The tests, in which young male sex offenders were shown sexual images while penile sensors were used to measure their arousal, were used to judge their likelihood of reoffending.

Children and Family Development Minister Mary Polak halted the so-called phallometric testing last year, after children's representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond first raised concerns ahead of her report.

On Thursday, Turpel-Lafond issued her report, saying the penile sensors are invasive and the clinical evidence suggests the results are unreliable.

'It was used as part of the arsenal of the sex offender treatment program, and upon really close evaluation, including us using an expert panel, we discovered that the evidence isn't there to support it," she said.

Ethical issue

Turpel-Lafond also questioned the ethics of the program, also known as PPG testing.

"There are legitimate concerns about the ethics of this procedure and whether it is an appropriate procedure for the treatment of sexually offending youth, particularly in absence of any evidence as to its effectiveness in improving the outcomes of treatment," she wrote.

"Like many medical interventions, PPG is an invasion of bodily integrity and privacy. An individual’s constitutional right to liberty and security of the person is a vital consideration whenever programs are provided to vulnerable populations. The representative is not satisfied that the practice for obtaining consent to PPG testing was as rigorous as it could have been, given the especially intrusive nature of the testing," she wrote.

Turpel-Lafond says she also has concerns about giving the invasive tests to young people who may themselves have been victims of sexual abuse, and she recommends the testing not be reinstated unless it can be shown to be effective and not harmful.

"The lack of evidence of harm to youth is not a justification for the use of the tool. In fact, in exceptional circumstances where a procedure is used that is as intrusive as the PPG, until there is evidence of no harm PPG testing should not be used in the treatment of sexually offending youth," she wrote in her report.

Youths shown images of children

During the testing, a youth would attach a device to his penis that would measure physical sexual arousal. Medical technicians in another room then played images of adults having sex, followed by images of partially naked children and infants, as they monitored the youth's level of arousal.

"The pre-test stimulus set was a segment from an adult sexual education video showing a man and woman engaged in consensual intercourse, with a voice-over describing the mechanics of the acts and the response," said Turpel-Lafond in her report.

"The test stimulus material was a video of a set of still photographs, ranging from infants to young adults, shown in underwear or bathing suits. One photograph shows a naked baby with genitalia blanked out. The photographs were shown with a voice-over of a male youth describing various scenarios suggestive of deviant and coercive sexual acts, but not containing sexually explicit language," said the report.

The youth's genitals were covered by a sheet during the testing, and the youth was monitored behind one-way glass to determine the effect.