Robert J. McGrath

Robert J. McGrath, M.A., is President of McGrath Psychological Services, a training and consulting practice, and was Clinical Director of the Vermont Department of Corrections integrated network of prison and community sex offender treatment programs for over 20 years. Based in Middlebury, Vermont, McGrath has specialized in sex offender assessment, treatment, and management for over four decades, establishing himself as one of the leading authorities on post-conviction sex offender testing (PCSOT) and evidence-based practices in sexual abuser management.

McGrath's most significant contribution to polygraph research is his landmark 2007 study with Cumming, Hoke, and Bonn-Miller examining treatment outcomes in community sex offender programs. This matched-pairs study involving 104 polygraphed offenders compared to 104 non-polygraphed offenders found no significant difference in sexual recidivism, but discovered a significant difference in violent recidivism, with polygraphed offenders showing lower rates of nonsexual violent offenses. Beyond this empirical work, McGrath has conducted the influential Safer Society surveys documenting polygraph use across North America. His 2009 survey found that respondents reporting the use of polygraph increased from 30 percent in 1996 to 79 percent in 2009, tracking the dramatic expansion of PCSOT practices in sex offender management programs.

McGrath has served on treatment advisory boards of several programs in the United States and the national sex offender treatment programs in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, and was co-chair of the committee that wrote ATSA's 2014 Practice Guidelines for the Assessment, Treatment, and Management of Male Adult Sexual Abusers, receiving ATSA's Significant Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. His frequent collaborators include Georgia F. Cumming and Brenda L. Burchard on the Safer Society surveys, and Stephen E. Hoke on Vermont-based treatment outcome studies. Among his over 50 publications, he is a co-developer of the ROSAC, VASOR-2, and SOTIPS risk assessment instruments.

While McGrath's polygraph research focused specifically on PCSOT applications, his broader contributions span the entire field of sex offender management. He developed the Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (SOTIPS), a dynamic risk assessment instrument now used internationally, and conducted extensive research on treatment effectiveness, recidivism prediction, and program evaluation. His work bridges clinical practice and empirical research, providing the field with both practical tools and rigorous outcome data on community-based cognitive-behavioral treatment programs.