Forensic Services
Dr. Bono graduated from the North Dakota School of Law in 2018. As a law-trained Psychologist, she is committed to providing expert psychological evaluations to attorneys, courts, and other agencies in a variety of forensic psychology specialty areas. Written psychological evaluations and psychosexual evaluations are comprehensive and focus on the psycholegal issues at question.
Psychosexual Evaluations
Psychosexual evaluation is a comprehensive evaluation which focuses on a person’s sexual development, sexual history, healthy and unhealthy sexual interests/arousal (paraphilic interests), sexual adjustment, and level of sexual risk. This evaluation includes relevant record review, interview, psychological testing, and application of research relevant to the case.
The evaluation lasts approximately 4-6 hours face-to-face. We incorporate empirically-supported assessments, including “gold standard” risk assessments for those charged with sexual crimes. Psychosexual evaluations can be requested at pre-trial stages, pre-sentence stages, post-sentence stages, or pre-release stages. Psychosexual evaluations may also be conducted if an individual has not been charged with a crime, but there is a question regarding their sexual history, development, or interests.
After the evaluation, a comprehensive report is written. It typically takes 2 weeks for the report to be completed, though individual circumstances may vary. A report will include any diagnosis as determined during the course of testing, including paraphilic disorders. Recommendations for treatment or other supportive resources will also be made. When formal risk assessment measures are used, level of risk will be calculated. All psychosexual evaluations will explain each individual’s unique risk and protective factors, which will be the basis of the overall findings.