Victims of sexual assault perpetrated by female youth: an exploratory study of gender differences*

ABSTRACT

This study examines sexual offending behaviour of juvenile females and juvenile males who come to the attention of the police. Using victim age as an analytical tool and more than 20 years of incident-level crime data, perpetrator, victim, and offense characteristics are compared to assess if the offending behaviours of juvenile females and juvenile males differ when the victim is a child versus a peer. The multinomial logistic regression showed there were differences in offending between juvenile females and juvenile males dependent on type of victim. Perpetrator substance abuse, victim sex, victim-offender relationship, type of sexual assault, use of force, location of the sexual assault, the time of day of the sexual assault, and whether or not the incident resulted in an arrest all reliably predicted these differences. The results reinforce the field's call for a greater development of a gendered understanding of sexual offending behaviour.     

The children’s programme: a description of a group and family intervention for children engaging in problematic and harmful sexual behaviour and their parents/carers

ABSTRACT

Children under 10 are increasingly being referred to services for concerning problematic or harmful sexual behaviour, but information about interventions to support these children and their families is limited. A 3-year pilot of a group cognitive–behavioural intervention for children and their parents/carers is described. Forty-nine children were referred to the programme with 27 completing the programme in this period. This is the first intervention of its kind to be delivered with a UK population and demographic information is provided about the children who have been assessed, including information about age, gender, family composition and abuse history. Outcome data from the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children, Child Sexual Behaviour Inventory, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Parental Stress and Social Support Scale is reported. The available outcome data indicates the group has been largely beneficial in reducing problematic sexual behaviour. Key learning and implications for practice are discussed.     

Non-sex offenders display distorted thinking and have empathy deficits too: A thematic analysis of cognitions and the application of empathy

Abstract

It is generally assumed that empathy acts to disinhibit behaviour that could be perceived as detrimental to others, and as a result is a common feature of offender treatment programmes. The present research hypothesised that empathy in all populations is both a situational and a selective process that is ultimately governed by self-interest, and further, that it is the nature of the self-interest that distinguishes individuals rather than a general empathy deficit per se. Empathic processes were observed in a non-offending population in a personal situation normally regarded as evocative of empathy: infidelity. Thematic analysis of data from individuals who reported being faithful or unfaithful to their partners revealed five dominant themes: vulnerable predisposition, emotional motivators, rational emotive decision making, avoiding cognitive dissonance and lack of remorse. The themes all revealed how individuals employed cognitive strategies, which were managed by self-interest that functioned to create cognitive states devoid of empathy.     

Reflections on the development of the nota policy ‘working with adults and adolescents who exhibit sexually abusive behaviours: The use of sexually salient and pornographic materials’

Abstract

In 1994 the Policy and Ethics Sub-Committee of The National Association for the Development of Work with Sex Offenders developed and published a policy on the use of ‘sexually salient and pornographic’ materials in working with adults and adolescents who exhibited sexually abusive behaviours. Here, Alix Brown, one of the originators of this policy, reflects on the reasons it was brought into being and its relevance to sex offender treatment now. The policy document follows this article.     

A study of stranger rapists from the English high security hospitals

Abstract

Heterogeneity hinders our understanding of sexual violence; but does this problem extend to stranger rape and, if so, would the construction of homogeneous subtypes advance our understanding of this crime and aid criminal investigations and clinical practice? To answer these questions, 41 stranger rapists from the English high security hospitals were examined using version 3 of the Massachusetts Treatment Centre rapist typology (MTC:R3) and multidimensional scaling (MDS). The MTC:R3 suggested that sexual desire and opportunism were the primary motivations for these men, but that proportionately more psychopaths were violent and sadistic. In accordance with previous research, the men experienced problematic childhoods and displayed high rates of criminality and psychiatric morbidity in adulthood. However, MDS found that rapist histories and offence behaviours generally divide into sexual and violent themes. These results have important implications for theory, criminal investigations and clinical practice.     

Repeat Citizens in Motor Vehicle Stops

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the possible existence of the repeat phenomenon and their impact on racial disparities in police motor vehicle stops. The repeat phenomenon is the existence of a small proportion of people or places that account for a much larger proportion of events. While this phenomenon has been identified and discussed in other areas of criminal justice and criminology, it has not been extended to motor vehicle stops. The current study examines the existence of repeat citizens in a population of motor vehicle stops (N = 4775) from a Mid-western city during 2001. A small, but significant, concentration of motor vehicle stops were discovered among a few citizens and significant predictors of citizen performance included citizen race, gender, age, residency, time of the stop, and reason for the stop.     

IS BEING “SPIRITUAL” ENOUGH WITHOUT BEING RELIGIOUS? A STUDY OF VIOLENT AND PROPERTY CRIMES AMONG EMERGING ADULTS

Although prior research has had a tendency to confirm a negative association between religiousness and crime, criminologists have been slow to incorporate new concepts and emergent issues from the scientific study of religion into their own research. The self‐identity phrase “spiritual but not religious” is one of them, which has been increasingly used by individuals who claim to be “spiritual” but disassociate themselves from organized religion. This study first examines differences in crime between “spiritual‐but‐not‐religious” individuals and their “religious‐and‐spiritual,” “religious‐but‐not‐spiritual,” and “neither‐religious‐nor‐spiritual” peers in emerging adulthood. Specifically, we hypothesize that the spiritual‐but‐not‐religious young adults are more prone to crime than their “religious” counterparts, while expecting them to be different from the “neither” group without specifying whether they are more or less crime prone. Second, the expected group differences in crime are hypothesized to be explained by the microcriminological theories of self‐control, social bonding, and general strain. Latent‐variable structural equation models were estimated separately for violent and property crimes using the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The overall results tend to provide a partial support for the hypotheses. Implications for criminology and future research are discussed.     

What Have We Learned from Columbine

Abstract

This study first examined a model of the predictors and mediators of both suicidal ideation and violent ideation, particularly since both types of ideation were highly correlated (r = .55) among our young adolescent participants. The variables in the model were those identified in media accounts of the histories of the 10 high-profile school shooting cases, and that have also been included in our earlier model of the predictors of suicidal ideation, which we expanded to include violent ideation. Perceptions of competence or adequacy and social support from peers and parents predicted two mediators in the model, an adjustment/depression composite (self-esteem, hope to hopelessness, and affect, along a continuum from cheerful to depressed) and anger-induced physical aggression. These variables, in turn, predicted both suicidal and violent ideation. Secondly, we examined adolescents' reactions to vignettes that described harassing events, at the hands of peers and teachers simulating the type of audience-observed ridicule experienced by the school shooters. We were particularly interested in the emotional reaction of humiliation, an effect that has received surprisingly little attention in the emotion literature. Humiliation was related to other emotions such as anger and depression, consistent with the co-occurrence of internalizing and externalizing symptoms demonstrated in the overall model. Next we compared those who reported that they would respond violently to the events in vignettes compared to those reporting nonviolent reactions. Examining the variables in the general model, those who reported violent ideation reported markedly lower perceptions of adequacy, lower levels of social support, lower self-esteem, greater hopelessness, depressed affect, and anger-induced aggression. The violent ideators also reported higher levels of both homicidal and suicidal ideation. Discussion focused on the fact that thoughts of violence toward others as well as toward the self have similar psychosocial origins that should be considered in prevention and intervention efforts.     

Radical distinctions: a comparative study of two jihadist speeches

Work on contemporary instances of “violent extremist” texts tends to see these primarily as more or less instrumental extensions of political (or political-religious) movements. As a result, there are few studies that devote close attention to individual examples of the texts themselves. In this article, we offer a detailed analysis of two jihadist speeches by the prominent ideologues Adam Gadahn and the late Anwar al-Awlaki. We argue that Al-Awlaki’s work ultimately succeeds where Gadahn’s seemingly fails because it is underpinned by a form of fundamentalism which, paradoxically, is inherently premised on the survival of possibilities for dialogue and polyglossia.