Handbook on Sexual Violence (40 page)

The literature, although rather sparse, does support that false allegations of sexual harassment can be made (O’Donohue and Bowers 2006). They report an estimated rate of false allegations of between 2 and 8 per cent. Reasons suggested for false allegations include: confused interpretation of events, coaching to make false reports, mental disorders, hypersensitivity, revenge and financial gain, excusing poor work performance, gaining a desired change in job status, gaining of power within the relationship dynamics of the workplace.

Kanin (1994) determined that 41 per cent of rape allegations made to a mid-

west police department in the United States were false. The reasons for making these allegations were: revenge, providing an alibi and/or obtaining sympathy and attention. Other commentators suggest that this rate of false reporting is too high and that police scepticism or the victim’s exhaustion with the criminal justice process may lead to perceptions of false allegations (Brown
et al
. 2007).

Custody disputes involving children can result in false allegations of domestic or child sexual abuse (Jaffe
et al
. 2008). Again evidence is sparse but rates of between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of allegations have been reported that are difficult to substantiate. That is not to say they are necessarily false, because, for example, after some distance has been achieved in the relationship and/or counselling received, a victim may come to understand the abusive nature of the relationship.

From description to explanation: general theories of ordinary behaviour

McGuire (2004) argues that there is a role for psychological factors in helping to understand the causes of crime and does so by considering everyday, ordinary or mundane activities which avoid the purely pathologising approach. This relies on the notion that most people’s lives are grounded in the routine of getting up, enjoying some form of organised activity such as work interspersed with leisure and recreation built around defined time

bands. People form routinised habits which are well established and accustomed patterns of behaviour. As such most behaviours are learnt and are part of a developmental maturation process taking place within a social context. Most of these daily routines involve a level of cognitive processing implicated in decision-making (e.g. whether or not to implement or vary the routines). For the most part these serve functional purposes. However, under some circumstances, routines which have served positive and constructive purposes may become harmful. To take the example of anger, showing this emotion can be a reasonable psychological reaction and illustrate some dissatisfaction in a relationship and serve to deal with the precipitating issues and even strengthen the relationship. Anger can become dysfunctional when it is out of control and is a disproportionate response relative to the issues that provoked it. Canter and Heritage (1990) provide another example. Desire for social contact or intimacy is a normal human reaction and difficulties in achieving this can lead to inappropriate reading of social-sexual cues and may result in rape. The pseudo-intimate rapist often engages subterfuge to make contact with the victim and behaviours include verbal contact, asking questions about her lifestyle and wanting the victim to participate in the sex acts and even asking to see her again. Bennell
et al
. (2001) found that approaches made to children by adult abusers mapped onto conventional adult–child behaviours in terms of control and love.

Canter (1994) argues that human transactions and interactions in any one arena of people’s lives reveal something about the way they act and/or interact in other arenas. Canter suggests that if interpersonal violent crime is thought of as a transaction between two people then other transactions conducted by potential offenders may reveal clues about how an offender interacts with people in a violent encounter. Moreover there will be some congruence between the individual’s non-criminal and criminal transactions. Canter also observes that criminals exist in the same physical world and social milieu as their potential victims, and as such they are subject to many of the same constraints on their behaviour. Furthermore, criminals are not constantly committing crime; in fact for the majority of their time they are going about their everyday non-criminal lives. Canter supposes that offenders will commit crime in a way that reflects their behaviour in ‘everyday’ life. For example, Horvath and Brown (2007) suggest that a drug-assisted rapist may regularly go with friends to a club in which there are many women consuming alcohol and drugs. The offender may use this opportunity from their everyday life to look for victims to rape and may even go so far as to target preferred women by buying them drinks in order that they become incapacitated to increase his opportunity to commit a rape. Given the prevalence and social acceptability of drinking alcohol (and, to a lesser extent, drug consumption) in social situations in Western society it is quite likely that everyday life will present opportunities for drug-assisted rape to occur. Scully and Morolla (1985) take the view that rather than suggesting sexual offenders are sick individuals, with underlying pathologies, they propose a learning model, such as the ideas expounded by McGuire (2004) mentioned previously. In this instance sexual violence serves several different purposes such as revenge, a means of access to unwilling or unavailable women or a recreational activity providing sensation and

excitement, or even a ‘bonus’ activity while committing another offence such as burglary.

Pathological theories

There are clinical approaches to understanding the commission of sexual violence. Beech (2010) describes three sets of intersecting dynamic factors associated with sex offending, i.e. biological determinants including genetic inheritance and brain development; ecological such as social, cultural and personal context; and neuropsychological. Thus genetic predispositions and social learning impact on brain development and three neuropsychological systems: motivation/emotional, perception and memory and action selection and control. These interplaying factors create clinical problems for offenders in terms of deviant arousal, offence-related thinking and sexual fantasies, social difficulties and emotional regulation problems. Sexually abusive behaviour then functions to maintain a positive feedback loop which alleviates the offender’s anxieties and serves to maintain or even escalate the deviant actions.

Personality disorders (PD) have been implicated in sexual violent offending. PD is not a mental illness, rather a style of interacting. Lord (2010) draws on the internationally recognised classifications to describe personality disorders as severe disturbances of the individual leading to persistent and problematic behaviour in which there is a low frustration tolerance, disregard for social norms, rules or obligations and low threshold for aggression and violence. Psychopathy in particular has been linked with sex offences (Porter
et al
. 2003; Storey
et al
. 2009). Psychopathy is described as involving impulsivity, remorselessness, lack of empathy, thrill seeking and a callous interpersonal style (Canter and Youngs 2009: 153). Psychopaths are predators who use charm, manipulation and violence to control others. The Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) is most frequently used to measure levels of psychopathy, with scores of between 25–30 being used to classify psychopaths. Thus Porter
et al
. (2003) found elevated levels of psychopathy in 125 male homicide offenders where there was sexual content to the murders. They concluded (p. 467) ‘not only are psychopathic offenders disproportionately more likely to engage in sexual homicide, but when they do, they use significantly more gratuitous and sadistic violence.’ They hypothesised that the psychopath’s profound lack of empathy and their desire for thrill seeking are especially pertinent in promoting such behaviours as they seek to optimise their pleasure through the damage they inflict on their victim. Storey
et al
. (2009) found psychopathic symptoms, especially affect deficits, associated with stalking victimisation of casual acquaintances described as ‘boldness and coldness’. They note that psychopathic stalkers were rare but where psychopathy was a factor those offenders were more likely than non- psychopathic stalkers to be highly preoccupied with their victims, escalate their stalking behaviours and target highly vulnerable victims. They were unlikely to be the unrequited ‘lovesick’ type of stalker or romantically inept (the pseudo-intimate types), nor were they motivated by strong emotional

attachment to their victim. Psychopathic stalkers are not likely then to be motivated by a need to re-establish close or positive relationships or reflect a separation protest, rather their behaviours reflect interpersonal dominance and control following what they perceive as a ‘narcissistic injury’ to the victim’s rejection of them. Thus stalking is a form of bullying to enhance the stalker’s sense of self. Mullen
et al
. (2000) describe erotomanics who meet DSM criteria for delusional (paranoid) disorder. They are convinced they are loved by someone they often have not even met, who are often media figures. Geberth (1992) describes psychopathic personality stalkers who may destroy property, make threats over the phone and engage in some form of harassment to gain control over the victim.

Grubin (1994) compared 21 men who murdered in the course of a sexual attack with 121 rapists. They were found to differ with respect to their personal history, with the murderers reporting much higher levels of social isolation both in childhood and adulthood. Sexual murderers were less sexually experienced than the rapists and fewer had had sexual relationships in their lifetime and they were older than the rapists when committing their index offence. They were more likely to ‘bottle’ their temper.

The murderers had few intimate relationships with women and those that they did form were emotionally limiting with little sharing and confiding. Grubin speculates that their social isolation may be indicative of underlying personality abnormalities which are a cause of their isolation and allow them to cross over from sexual attack to murder. They may also be a cause of their lack of ability to empathise, and this impoverished internal life weakens the restraint that inhibits excessive sexual violence.

Interestingly there appear to be no differences between murderers and rapists in terms of their relationship to their victims, and sexual fantasy and interest in aggressive pursuits was equally likely (Oliver
et al
. 2007). Their own study of 58 sexual murderers and 112 rapists about to enter a treatment programme within the England and Wales prison system differed in terms of age at index offence (rapists were older), mean IQ (murderers were more intelligent). Rapists had a greater number of prior violent offences (twice as many) and murderers were less likely to be in a relationship at the time of the murder. The rapists and murderers did not differ in terms of juvenile sex offending, or previous sexual offences. Rapists had more self-revealing personalities, both groups had similar degrees of anxiety, avoidance and anxiety personality disorders and alcohol dependency. Rapists had higher scores on paranoid suspicion and resentment and self-esteem thus having a more negative outlook on life compared with the murderers. Rapists committed offences against younger victims and more committed rapes against both adults and children.

From quantum to qualitative differentiation

Kelly’s notion of quantum is found in psychological theorising but in a somewhat different form. As mentioned earlier, Salfati (2008) described a frequency continuum of homicide behaviours. Thus, as she demonstrates in

homicides, some behaviours occur more than 50 per cent of the time and were classified as high-frequency common behaviours but which do not differentiate individual offenders. Canter (2000) argues for a hierarchy of distinctions between crime behaviours in which lower-frequency behaviours are differentiated from the higher-frequency, core actions. Canter suggests that at the most general end of the hierarchy these common features are indicative of criminal behaviour but are not especially helpful in differentiating between different types or themes of crime. As actions become more specific to a given crime, Canter hypothesises that behaviours become more indicative of the individuals carrying them out, termed the modus operandi, until at the most detailed level of specificity, signature behaviours characterise a particular individual because they are idiosyncratic. Canter’s idea is that crimes can be differentiated along this continuum of generalised typicality to the highly individualised. His classification of qualitative distinctions between the high and low frequencies finesses Kelly’s prevalence continuum.

Sexual violence can be thought of in terms of the same hierarchy. Thus core behaviours that are typical of sexual violence (which Kelly (1988) identifies as threats of violence experienced by all the respondents in her study) distinguish this offence from, say, others such as property crime but in and of themselves are an undifferentiating characteristic of all subtypes of sexual violence. So these typical behaviours occurring with high frequency do not help to distinguish the different types of sexual violence or indeed different types of offenders. To do this Canter and Youngs (2009: 144) argue that themes, identifying some underlying psychological purpose, can be used to differentiate different types of crime. Canter (2000) and Canter and Youngs (2009) use the analogy of colour to explain how these themes merge into one another and should not be thought of as independent dimensions or ‘pure’ differentiated types. This analogy fits well with Kelly’s notion of shading. As well as differentiating between crimes, such a model can describe themes that occur within a crime category. As mentioned above, Canter and Heritage (1990) found five themes that accounted for different groupings within rather than between rape behaviours. Canter and Youngs then argue that at the next level of specificity, the offender’s behaviour needs to be taken into account. They use the term modus operandi (MO) to describe a pattern of behaviours that typify different types of offender. These patterns enable individuals with similar MOs to be thought of as sharing certain common characteristics but also allow for variations within a sexual violence subcategory. Thus, by way of example, rapists motivated by anger may show a similar degree of gratuitous physical violence in the rapes they commit but which is of a different character from that of rapists motivated by mistaken attempts at intimacy.