Handbook on Sexual Violence (57 page)

Conclusions

In conclusion, these chapters are a valuable reminder that interventions designed to reduce sexual offending should acknowledge and reflect both sociological and psychological explanations for sexual violence. Interventions that take a purely psychological approach have a modest impact on reoffending but these
chapters offer an explanation for why the individualist psychological approach may limit their impact and provide several ideas for improving the effectiveness of services for offenders. As argued at the outset of this commentary, it is essential that the policies and practices that are intended to combat sexual violence are evidence-based. Academics can offer valuable independent critiques of the scientific basis for practitioners’ endeavours, and provide new information and new perspectives on the evidence base to assist policy-makers and practitioners continually to improve the standards of applied practice. Academics and those in applied settings must recognise their mutual dependence in achieving the goal of reducing sexual violence.

References

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Building Motivation for Change in Sexual Offenders
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Mann, R.E., Hanson, R.K. and Thornton, D. (2010) ‘Assessing risk for sexual recidivism:

Some proposals on the nature of psychologically meaningful risk factors’,
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Maruna, S. and Mann, R.E. (2006) ‘A fundamental attribution error? Rethinking cognitive distortions’,
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Part Three
‌

Acts of Sexual Violence

Introduction
‌

Sandra Walklate and Jennifer Brown

Introduction

In this
section of the book we have invited authors to focus their concerns on particular acts of sexual violence, what we know about the nature of those acts and the impacts that they have. We also invited authors, where appropriate, to consider the policy responses to the particular acts with which they are concerned and to reflect upon the efficacy of those responses. As is the case elsewhere in this book, the value of understanding acts of sexual violence as part of a continuum also features in the analyses presented here. The particular acts of sexual violence covered include: rape, domestic violence, murder, child abuse and Internet offending where it has a sexual dynamic. Thus what we have here is a review of the nature and extent of sexual violence that covers some traditional territory (rape) and some newer territory (sexual crime associated with the Internet). However, as we shall see, there are some common threads that bind our understanding of these acts together. What follows is a brief overview of each of the contributions and then some observations on the common threads between them.

Jan Jordan (in Chapter
12) provides a stimulating and illuminating insight into the persistence of rape as a social and policy problem. She situates her analysis within what might be considered to be a ‘post-feminist’ world in which ‘we have done rape’. In the UK for example, the combined effects of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the commitment by the Coalition Government to put Rape Crisis funding on a secure basis as well as provide funding for the extension of their services might suggest that the feminist case in relation to rape has been not only made and proven but also accepted. Yet there is equally contradictory evidence of such, as Lovett and Kelly’s (2009) comparative analysis of attrition rates for cases of rape across a number of jurisdictions demonstrates. (The ambivalent evidence on this issue is explored in more detail in the conclusion.) Moreover, as Brown
et al
. (2010) have suggested, while there has been some change in public attitudes towards rape, especially in it being seen as the woman’s ‘own fault’, other more prejudicial views persist among a significant minority of the population. In the face of

these contradictory forces, Jordan encourages us to think critically about both the extent to which the issues that surround rape have or have not changed and why. For her the key dynamic in understanding the contemporary situation lies within the politics and processes of silencing.

Jordan suggests to us that women themselves silence their experiences of rape, the police response adds to this, followed by the courts and the trial process, compounded by formal and informal supports, the media, researchers and academics. The cumulative effects of the dynamics of silencing, whether intentional or unintentional, result in women failing to acknowledge what has happened to them. In particular, the grey areas of rape (notably when the victim knows the offender) are minimised by the media and criminal justice professionals and not accommodated in law. Such ‘silent collusion’ with what counts as ‘real rape’ mutes women’s experiences and their voices. This is added to by the research process and associated ethical requirements which place additional limits on what people are ‘permitted’ to talk about and how this is conveyed in academic writings. Jordan keenly reminds us to constantly look, not to the tip of the iceberg (the post-feminist world) but to what is supporting that world beneath the waterline. She leaves us with a clear question: whose interests does the post-feminist vision of the world serve? Certainly not the women on whose testimony the analysis in her chapter is derived from.

In a similar vein Nicole Westmarland (in Chapter
13) maps the nature and extent of domestic violence (primarily in the UK) and traces the changing policy context in responding to domestic violence. As with rape, the introduction of multi agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs) for cases of domestic violence, independent domestic violence advisers (IDVAs) and specialist domestic violence courts (all discussed by Westmarland) have been heralded as marking a sea change in understanding and responding to violence against women. Moreover, while these can be viewed as major steps forward in joining up policy responses in this arena, domestic violence remains a hard problem to solve. For example, the embrace of risk assessment for victims ‘at risk’ of domestic violence illustrates similar contradictions to those observed by Jordan for women who have been raped. In particular the focus on the ‘at risk’ victim, and the ‘one size fits all’ risk assessment tools adopted (see Robinson and Rowlands 2009), reflects a tendency to silence the victims’ voice in that process, both male and female victims. Moreover, Westmarland also charts for us the development of programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence (these programmes are also taken up by Stephanie Kewley in Chapter
17) where she points to the shortage of places on such programmes as well as difficulties concerning what ‘success’ on such a programme might mean. As Mooney (2007: 159) has asked: ‘How can violence be both a public anathema and [still be] a private common place?’ (Our addition.) This is indeed a good question and one that is also implied by Anette Ballinger’s discussion of sexual murder in Chapter 14.

As Ballinger acknowledges, the statistics on murder point to a huge disparity between the sexes. Coleman and Osborne (2010: 13) report that: ‘In 2008/09, around three in four female victims (76%) knew the main or only suspect at the time of the offence, the same proportion as the previous year.

However, a greater proportion of these female victims (69%) were killed by their partner, ex-partner or lover in 2008/09 compared with 2007/08 (50%).’ So, not only is there a sexual disparity in relation to murder, this disparity does not seem to be changing. Moreover it is a statistic that is repeated internationally (see inter alia, Wilson and Daly 1998). Connecting with Chapter
10 by Jo Phoenix, Ballinger explores this phenomenon through two particular case studies. Both involved the murder of sex workers whose vulnerability is also evidenced in Jo Phoenix’s discussion of prostitution(s). The first case study is of Peter Sutcliffe from the early 1980s. The second is that of Steve Wright, whose crime took place in the new millennium. In both cases Ballinger explores their similarities and differences in how the activities of both of these men were constructed and responded to. One key difference is that the ordinariness of Peter Sutcliffe seemed to fool the police in the 1980s but the acknowledged ordinariness of serial killers was pronounced in the search for Steve Wright. However, on the other hand, the woman-blaming explanations that were drawn upon to understand the behaviour of both men remained depressingly the same. These men had problems because of a bad wife or mother! Of course, Ballinger argues that this kind of response to the murderous acts of both of these men only makes sense if they are situated within a deeply mysogynistic culture; a culture that can take different forms but is, for example, being perpetuated by the ‘freedom’ of the Internet. (See also David Shannon’s Chapter
16). Ballinger’s chapter begins to offer part of an answer to the question posed by Mooney (2007) insofar as she puts squarely on the table the problem of masculinity that gives voice to some men while silencing others and certainly silences women, sometimes fatally.

The politics around whose voices are heard and listened to is given an added dimension by Stephanie Petrie in Chapter
15. She considers the complex interplay between violence, sex and the child. She takes as her starting point a critical understanding of what we understand by the concept of the child and childhood. Suggesting that the use of both terms has implied both a uniform and a unifying understanding of childhood that denies children their agency and competency, Petrie argues that, as a result, the adult concern about children and sex silences the sexuality of children and produces policies that fail to recognise their competencies. The ebbs and flows of policies between prevention and protection of child sexual abuse produced as a result of those cases that ‘slip through the net’ fail to recognise the child, the normalisation of violence in their lives (from war to their experience of state institutions as well as within their family circle) and unify understandings of the offender. Little of which takes into account children and young people’s own voices. David Shannon, on the other hand, offers us a unique empirical insight from a study of young people’s experiences of online sexual solicitation in which the voices of these young people can certainly be heard.