Victim perspectives
The perspectives of victim-survivors of sex crimes are primarily concerned with the impact of offending on them personally. There are an increasing number of accounts of being groomed available on the internet (eg Surviving Therapist Abuse, 2009). Briere and Elliott (2003), in a study of 935 subjects, identified that 49.6% were male and 50.4% were female, and the mean subject age was 46 years, with a range of 18 to 90. They found that childhood sexual abuse is a significant risk factor for a range of psychological and psychiatric disorders and problems, including depression, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, sexual disorders and both suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. The nature of the abuse – intrafamilial or extrafamilial – did not affect psychological outcome, neither did the sex of the abuser. Similarly, Deering and Mellor (2011) note that the consequences of sexual abuse by women on their victims are similar to when the offender is a man, including depression, substance abuse (Tsopelas et al, 2012) and self-harm (Denov, 2004). Deering and Mellor (2011), talking with both male and female survivors of female sexual abuse, found high levels of self-reported anger and aggression, difficulties with intimate relationships, and psychosexual malfunctioning, all of which are similar to the consequences of being abused by a man.
However, it is important to recognise that not all victims speak about their experiences. Kenny and McEachern (2000) and Futa et al (2001) have noted that ‘sexual abuse’ remains a concept constructed through discourses that have usually been in English, and that have generally explored the experiences of white children in North America, Western Europe and Australasia, rather than those of children in Asia, Africa and South America, or in minority communities in the West. Additionally, cultural notions of shame and modesty have been shown to inhibit South Asian victims from speaking about their experiences (Gilligan and Akhtar, 2006). Moreover, Valentine (2008) has noted that language is a gendered phenomenon, and in South Asian languages, it reproduces the gendered social order, thus restricting or preventing some victims from speaking authentically about their experiences. The challenge in understanding sex offending is to consider the many academic disciplinary perspectives alongside the authentic language of victim-survivors.
Understanding sex crimes
Sociological understandings
At the outset of this section, we recognise that we use the term ‘sociological’ to include criminological and social-anthropological work. We address three areas that locate sex crimes within a social context: identities, the construction of risk and understanding desistance.
Identities: problematic men, invisible women and the young sex offender
The term ‘identity/ies’ opens up a complex area of social theory that disputes the nature of identity: is it an innate aspect of a person that is fixed and unchanging, or is it contingent on time and place, and therefore changeable? Similarly, there are debates about the various strands of identity, for example, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, (dis)ability and so on. These debates explore whether there is a dominant identity to which others are subordinate. These explorations, while important, potentially deflect from the focus of this section. However, the sociological concept of ‘intersectionality’ is useful here (see Crenshaw, 1991; Grabham et al, 2009; Walby et al, 2012), in that it looks at the different dimensions of identity and how they intersect with one another across place and time. For example, in understanding and responding to sex offenders, it may be important to consider not only ‘race’ in its crudest form, but also issues related to masculinity, ethnicity and faith. Moreover, these issues have to be considered within a dynamic context involving time, location and (social) situation. Thus, in sociological terms, an understanding of offending that considers intersectionality offers a nuanced appreciation of the dynamics of identities. In Chapter One, we explored issues relating to race and ethnicity, and how the over-representation of BME people in criminal justice systems can lead to a racialised version of ‘sex crime’; here, we address gender and age.
Thinking about gender in relation to understanding sex crime requires critical reflection on the wider social context. Feminist theories originate from structuralist accounts of social divisions and highlight patriarchal practices as supportive of sexual coercion and harm (eg Brownmiller, 1975; Kelly, 1988; Donat and D’Emilio, 1992; Gavey, 2005). While not homogeneous, feminist theories have made an important epistemological and political contribution to both understanding sex crimes and informing a social response to them. According to feminist activists, the laws surrounding sexuality and sexual behaviours favour the interests of the heterosexual man; this is largely achieved by using narrow definitions of sex crimes and stringent evidential requirements (Howe, 2008). A key theme in feminist writing is that sexually harmful behaviours are commonplace, but not all of them are identified in law. Gavey (2005), for example, refers to the ‘cultural scaffolds’ of rape, located in commonplace social attitudes, values and behaviours. Sanday’s (1979, 2003, 2007) social-anthropological work, spanning three decades, draws attention to the characteristics of ‘rape-free’ and ‘rape-prone’ societies and communities, including rape-prone university campuses in the US. In all ‘rape-prone’ contexts, she found ‘an ideology of male dominance enforced through the control and subordination of women’ (Sanday, 2003, p 337). Feminist theories view male values and behaviours as underpinning and perpetuating sex crimes, and point out that social policy, not individual therapies, is the way to reduce sex crimes.
The critique of ordinary male behaviours prompted a range of studies of non-convicted male populations, particularly looking at the ‘proclivity’ to rape. Studies, mostly undertaken with male student populations, asked men to indicate their likelihood of raping if there would be no negative consequences for themselves (eg criminal prosecution). A consistent finding of between 25% and 30% of respondents indicates that they would rape (Stermac et al, 1990). More recently, two British studies of young people found significant support (particularly from male respondents) for attitudes that endorsed both rape and partner violence (Burton et al, 1998; Burman and Cartmel, 2006). Alleyne et al (2014) found that 66% of a sample of ‘community males’ did not emphatically reject an interest in ‘multiple perpetrator rape’. A symposium at the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) annual conference in 2015 considered studies exploring attitudes to rape in unconvicted male populations (ATSA, 2015). The issue of ‘proclivity to rape’ remains an international political concern; Bruenig (2015) describes the Obama administration’s campaign against sexual assault (‘It’s On Us’1), which challenges social attitudes dynamically and endeavours to make sexual assault socially unacceptable in all sections of society. There are similar campaigns internationally, for example, the White Ribbon Campaign exists in many countries, including the UK.2 These initiatives seek to challenge sexual violence as a social phenomenon, and not (only)