Practical Aspects of Rape Investigation

A Multidisciplinary Approach, Third Edition

Robert R. Hazelwood, Ann Wolbert Burgess, Robert R. Hazelwood, Ann Wolbert Burgess

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315316345
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Infrastructure
• Index: Business

This latest edition addresses rape and sexual assaults from all clinical, pathological, medical, and legal aspects. The book focuses on the victim and covers contemporary issues in sexual violence, investigative aspects of rape and sexual assault, offender fantasy, the personality of the offender, collection of evidence, medical examinations, and treatment, as well as trial preparation issues. Special topics include pedophiles, female and juvenile offenders, drug-facilitated rape, sexual sadism, elder abuse, and sexual assault within the military.

Section II

Investigation

5 The Relevance of Fantasy in Serial Sexual Crimes Investigation

Robert R. Hazelwood and Janet I. Warren

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Human Sex Drive

Sex Is a Sensory Act

The Paraphilias

Fantasy in Sexual Crimes

Inanimate Objects

Dolls

Photographs/Magazine Pictures

Pornographic Videos

Clothing

Consenting Partners

Prostitutes

Girlfriends or Spouses as Partners

Self-Composition

Investigative Significance of Fantasy

Fantasy and Intelligence

Fantasy Is Always Perfect

Fantasy Enactment with Wives and/or Girlfriends

Fantasy and the Linking of Cases

Fantasy and Search Warrants

Fantasy and Prosecutive Strategy

Summary

References

CASE NO. 1

A 24-year-old housewife was kidnapped from her home and murdered. At the time of her death, she was four months pregnant. A search of her residence revealed that all of her panties and the bottom half of her bathing suit had been taken. Her badly decomposed body was discovered 2 days later and an autopsy revealed that she had died from paper towels being lodged in her throat. There were no other signs of physical trauma.

Four months later, a woman was abducted and raped. During the assault, the offender forced her to model several sets of teddies. He forced her to ask him to make love to her and, prior to releasing her, he requested a date and obtained her phone number. Two days later, he was observed leaving a Christmas tree on her porch. He was arrested and convicted for the abduction–murder as well as the abduction–rape.

A search of his home uncovered several hundred pieces of lingerie, over two thousand 3 × 5 cards containing information on women whose photographs and personal information appeared in soft pornographic magazines, a spiral notebook with cross-indexed information from the 3 × 5 cards, newspaper articles about women, lingerie catalogs, and the bottom half of the murder victim’s bathing suit. His wife advised that the man utilized the materials for masturbatory acts. The subject manifested several paraphilias during this and other crimes. They included fetishism, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and telephone scatology.

INTRODUCTION

Sexuality represents one of the more complex aspects of human experience. It integrates the cognitive, emotional, sensual, and behavioral elements of the individual into a uniquely personal pattern of experience that derives from both internal fantasy and external behavior. While usually a private aspect of a person’s life, it becomes relevant to law enforcement once the element of coercion or exploitation is introduced into it.

Theorists (Prentky, Knight, & Rosenberg, 1988) classify the underlying motivation for sexual assault into three main categories: aggression, sex, and power. These primary motivations are frequently expressed in complex sexual fantasies that often begin to develop shortly after puberty. Through a gradual process of enactment, they also become the template for many offenders’ patterns of serial sexual offending. They serve a complex organizing function in the behavior of the offender and frequently determine the choice of his verbal interactions with his victim, his preferred sexual acts, and his overall ritualistic (see Chapter 6) patterns of behavior.

The criminal investigator and others involved in the identification, prosecution, and treatment of the offender can learn to make use of these fantasy-driven behaviors within a sexual offense. Through a detailed review of the verbal, sexual, and physical behavior of the offender, the underlying fantasy behavior can be deduced and the motivational themes formulated (see Chapter 7). This information can subsequently be used to identify sexual assaults perpetrated by the same offender (see Chapter 10), determine future patterns of victim selection, and help to predict the scenario of future crimes.

THE HUMAN SEX DRIVE

There are three principal components of the human sexual drive: (1) the biological, (2) the physiological, and (3) the psychosexual. Humans share the biological component with other forms of mammalian life. It constitutes the natural or instinctual urge to engage in sexual activities with others. This instinctual component influences the basic orientation of the sexual impulse but has little influence on the individual form through which it is expressed. As such, it has limited relevance to sexual crimes investigation. The physiological component is activated when the body begins to respond to stimuli in a sexual manner. This response pattern may vary in intensity and be interrupted by a variety of sexual dysfunctions that are physiological in nature. Such information may provide rudimentary information about an offender in unique cases. The psychosexual element constitutes the most variable and individualistic aspect of the human sexual experience. It integrates the highly specific cognitive, sensory, and behavioral stimuli that are arousing to an individual and reflects his or her unique pattern of experience and development. This psychosexual aspect of the sexual experience, in its almost unending variability, provides the criminal investigator and others with the richest source of information about an offender and with the “flavor” of the specific individual he is seeking.

SEX IS A SENSORY ACT

All human beings employ their available senses to enhance their sexual arousal. A thorough review of the ways that the various senses are manipulated in a sexual assault will ensure that a comprehensive assessment of the psychosexual component of the offender’s sexual arousal pattern has been captured from the victim.

Sight has been identified as the primary component of the male’s sexual response. As indicated in Case no. 1, the offender had his victim model lingerie that he had purchased as props for his fantasy. Without these visual stimuli, he tended to have difficulty becoming sexually aroused. Touch, another important sense related to sexual arousal, similarly manifested itself in the offender’s fondling of his victim and in his autoerotic, masturbatory activities with several hundred pieces of lingerie. The offender’s request that the victim verbalize a desire to make love to him reflects a use of auditory stimuli to enhance arousal while his post-offense delivery of a Christmas tree behaviorally demonstrates the reciprocity that lay at the core of his sexual fantasy. These fantasy-derived behaviors were consistent across the sexual assaults and murder perpetrated by this particular offender and, as indicated, were instrumental in linking the two offenses to him.

THE PARAPHILIAS

Paraphilia is a term used by the mental health profession to describe what is more commonly called sexual deviation. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM 5) defines paraphilia as referring to a persistent, intense, atypical sexual arousal pattern, independent of whether it causes any distress or impairment which, by itself, would not be considered disordered.

Paraphilic behavior is fantasy driven and is commonly exhibited during sexual crimes. The sexual deviations recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fifth edition, include exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, transvestic fetishism, and voyeurism. Abel, Becker, Cunningham-Rathner, Mittleman, and Rouleau (1988) have documented that individuals tend to suffer from multiple paraphilias and that individuals identified as having one paraphilia generally suffered from one or more additional forms of sexual deviation. As indicated in Case no. 1, the offender demonstrated multiple paraphilias, including exhibitionism, fetishism, and voyeurism. It is important for investigators to remain aware of this clustering of paraphilic behavior as it argues against one-dimensional descriptions of particular offenders (e.g., “he’s just an exhibitionist”) and helps to avoid the premature exclusion of offenders from other types of unsolved sexual crimes.

Paraphilic patterns of behavior have been found to remain highly consistent over time. Research suggests that some types of paraphilic behavior can be altered through comprehensive treatment (exhibitionism, for example), while the more aggressive forms of sexual offending (sexual sadism) are unlikely to be changed regardless of the types and length of treatments offered. This stability is demonstrated repeatedly in cases involving the release of a sexual offender from prison who, within months of his release, perpetrates another paraphilic-motivated crime. In such cases, it is assumed that the deviant sexual fantasy has been maintained through masturbatory reinforcement and motivates behavior as soon as external constraints are removed.

The dynamics of these sexual fantasies, their possible paraphilic underpinnings, and their behavioral enactments provide the criminal investigator and others with information that can be used to direct the investigation, prosecution, and treatment of a sexual offender. Contrary to popular belief, there are no obvious demographic characteristics that identify an individual as a sexual criminal. Indeed, the serial sexual criminal is most often found to be like the guy next door (Hazelwood & Warren, 1989). Understanding the role of motivationally driven fantasy and its interaction with the human sexual drive will provide the investigator better insight into the criminal sexual behavior with which he is confronted.

FANTASY IN SEXUAL CRIMES

It is important to note that, for most individuals, fantasy is sufficient to satisfy psychosexual desires and, regardless of its nature, there is no impulse to enact it in reality. For others, fantasy is not satisfactory and there appears to be a progressive desire to transform the fantasy into actual behavior. MacCullough, Snowden, Wood, and Mills (1983) studied 16 sexually sadistic offenders and found that their core sexual fantasy made its appearance around the age of 16 years but took a number of years to be encapsulated into the criminal behavior that led to their arrest. They found that, in the interval between the appearance and enactment of the fantasy, the offender engaged in gradual and partial reenactments of the fantasy (e.g., buying rope, following a woman home) and used these behavioral tryouts as stimuli to enhance his masturbatory activity.

CASE NO. 2

A 22-year-old man abducted a coworker, tortured and raped her. He killed her by taping her nose and mouth and then watched her as she slowly asphyxiated. Twenty-three months later, he abducted, tortured, and raped a second woman, strangling her with his hands as he looked into her eyes. This man had modified his vehicle and constructed a torture platform for use in his crimes. His criminal behavior demonstrated much more criminal sophistication than would be expected in such a young offender. Investigation determined that he had begun discussing his fantasy of capture, torture, rape, and murder with others when he was only 14! From 14 until 22, he developed materials for the crimes, followed women, became familiar with the roads in his county, and modified his vehicles for criminal use.

Researchers have suggested that various factors play a role in the materialization and acting out of deviant sexual fantasy among sexual offenders including personal histories of early traumatic experiences, social isolation, sexual dysfunction, but also cognitive and emotional factors as well (Maniglio, 2010). Sexual fantasizing may have various functions for the offender as well that may include sexual stimulation, selecting specific targets, planning of the offense, mood regulation, or may serve as a coping mechanism for feelings of inadequacy (Gee, Ward, & Eccleston, 2003; Carabellese, Maniglio, Greco, & Catanesi, 2011). It has also been suggested that the content of sexual fantasy can be classified into several subcategories including demographic characteristics of the victim(s), behavioral characteristics of the sexual offense, relational context between offender and victim, situational characteristics such as time and place, and self-perceptual aspects of how the individual envisions himself in the fantasy (Gee, Devilly, & Ward, 2004). Each of these dimensions are potentially revealing to investigators when attempting to draw links between the crime and aspects of ...