Sex Crimes

Research and Realities

Donna Vandiver, Jeremy Braithwaite

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000547023
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Violence in Society
• Index: Social Sciences

Sex Crimes: Research and Realities, 2nd edition, provides succinct overviews and details of the research regarding sex crimes and the persons who commit them, dispelling common myths related to sex crimes that have been contradicted in the scientific literature in recent decades. Throughout the book, survivors of sexual violence are highlighted, including those who have engaged in activism leading to positive changes for victims of sexual violence or came forward with their stories of sexual victimization despite being told "nothing can be done."

The book begins with a broad overview of the number and types of sex crimes that occur annually, then outlines several theories developed to explain sex crimes specifically, along with descriptions of popular criminological theories that have been applied to persons who have committed a sex crime. The next several chapters provide details regarding different types ofsex crimes. Subsequently, the authors provide an overview of juveniles and females who commitsex crimes, and of sex crimes that occur within an institution, such as college campuses and sports or youth organizations. New to this edition is a chapter that focuses on victims of sex crimes and the victimology of sexual violence. Attention is given to the nuances of investigating sex crimes and policies (such as registration and civil commitment laws) affecting persons who have committed a sex crime. The conclusion provides an overview of the myths regarding sex crimes and the persons who commit them, again with a summary of what research has unveiled while highlighting areas of recommended future research.

This book is suitable for an undergraduate or graduate-level course for a variety of social science fields. It is invaluable for treatment providers, law enforcement officers, detectives, or policy makers.

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003031444-1

Chapter Objectives

• Assess the relevance of the concept of moral panic for sex crimes and the persons who commit them
• Define a sex crime
• Assess multiple sources for estimating how many sex crimes occur
• Provide a brief history of the research on sex crimes
• Describe the state of current research on sex crimes
• Assess sexual recidivism rates of persons known to have committed a sex crime
• Provide an overview of the research and realities of sex-crime myths

Tune in to your favorite podcast, visit your favorite social media site, or check out the daily newsfeed, and you are likely to come across a story about someone famous who is accused or convicted of a sex crime. Many of us find it hard to look away. It is like a car crash. We don’t want to see it, but there seems to be some innate fascination pulling us toward gruesome sights. The same is true of information about a new sex crime. Many celebrities, politicians, and sports figures have been accused or convicted of serious sex crimes, further attracting our attention. Who would have thought the famous comedian, actor, and educator, Bill Cosby, who portrayed a wholesome persona, would spend two years incarcerated for rape? The bottom line is that the list of people who have been accused or convicted of sex crimes now includes people we know. We also know people, famous and not so famous, who have come forward as survivors of sex crimes.

Virtually everywhere, it seems, we are bombarded with real and fictional accounts of sex crimes, making it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. One goal of this textbook is to debunk many sex-crime fictions—what we call “sex-crime myths”—by examining what research reveals about them. In some instances, the research is definitive, while in other instances, the research is murky. We will examine both types.

In this chapter, we first consider the relevance of the concept of moral panic for sex crimes and people who commit them. We also examine several sources of data on how many sex crimes occur and trends in sex-crime rates over time. A brief history of sex-crimes research is presented, and we provide an overview of the state of current research. Last, several sex-crime myths are assessed; they provide guideposts for this book. Each chapter examines some aspect of an overarching myth that all persons who commit sex crimes are the same. This myth is presented alongside research to contradict it.

Moral Panic

It has been well documented that many of the public’s perceptions of sex crimes and the people who commit them are inaccurate (Stafford & Vandiver, 2016). In 1972, Cohen introduced the term moral panic, which can be defined as a collective response to a perceived threat from an individual or group. The response often exceeds the actual threat and is manifested through an us-versus-them, do-something-about-them sentiment. Although the term has relevance for many phenomena, it is clearly reflected in today’s hyperbolic media portrayals and punitive U.S. laws regarding people who commit sex crimes.

In his book, Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America, Jenkins (1998) has attributed many of the public’s perceptions of persons who have molested children to a moral panic. He detailed how media portrayals, laws, and public perceptions of children and child molestation have changed over time. For example, he described how children in the 1960s were viewed as seducers, whereas children in the 1940s and 1950s were viewed as potential victims of sex crimes who needed protection. He also described perceptions regarding persons who have committed a sex crime as cyclical, with the current moral panic being a swing in the pendulum toward perceiving offenders as “monsters.” The result of the moral panic has been largely ill-conceived and ineffective laws (Klein & Cooper, 2019; Lytle, 2019), which are discussed in Chapter 11.

A noteworthy point made throughout this textbook is that current reactions to people who have committed a sex crime are largely limited to the Americas, especially the United States and Canada. For example, you will learn in Chapter 11 that the United States leads the way in developing sex-crime laws. Many of the assessment tools and treatment programs were developed in the United States and Canada. Much of the research is also done in these countries.

Defining a Sex Crime

Current U.S. federal law defines a sex crime as “a criminal offense that has an element involving a sexual act or sexual contact with another” (42 U.S. Code § 16911 [5][a][1]). This broad and nonspecific definition is reflective of the extensive range of sexual acts that have been criminalized.

Some sex crimes are violent such as rape, other sexual assaults, and sexual abuse of children. Sex crimes also include child pornography production, engaging children in prostitution, and sex trafficking. Still other sex crimes involve social taboos, including exhibitionism (i.e., indecent exposure), voyeurism (i.e., peeping), bestiality (i.e., sexual activity with animals), necrophilia (i.e., sexual activity with bodies of dead persons), and many others.

As you will learn throughout this textbook, the definition of a sex crime is largely time variant, meaning that definitions change over time as a result of social, legal, moral, and even technological changes. Later in this chapter and in Chapter 3, we discuss how the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) definition of rape has changed. Also, as noted in Focus Box 1.1, how we refer to persons who have committed a sex crime has changed. With regard to defining rape, it was not so long ago that the FBI limited rape to acts involving forceful penetration of a female victim. The FBI’s new definition allows for both male and female victims and requires only a lack of consent, not force. Likewise, in Chapter 5, we examine how the legal definition of child pornography has evolved over the past 40 years, particularly emphasizing how the internet has affected its definition.

Focus Box 1.1 Managing the Terminology—Sex Offender Versus Person Who Committed a Sex Crime

Recently, organizations such as the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) and the American Psychiatric Association (2013) have recognized the stigma of the label sex offender. The term carries a wide range of negative meanings, and therefore, it has been suggested that a more person-centered language be adopted, which we do. Thus, we rely primarily on the terminology persons who have committed a sex crime as opposed to sex offenders. Exceptions are made when this changes the original author’s intent or becomes too cumbersome. Although this change in language may appear slight, it can have a substantial impact on people’s perceptions. For example, a recent study showed that people were substantially more willing to volunteer to work with “persons who had committed a sex offense” as opposed to “sex offenders” (Lowe & Willis, 2020).

Sex-crime definitions are also contingent on place and culture. For example, only rapes involving white female victims were prosecuted under the apartheid system in South Africa that lasted until the 1990s. Rape of black women was socially accepted (Armstrong, 1994). In some parts of rural India, marriage and sexual relationships between adult men and young girls had no legal sanctions (Ouattara et al., 1998). Even within the United States, what constitutes a sex crime varies among states. For example, most, but not all U.S. states, classify indecent exposure as a sex crime and mandate registration for convicted offenders (Levenson et al., 2010). Throughout this textbook, these kinds of jurisdictional differences are discussed.

The point is that there is considerable heterogeneity in definitions of sex crimes. More information regarding the definitions of specific types of sex crimes, such as rape, child molestation, child pornography, and human trafficking, is presented in subsequent chapters.

Sources and Numbers of Sex Crimes and Offenders

A need exists for accurate data to determine how many sex crimes occur. Here, we identify several sources of sex-crime data. We also consider the strengths and weaknesses of each source. First, we examine an international source of sexual-violence data and, subsequently, several sources of U.S. data, which are where we get most of our sex-crime and sex-offender estimates.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is a source for international sexual-violence data. These data come from multiple surveys, including an annual report questionnaire, an annual self-report survey on crime trends and operations of criminal justice systems, and other national surveys administered in member countries of the United Nations (UNODC, 2020). The data, however, are constrained by the fact that countries define sexual violence differently, making between-country comparisons impossible. Also, some countries change their definitions of sexual violence over time, making temporal comparisons difficult. Data for selected regions and countries are presented in Table 1.1. The data may reveal real differences among countries, or they are more likely due to different definitions and methods of measuring sexual violence among countries.

TABLE 1.1 Sexual Violence Rates among Countries

Region	Country	Rate Per 100,000
		2012	2017
	Cabo Verde	52.1	39.8
	Kenya	10.8	10.9
	Morocco	8.8	11.3
	South Africa	Data not available	87.9
Americas	Bahamas	82.2	84.1
	Canada	76.9	95.3
	Costa Rica	133.3	191.2
	Ecuador	26.4	80.5
	Mexico	31.0	30.7
Europe	Denmark	33.3	83.6
	Estonia	30.2	19.6
	Finland	64.8	55.4
	Germany	44.8	42.1
	Greece	4.5	4.3
	Iceland	83.8	142.3
	Italy	7.8	8.4
	Polan...