Trajectory Analysis of the Campus Serial Rapist Assumption

IMPORTANCE:

Rape on college campuses has been addressed recently by a presidential proclamation, federal legislation, advocacy groups, and popular media. Many initiatives assume that most college men who perpetrate rape are serial rapists. The scientific foundation for this perspective is surprisingly limited.

OBJECTIVE:

To determine whether a group of serial rapists exists by identifying cohesive groups of young men, indicated by their trajectories of rape likelihood across high school and college.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS:

Latent class growth analysis of the 2 largest longitudinal data sets of adolescent sexual violence on college campuses using 2 distinct groups of male college students. The first group was used for derivation modeling (n = 847; data collected from August 1990 through April 1995) and the second for validation modeling (n = 795; data collected from March 2008 through May 2011). Final data analyses were conducted from February 16, 2015, through February 20, 2015.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES:

Rape perpetration assessed using the Sexual Experiences Survey.

RESULTS:

Across samples, 178 of 1642 participants (10.8%) reported having perpetrated at least 1 rape from 14 years of age through the end of college. A 3-trajectory model best fit both the derivation and validation data sets. Trajectories reflected low or time-limited (92.6% of participants), decreasing (5.3%), and increasing (2.1%) rape patterns. No consistently high trajectory was found. Most men who perpetrated a rape before college were classified in the decreasing trajectory. During college, the increasing trajectory included 14 men (15.2%) who reported having perpetrated a rape, the decreasing trajectory included 30 men (32.6%), and the low or time-limited included 48 men (52.2%). No participant in the low or time-limited trajectory reported perpetrating a rape during more than 1 period. Most men (67 [72.8%]) who committed college rape only perpetrated rape during 1 academic year.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE:

Although a small group of men perpetrated rape across multiple college years, they constituted a significant minority of those who committed college rape and did not compose the group at highest risk of perpetrating rape when entering college. Exclusive emphasis on serial predation to guide risk identification, judicial response, and rape-prevention programs is misguided. To deter college rape, prevention should be initiated before, and continue during, college. Child and adolescent health care professionals are well positioned to intervene during the early teenage years by informing parents about the early onset of nonconsensual sexual behavior.

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By:  Swartout KM¹, Koss MP², White JW³, Thompson MP⁴, Abbey A⁵, Bellis AL¹.

¹Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta.

²Department of Health Promotion Sciences, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson.

³Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro.

⁴Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina.

⁵Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.

JAMA Pediatr. 2015 Dec;169(12):1148-54. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0707.

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The Prevalence of Sexual Violence: Results from a Population-Based Sample

Background

Sexual violence can cause severe mental and bodily harm. This is the first study of a population-based sample in Germany to assess both the frequency of the subjects’ having experienced sexual violence and the frequency of their having manifested sexually aggressive behavior themselves.

Methods

2513 persons (of whom 2422 were over age 18 and 91 were aged 14 to 18) were asked about their experiences with sexual violence in the past 12 months, either as the person committing sexual violence or as the victim of sexual violence at the hands of other adults or similarly aged adolescents.

Results

0.6% (n = 6) of the men and 1.2% (n = 16) of the women surveyed, and ca. 5% (n = 4) of the adolescents surveyed, reported having been the victim of some kind of sexual violence. 1.5% (n = 15) of the men and 1.0% (n = 13) of the women reported that they themselves had manifested sexually aggressive behavior. Women were over-represented and adolescents underrepresented in the sample, in comparison with the overall population.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that the prevalences of experiences of sexual violence and of sexually aggressive behavior are markedly underestimated in official crime statistics, particularly with respect to events in which women commit sexual violence and men are victims of it. Prevalences were assessed in this study from self-reported information; the findings may thus have been distorted by a tendency on the part of the informants to give answers they thought would be socially acceptable, particularly with respect to their own sexually aggressive behavior. Moreover, the small overall number of events complicates the interpretation of the findings.

Key Messages

• In 2015, 2513 persons in a population-based representative sample were asked questions about sexual violence.
• 0.6% of adult men and 1.2% of adult women reported having experienced sexual violence in the last 12 months.
• 1.5% of adult men and 1.0% of adult women reported having behaved in a sexually aggressive way themselves in the last 12 months.
• The present survey yielded higher percentages of women as perpetrators and of men as victims of sexual violence than the official crime statistics.
• Increased sensitivity for the prevalence of experienced sexual violence can help the affected persons obtain the help they need.

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/1mZWB2

By:  Marc Allroggen, Dr. med.,*,1 Miriam Rassenhofer, Dipl.-Psych.,1 Andreas Witt, Dipl.-Psych.,1 Paul L Plener, PD Dr. med.,1 Elmar Brähler, Prof. Dr. rer. biol. hum.,2,3 and Jörg M Fegert, Prof. Dr. med.1

¹Department of Child- and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ulm University Hospital

²Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology, Leipzig University Medical Center

³Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

*Klinik für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie/Psychotherapie, Universitätsklinikum Ulm, Steinhövelstr. 5, D-89075 Ulm, Germany,

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Tested at Last: How DNA Evidence in Untested Rape Kits Can Identify Offenders and Serial Sexual Assaults

An increasing number of U.S. law enforcement agencies have disclosed that they have large numbers of untested sexual assault kits (SAKs; also called "rape kits") in police property storage. Whether previously untested SAKs should be tested for DNA evidence has been the subject of considerable public debate. 

To inform policy and practice regarding rape kit testing, the current study tested a sample of 900 previously unsubmitted SAKs from Detroit, Michigan, and documented the DNA forensic testing outcomes associated with those kits. 

We assessed how many SAKs yielded DNA profiles eligible for upload into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), the federal DNA criminal database; how many resulted in a DNA match (termed a "CODIS hit"); and how many of those hits were associated to other sexual assault crimes (i.e., serial sexual assault hits). 

Overall, there were 259 CODIS hits, 69 of which had DNA matches to another sexual assault case. The potential utility of a DNA profile and CODIS hit may vary depending on whether offender was known or unknown to the victim, so we examined these outcomes separately for SAKs associated with stranger- and non-stranger-perpetrated sexual assaults. 

We also present six case study examples of how DNA testing and CODIS hits helped identify serial sexual assaults in both stranger and non-stranger sexual assault cases. Implications for rape kit testing policies are discussed.

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By:  Campbell R1, Feeney H2, Pierce SJ2, Sharma DB2, Fehler-Cabral G3.

• 1Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA rmc@msu.edu.
• 2Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA.
• 3Harder + Company Community Research, Los Angeles, CA, USA. 
• J Interpers Violence. 2016 Mar 27. pii: 0886260516639585. 

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The Juvenile Sex Offender: Criminal Careers and Life Events

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