Chapter Summary

• Legal classifications and definitions of sexual crime change over time and may include non-consensual offences such as rape; offences involving ostensible consent such as those involving children; preparatory offences such as sexual grooming; and exploitation offences such as abuse of children through prostitution and pornography.
• The occurrence of a sexual offence is often hidden from the official records because the victim, often physically harmed, is too frightened or ashamed to report the crime. Sexual offences are significantly under-represented in the official statistics.
• The advent of the internet has produced a new means by which sex offending can take place through, for example, grooming potential victims, exchanges of information between sex offenders and traffic in illegal images.
• Some psychological theories have considered the motivation of the sex offender leading to typologies such as preference and situation child molesters and anger, power and sadistic rapists.
• The large-scale integrated theories seek to include a range of background, social and psychological factors to given accounts of sexual offending.

Reading List

Myhill, A., & Allen, J. (2002). Rape and sexual assault of women: The extent and nature of the problem. Findings from the British Crime Survey. Home Office Research Study 237. London: Home Office.

Proulx, J., Beauregard, É, Cusson, M., & Nicole, A. (2005). Sexual murderers: A comparative analysis and new perspectives. Chichester, Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.

Sheldon, K., & Howitt, D. (2007). Sex offenders and the internet. Chichester, Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.

Weblinks

American statistics: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/crimesmain.htm

Child sexual abuse:

http://www.protectkids.com/abuse/index.htm

http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/brochures/sex-abuse.aspx

http://www.safersociety.org/

http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/csa_myths.html

Juvenile sex offenders: http://www.practicenotes.org/vol7_no2/understand_jso.htm

Rape: http://www.rapecrisis.org.uk/

Sexual Offences Act 2003:

http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/web_SexualOffencesAct_2003.pdf

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/sexual_offences_act/

UK statistics: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/crime-justice/crime/violent-and-sexual-crime/index.html

Study Questions

Open Questions

In what ways does the internet play a part in the sexual abuse of children?

Why is it difficult to estimate precisely the number of sexual crimes that take place?

Why are there such wide-ranging differences across different countries in the prevalence of rape?

What is meant by the term 'cross-over sex offender'?