Pathways to rape: Preliminary examination of patterns in the offence processes of rapists and their rehabilitation implications

Abstract

Offence process models seek to capture the interactions between cognitive, affective, behavioural and volitional components of offences, as they unfold over time. These models are primarily descriptive and provide a foundation to higher levels of theorizing. Previous research into the offence chains of child sexual offenders has suggested that a number of different pathways are required to accommodate the most common variations in how men go about committing their offences. Offence chain research has established that the Relapse Prevention (RP) model accommodates a truncated range of these offence chain patterns, yet most treatment programmes for sex offenders rely heavily on the RP model. In recent research with rapists, we constructed an offence process model for rape, using qualitative data obtained from a sample of rapists incarcerated in New Zealand prisons. We present preliminary work on identifying the pathways that individual offences take through this model. We describe these pathways and examine their implications for tailoring of rehabilitation endeavours for men who sexually assault adults.