Obscene Phone Calls Research Articles

(038) Sexual Issues Due to Comorbidities in Individuals with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder

Abstract Introduction Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is used to describe the range of conditions associated with prenatal alcohol exposure. FASD is characterized by growth deficits, facial dysmorphia and central nervous system abnormalities. When an individual with an FASD remains undiagnosed and proper interventions are not instituted, secondary disabilities are common. Prenatal exposure to alcohol affects the individual’s development, cognition and learning, which results in characteristic ways of thinking and behaving. Deficits can range from mild cognitive deficits such as subtle effects on executive function, memory and adaptive behavior to profound intellectual disability and severe behavioral problems that result from poor self-regulation. Objectives To examine adverse life outcomes regarding sexual behavior in individuals with FASD. Methods A literature search was performed using keywords relating to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, FASD Development, FASD Cognition and FASD Sexual issues. Results Findings showed that one of the strongest correlates of adverse life outcomes including inappropriate sexual behaviors was lack of an early diagnosis. The longer FASD went undiagnosed, the greater the odds of adverse outcomes. One study that examined 415 subjects with FASD of ages ranging from six to fifty-one noted that inappropriate sexual behaviors was the most frequent adverse life outcome increasing with age. Inappropriate sexual behavior was defined by sentencing to a sexual offending treatment program or a persistent pattern of encounters with at least one of these sexual behaviors: obscene phone calls, sex with animals, voyeurism, incest, masturbation in public, compulsions, exposure, promiscuity, sexual advances, and sexual touching. It was concluded that symptoms of FASD may make it challenging to distinguish between inappropriate and appropriate sexual behaviors due to functional and cognitive deficits. For the same reasons, individuals with FASD do not generally improve after standard cognitive behavioral programming for addressing sexually inappropriate behaviors. Conclusions There has been very little empirical research on the role of FASD in inappropriate sexual behavior. In addition, environmental factors associated with prenatal alcohol exposure may play a role in the increased incidence of inappropriate sexual behaviors. One study that examined inappropriate sexual behaviors in individuals with FASD found that almost all the females in the study that exhibited these behaviors had also experienced physical, sexual abuse or violence against themselves. Additionally, half of them had alcohol or drug related issues. Further research into sexual issues related to FASD is required to confirm causality in findings so far. Disclosure No.

Geographical profiling obscene phone calls—a case study

AbstractStudies on geographical profiling have typically focused on crimes with physical crime sites. This study focused on crimes with no physical crimes sites (i.e. no physical contact occurred between the victim and the offender). A single offender made obscene phone calls to 86 children during the years 1999–2000 in the south of Sweden. The locations in which obscene phone calls were received were analysed in a geographical profiling system (Dragnet) to see whether it could provide a map that showed the most likely area the offender would reside in. The purpose of this study was to explore whether geographical software such as Dragnet can be used by investigators of crimes with no physical crime locations. The result showed that the offender in this case had his home close to the region assigned the highest probability of containing home or base, which indicates that Dragnet can provide maps that can narrow down the search areas for the police in cases without physical crime locations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Children exposed to obscene phone calls: What they remember and tell

Objective: This case study examined children's reports from an obscene phone call (i.e., a verbal sexual abuse). We investigated which type of information the children reported, the completeness and accuracy of the children's statements, and whether there were systematic patterns in terms of memory distortions and omissions. Method: The completeness and the accuracy of the children's statements were examined by matching 64 children's statements given during police interviews with a detailed documentation of each phone call, made by the perpetrator during the actual phone calls. Results: All children remembered the phone call per se, but they were found to omit almost all of the sexual and sensitive information (perpetrator's questions and statements) and about 70% of the neutral information given by the perpetrator. However, the children were accurate in the information they did report. Conclusions: The fact that the children did remember more of the neutral information suggests that they actually remembered the sexual information as well, but that they chose not to report it. Results indicate that children who have been sexually abused may remember more than they report in an initial interview. One possible underlying reason is that children experience shame or embarrassment.

The Self-Reported Behaviors of Juvenile Sexual Offenders

Information was gathered from 485 males younger than 18 being evaluated as possible juvenile sex offenders. More than 60% reported involvement in child molestation, more than 30% in pornography, and 10 to 30% in exhibitionism, fetishism, frottage, voyeurism, obscene phone calls and phone sex. Compared with adult males, juveniles had greater frequencies of fetishism, obscene phone calls, child molestation, and phone sex. Juveniles reported engaging in between 9 and 46 acts of sexual offenses. The average age of onset for the sexual offenses was between 10 and 12 years. Juveniles unwilling to admit violations of common social mores reported fewer sexual offenses than juveniles willing to admit such violations. Of the boys who reported never being accused of child molestation, 41.5% reported they had molested a younger child. Findings are discussed as they pertain to the assessment and treatment of juvenile sexual offenders.

Connections: social and cultural studies of the telephone in American life

Perhaps no other technology has done so much to so many, but been studied by so few, as the telephone. Even as its physical size diminishes, the telephone is becoming more important. In Connections, James E. Katz presents a series of pathbreaking studies, that give greater visibility to this important element in modern life. Katz examines how the telephone reveals gender relations in a way not predicted by feminist theories, how it can be used to protect and invade personal privacy, and how people harness telephone answering machines to their advantage. Katz's inquiry reports on obscene phone calls, the abuses of caller-ID technology, and attitudes toward voice mail. National data about cellular telephones are presented to show the extent to which beepers and car phones have become status symbols. Katz ranges from microsocial interaction to macrosocial theory, and from the family and personal levels of organization to that of large-scale industrial bureaucracies. The result of this multidisciplinary investigation is a compelling mosaic spanning sociology and psychology, and organization and communication studies. These arresting portraits will offer profound insight to historians, students of American culture, and those concerned about the nature and direction of the emerging information society.

'Nuisance' phone calls to women in England and Wales

Obscene or nuisance phone calls are particularly targeted towards women. Employing data from two sweeps of the British Crime Survey a decade apart (BCS 1982 and BCS 1992), this work attempts to measure the effects of individual socio-economic characteristics and victimization history of women in England and Wales on their likelihood of receiving at least one nuisance call. To make the logit modelling analysis more tangible, risks of nuisance calls are calculated from our models of five hypothetical women, single mother, professional, student, housewife and pensioner, with specific attributes taken from the set of explanatory variables.

Communication in a power vacuum: Sense‐making and enactment during crisis‐induced departures

AbstractUnanticipated departures of CEOs place demands upon interim leaders. From the literature a model is derived that illustrates problems of sense‐making, enactment, communication, and organizational learning faced by these leaders and their internal and external stakeholders. A case, which focuses on the sudden resignation of the president of American University for making obscene phone calls to an area day‐care worker, is used to illustrate the model. Comparisons are made in the corporate world with executive transitions at Kodak and American Express. Alternatives are suggested for improvements in communication and interim leadership when traumatic executive departures place severe and unfamiliar pressures on governance structures. © 1995 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Empirical and Theoretical Dimensions of Obscene Phone Calls to Women in the United States

A survey of 354 women (apparently the first representative national sample) found that 16% had received at least one obscene phone call (OPC) within the 6 months preceding the survey. The majority of calls appear to be targeted in some way. Women less than 65 years of age and those who were neither married nor widowed were more likely to receive an OPC. Five theoretical propositions were examined. Two were not supported: namely, that OPCs are pure random incidents or are attacks on socioeconomically powerful women. Two others were reasonably well-supported: that OPC receipt is explained by displaced aggression against a vulnerable population or by perceived availability (a modification of criminal opportunity theory). There was also strong empirical support for the final proposition that sees OPCs occurring in a pattern statistically similar to that of rape.

Atmospheric and Temporal Correlates of Sex Crimes

It was hypothesized that environmental rather than endogenous factors are responsible for seasonal differences in rapes and other sex crimes. Data on four types of sex crimes, nine meteorological variables, and photochemical oxidants, covering a 2-year period, were collected to test this hypothesis. As hypothesized, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that seasonal differences in rapes, indecent exposure, and miscellaneous sex crimes shrank to nonsignificance after meteorological variables were added to prediction equations, but seasonal differences in obscene phone calls retained their significance in analyses that controlled for atmospheric conditions. Further analysis revealed that fewer sex crimes were committed on cold than warm days, and ozone was associated with complaints about obscene phone calls. It was concluded that tabulations of seasonal trends should give way to experiments on the effects of atmospheric variables on sexual and other types of behavior.

Contrapower sexual harassment: The effects of student sex and type of behavior on faculty perceptions

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of sex of offender and type of behavior on faculty perceptions of contrapower sexual harassment. Probability samples of predominately white male and female faculty at two universities in the Midwest were asked to read and make judgments about an incident that might constitute sexual harassment of a faculty member by an opposite-sex student. The effects of offender/student sex, type of harassing behavior, and subject sex were assessed. Some of the results included, as hypothesized, that when the student offender was male, subjects were more likely to: (1) view the incident as harassment, (2) believe the faculty member would be upset, and (3) see the student as responsible, compared to when the student offender was female. Overall, obscene phone calls and explicit verbal-physical harassment were viewed more negatively than written sexual comments and implicit verbal-physical harassment. Female faculty subjects also viewed the incidents as more negative or problematic on several measures than did male faculty.

An Exploratory Study of the Role of Psychotropic Medications in the Treatment of Sex Offenders

Sixteen patients who had been treated with psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy for sex offenses in an outpatient clinic for sex offenders from 1988 to 1991 were contacted to participate in a retrospective study of their treatment. These subjects had been part of an outpatient treatment program for sex offenders and had either been arrested and convicted of sexual offenses or had been engaging in illegal behavior involving a paraphilia (pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and obscene phone calls). During the course of their treatment, they had been referred to one of our physicians for evaluation for pharmacotherapy because of a lack of response to psychological treatment, intense and recurrent sexual obsessions, difficulty in controlling their paraphilic urges, and concomitant and unremitting symptoms of anxiety and depression. Thirteen patients agreed to participate in the study and were administered the Hamilton Anxiety and Depression Scales, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Yale-Brown Obsessive-C...

Patterns of sexual arousal and history in a ?normal? sample of young men

Sexual histories and arousal patterns of 60 college men were sampled in a rural area to better evaluate the role of sexual arousal in males typically used as nonoffender controls in sex research. Nearly two-thirds of the sample (65%) had engaged in some form of sexual misconduct in the past, ranging from sexual contacts with children and coercive sex with women to voyeurism and frottage. Even more subjects expressed a desire for such activities. Previous experience with frottage, obscene phone calls, and pedophilic contacts was associated with higher subjective arousal to depictions of these activities. Previous experience with coercive sex or voyeurism did not appear to be associated with greater arousal to these activities. There was considerable variability in the arousability of subjects to the variety of deviant stimuli presented, thus blurring the distinction between pathological and normal arousal patterns. These results suggest that young men are easily aroused sexually by a variety of stimuli, and seek out a variety of sexual experiences, some of which are punishable by law.

Male adolescent sexual offenders: Exhibitionism and obscene phone calls

Clinical assessment of 19 male adolescent sexual offenders who had committed exhibitionism or telephone scatologia showed that the majority were maladjusted, had committed numerous sexual offenses and came from multi-problem families. Several of them appeared to be sexually deviant, although they did not meet DSM-III-R criteria for a diagnosis of paraphilia. Anti-social traits, sexual deviance in the family, homosexual conflicts, repressed sexuality and sexual deviance were considered to be contributory factors.

Sexual harassment of university faculty by colleagues and students

The focus of this research was on faculty members as victims of sexual harassment by colleagues (peer harassment) and students (contrapower harassment). A self-administered, mailed questionnaire was sent to a probability sample of faculty at a large, public Midwestern university and to the whole population of faculty at a small, public institution in the Western Mountain region. Several hypotheses were made based on conflict theory, role theory, and previous research. Results indicated that women faculty generally have more negative attitudes toward and broader definitions of sexual harassment than do male faculty. Moderate levels of sexual harassment of faculty by both colleagues and students were reported; minor and anonymous (course evaluations and obscene phone calls) forms were the most common. Female faculty were more likely to report harassment by colleagues; male faculty were more likely to report some potentially harassing behaviors by students. Incidents of sexual harassment were usually not reported to formal agents of social control.

THE INVISIBLE INTRUDER:

The analysis of male sexual violence as an integrated phenomenon rests on a theoretical premise that violence and its threat are the foundation of male dominance. I call this phenomenon “sexual terrorism”: the system by which males frighten, and by frightening, dominate and control females. Sexual terrorism is manifested through both actual and implied violence and takes many forms. This article discusses the obscene phone call, a commonly experienced form of intimidation. In this study, while respondents reported a variety of responses to obscene phone calls, most experienced them as “terroristic.” The dynamics of obscene telephone calls mirror the social construction of gender and the fusion of dominance and sexuality.

Effect of homosexuality upon public health and social order.

Are homosexuals "not dangers to society" and is homosexuality "compatible with full health"? To answer these questions 4,340 adult respondents drawn via area probability sampling from 5 metropolitan areas of the USA self-administered an extensive sexuality/public order questionnaire of over 500 items. Bisexuals and homosexuals (about 4% of the sample) as compared to heterosexuals: (1) more frequently exposed themselves to biological hazards (e.g., sadomasochism, fisting, bestiality, ingestion of feces); (2) exposed themselves sexually to more different bodies (e.g., more frequently admitted to participating in orgies, reported considerably larger numbers of sexual partners); (3) more frequently reported participating in socially disruptive sex (e.g., deliberate infection of others, cheating in marriage, making obscene phone calls); and (4) more frequently reported engaging in socially disruptive activities (e.g., criminality, shoplifting, tax cheating). From the standpoints of individual health, public health and social order, participating in homosexual activity could be viewed as dangerous to society and incompatible with full health.

Telephone Associated Pathology: Clinical Case Studies and Discussion

The advancement of modern technology shapes a nd deve lops new expressio ns of psychopathology and accompanying treatments. This is most apparent with the telephone, an instrument ofcontact and communicati on fo r th e pat ie n t , and assessment and intervention for the therapist. T he telephone both const rains and creates unique constellations of patient sym pto matology . T his paper will examine one suc h te lephone symptom complex-the habitual over use of the telephone by non-bipolar patients. T he frequent monopolization of th e phone seen in some b ipolar patients will not be considered, th ough the e lements of in t rusion a nd aggression d iscussed in this paper are probably shared by manic patients . A review of the psychiatric literature reveal s a sur pr ising pau cit y of wr iting about the psychodynamic significance of patient 's use of th e telephone , even in the area of sexual paraphilias and sexually obscene phone ca lls. Freud describes th e telephone as a representation of the body, and as a metaphor for psych oa na lysis (1,2). Stekel (3) discusses the telephone as a se xua l sym bol, a nd Har r is (4) relates phobic anxiety of the telephone to castration anxiety. Fliess (5) is th e first to write of telephoning as a sym bo l for masturbation , an idea elaborated by Shengold in his paper The Symbol of Telephoning (6). Alman si, Soca rides, and others have written of the use of the telephone in sexua l paraph ilias (7 ,8) . The bulk of writing in the mental health literature, however, focu ses o n th e use of th e te lephone in counseling services and suicide hotlines. With th e ever increasing utilization of the te lephone by patient and therapist alike , thi s limited analysis of the meaning and uses of the telephone in the psychi atric literatu re is a n intriguing deficiency in the understanding of patient behavior. Throughout two yea rs of residency training in clinical psychiatry in inpatient and outpatient sett ings, I have treated two patients whose sole presenti ng complaint was the overuse or abuse of the telephone. These patients would make upwards of fifty ca lls a day to their parents, spouse, or th erapist. This beha vio r was independent of manic or psychotic symptoms, and without over t sexual deviancy or perversion . Such an affinity for the telephone is not un common among psych iatric patients, as many psychiatrists a nd their sec reta r ia l staff can attest. Some possible meanings and the various expressions of this behavio r will be examined in these two case stud ies. Mrs. Z is a thirty-three year old, married, Jewish mother of two children who presented to the ew York Hospital-Westch ester Division Outpatient

Male Adolescent Sexual Offenders: The Offender and the Offense

A group of male adolescent sexual offenders were divided into three groups: Courtship Disorders (Exhibitionism, Toucherism and Obscene Phone Calls), Sexual Assaults, and Pedophilic Offenses. Group I offenders tended to come from a less disorganized family background, were better adjusted to school and in the community and were seen by clinicians as less seriously disturbed than the adolescents in the other two groups. In addition, these adolescents did not experience the offense as a sexual act. Group II offenders (Sexual Assaulters) came from a more disturbed family background characterized by a high rate of long-term parent-child separations, committed more violent offenses and had a higher frequency of intellectual functioning in the Borderline Range of Intelligence. Group III offenders (Pedophilic Offenses) were Canadian born, had witnessed physical violence between their parents, were described as having been infants who did not enjoy being cuddled and had siblings who were truant. This study suggests that classifying adolescent sexual offenders along the line suggested in adult literature seems to be justified.