Serial Rapists Research Articles

Leveraging Geo-Profiling to Address Rape as a Public Health and Criminal Epidemic in the United States

Abstract Rape, as a pervasive societal issue, transcends the boundaries of public safety, criminal justice, legal jurisprudence, and public health, casting a long shadow of fear, trauma, and profound consequences across communities. This article delves into the multifaceted nature of rape, recognizing it not solely as a criminal phenomenon but as a complex public health crisis demanding comprehensive intervention. In response to the imperative of addressing rape and serial rapists as a criminal and public health epidemic, this study introduces an innovative approach that harnesses the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and geo-profiling. Through synthesizing criminological and epidemiological insights, this research elucidates the transformative role of geo-profiling in understanding, preventing and solving rape crimes. Geo-profiling data analytics capabilities are harnessed to dissect the intricate details, patterns and dynamics of rape incidents, offering a data-driven foundation for preventive strategies. Moreover, integrating geo-profiling techniques empowers law enforcement and public health agencies to map high-risk behaviors, areas and optimize resource allocation geographically. This holistic approach advances our understanding of rape as a public health crisis and informs targeted, evidence-based interventions to reduce its prevalence. In a contemporary landscape marked by the imperative of innovation and interdisciplinarity, this article contributes a nuanced perspective to the discourse surrounding rape. By unifying law enforcement, criminal justice, legal, and public health paradigms and harnessing geo-profiling as a powerful tool, we embark on a path to address rape comprehensively, recognizing its profound impact on individuals and society.

Life Course of Serial Rape Prisoners

Life Course of Serial Rape Prisoners

Ask a Political Scientist: A Conversation with Catharine A. MacKinnon about Power, Politics, and Political Science

Ask a Political Scientist: A Conversation with Catharine A. MacKinnon about Power, Politics, and Political Science

What is the psychological appeal of the serial rapist model? Worldviews predicting endorsement

Abstract The serial rapist model claims that a small number of intentional, repeat offenders are responsible for the majority of sexual assaults on college campuses. The model has formed the dominant argument for some of the most popular forms of campus intervention programs and is cited by high profile advocates and policymakers. Despite enthusiasm for the serial rapist model, it is not empirically well-supported and is contradicted by recent robust data. In this article, we ask: why does the serial rapist model have such broad and enduring appeal? In two US-based samples, one convenience and one representative, we find that people's endorsement of the serial rapist model correlates with worldviews that cohere around ideas of a just and good status quo, and a preference for simple stories. Specifically, we find a positive relationship between endorsement of the serial rapist model and belief in a just world, system justification, social dominance orientation, need for closure and essentialism.

Black, White, and Read all Over: Exploring Racial Bias in Print media Coverage of Serial Rape Cases

The discussion of race and crime has been a long-standing interest of researchers, with statistics consistently showing an overrepresentation of non-white offenders compared to their white counterparts – specifically in relation to violent crimes such as murder and rape. Prior research has found that about 46 percent of identified serial rapists are black, which correlates with other sensationalized violent crimes such as mass murder and serial murder (Wright, Vander Ven, & Fesmire; 2016). The news media are the primary sources of this kind of information for the general public, with previous studies acknowledging that the media primarily focus on discussing non-white offenders in their crime-based news stories. With the majority of Americans receiving their information about crime from the news media, it is important to increase our understanding of how they present crime information. The current study explores the print media representations of serial rapists, from 1940–2010, from five prominent newspapers: The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. A content analysis was conducted on 524 articles covering 297 serial rape offenders from the data compiled by Wright and colleagues (2016) in which race of the offender was known. Results suggest that while newspapers dehumanize both white and non-white offenders, white offenders tend to have their behavior neutralized using techniques to garner more sympathy, while these same neutralization techniques are not generally applied to non-white offenders, thus potentially increasing racial and ethnic bias.

Getting the Cosmology Right

Getting the Cosmology Right

Finding Needle in the Haystack: “Kasur’s Bogeyman” Brought to Justice by Geographic Profiling and Mass DNA Screening

This article describes the application of the concept of geographic profiling in hunting a serial child rapist in Kasur, Pakistan. It also discusses, how DNA became the prime witness against the serial rapist in the court of law. In January 2018, the blind rape and murder case of Zainab Amin hit the headlines. Following autopsy and the subsequent forensic examination, the only piece of evidence, the agencies had, was the DNA profile of the perpetrator and the information that the source of DNA profile is a serial child rapist, involved in at least seven more cases. The analysis of all crime sites and the distance between them strongly suggested that the offender most likely was a local resident. Mass DNA screening in the target region was conducted by CSI teams of Punjab forensic science agency. The DNA matched with suspect number 814 who later confessed all his crimes. In Polygraph examination, the offender revealed his modus operandi which was in line with the hypotheses made during the geographic profiling of the crime scenes. Thus, geographic profiling proved to be a very useful investigative tool in predicting the probable location of the criminal involved in a series of crimes.

Child Sexual Abuse in South Africa: A Criminological Case Study Analysis Exploring a Life-Course-Persistent Pathway for Serial Rape and Murder

Child sexual abuse and the criminogenesis thereof are notably not perpetrated in isolation from physical and emotional abuse – although empirical evidence suggests that the most profound impact thereof revolves around a desire to escape (as a coping mechanism) into a world of deviant sexual fantasy, rape and murder. The article explores a phenomenological case study analysis of a serial rapist and murderer from birth to early adulthood, prior to incarceration – and it depicts an existence driven by fatal sadistic sexual desires, hate and lethal intent. The researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with the participant comprising of three one-hour interviews, with the aid of a semi-structured interview schedule. The study highlighted the need for a proactive response in rendering psychosocial services to the abused child.

Predicting Serial Stranger Rapists: Developing a Statistical Model From Crime Scene Behaviors.

Stranger rapes are the most difficult cases to solve for the police, especially when a serial rapist is involved. Recent research in offender profiling has focused on generating inferences between crime scene variables and offender characteristics to aid the police investigation. This study aims to develop an empirical model to predict a new case of a serial stranger rapist by analyzing a Spanish sample of 231 one-off and 38 serial sexual offenders. A multivariate logistic regression model that included eight significant crime-related variables was able to predict whether an unknown offender is a one-off or serial rapist based only on the victim's account. The predictive validity of the model was tested using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and the result of AUC value indicated a medium predictive capacity. The final model correctly classifies nearly 80% of serial stranger rapist cases. The implications of these findings for criminal investigation are discussed.

Predicting rapist type based on crime-scene violence, interpersonal involvement, and criminal sophistication in U.S. stranger rape cases

Stranger rape cases are one of the most difficult sexual assault crimes to solve for law enforcement. This study aimed to compare crime-scene characteristics between serial rapists and single-victim rapists in stranger rape cases and build a predictive model to predict rapist type. An archival database of released sex offenders included 385 who committed stranger rapes. Of those, 244 were single-victim rapists and 141 were serial rapists. The single-victim rapists were significantly more likely to have violently themed crime-scene characteristics than serial rapists, whereas serial rapists were significantly more likely than single-victim rapists to engage in criminally sophisticated behavior and induce participation from their victims. A logistic regression using 10 crime-scene characteristics correctly identified 75.8% of cases as perpetrated by either single-victim or serial rapists. The most significant predictors of rapist type were whether the offender digitally penetrated their victim, whether the offender choked their victim, whether they were at a new/unknown location or whether they threatened their victim. The implications of these results are that they benefit law enforcement in the investigation of stranger rape cases by potentially narrowing down their suspect pool and add to the classification of stranger rapists in offender profiling literature.

Psychological Profiling of Criminals in Violent Crime Investigations in Nigerian Criminal Justice System

The Nigerian criminal justice system is not entirely ignorant or unaware of the use and the merits of the application of criminal profiling as a tool in crime investigation. The technique was introduced to help law enforcement agencies solve serious crimes such as serial rape or murder and to a lesser extent arson and property crime. At the heart of profiling lies the belief that by combining psychological principles with crime scene analysis, it is possible to identify the likely characteristics of a perpetrator. However, criminal profiling in Nigeria has not nearly reached the level of recognition, functionality, or institutionalization that it has attained in other jurisdictions. This study aims to examine the feasibility and the practicality of offender profiling in a criminal investigation of violent crimes with a particular focus on the Nigerian criminal justice system. It will also give an expository critique of the loopholes and impediments in the Nigerian criminal justice system and ways criminal profiling can fill up these holes. The research methods employed in this study include a combination of both primary and secondary sources. The work highlighted the effectiveness of this field and thus concluded that criminal investigative analysis should be effectively immersed into the justice system and should also receive as much recognition as it has in other jurisdictions especially in the United States and in major parts of Europe.

Mapping matters: geoprofiling application in South African serial rape investigation

Generally, the application of geographic profiling (also known as geoprofiling) is under-researched and its scientific and theoretical foundations, as well as the existing research evidence of its effectiveness, claimed to be inadequate and questionable. Notwithstanding, the present study explored the role of geographic profiling, in the context of the South African serial rapist, by scrutinising, amongst others, the locations of their crime sites. The basic theoretical assumptions underlying geographic profiling, their empirical validity, methods of constructing geographic profiles, and geographic profiling’s accuracy were also probed. Findings presented pioneering criminological insights on how serial rapists navigated to and from their crime sites, which could potentially assist national and international crime investigators with the prediction of subsequent offence locales.

Case linkage in Australian serial stranger rape

PurposeCase linkage theory and practice have received growing empirical support; however, they have yet to be examined fully within Australia. For sexual assault case linkage to be successful, it is assumed that a serial rapist will behave relatively consistently across offences yet distinctively compared to other offenders. The purpose of this paper is to test the underlying principles of case linkage, behavioural consistency and distinctiveness, as well as distinguishing accuracy.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 250 solved stranger rapes by 171 offenders (46 serial rapists, 125 one-off rapists) were taken from Queensland Police Service (QPS) crime records. All possible crime pairings were created and cross-crime similarity was assessed using Jaccard’s coefficient. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis was used to examine the ability to distinguish between linked and unlinked offence pairs.FindingsSerial linked pairs had the highest Jaccard’s coefficient (0.456), followed by non-serial unlinked (0.253) and finally, serial unlinked pairs (0.247). Within the ROC analysis, an area under the curve value was found of 0.913, indicating excellent distinguishing accuracy. Both the underlying principles of behavioural consistency and distinctiveness were supported through theoretical and practical methods. This paper provides the first analysis of serial rape case linkage in Australia, adding validity to this practice.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors wish to acknowledge the support and assistance from the QPS in undertaking this research. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the QPS and any errors of omission or commission are the responsibility of the authors.Practical implicationsThis paper provides validity to the practice of case linkage using a database within Australia. The results of this paper can be used to inform investigators of serial offender behaviours. The theories of offender consistency and distinctiveness are supported, highlighting the importance of behavioural evidence for practitioners. This paper provided a practical increase of the quantity and quality of offences uploaded on the Australian violent and sexual crimes database, which will assist further linkage efforts.Originality/valueThis paper is the first in Australia to examine consistency, distinctiveness and case linkage of serial stranger rape. Thus is contributes significantly not only to an increased understanding of serial rape and case linkage in Australia but also brings Australia closer to modern research practices in this field.

Haunted Television: Trauma and the Specter in the Archive

On television, the ghost enables a revisitation of traumatic histories and a revelation of injustice beyond death, in genres as diverse as the ghost drama and the public information film. In these texts, the ghost brings about awareness and acceptance of past trauma, or avoidance of the repetition of the mistakes of the past. However, if television haunts us – not only in Sconce’s sense of a form of ‘occult liveness’ (2000) but in its ability to reanimate the dead – then the recent resurfacing of Jimmy Savile, a dead television celebrity and serial rapist, might be seen as a more troubling and problematic form of televisual haunting. This article explores the ideas that television itself can be ‘haunting’, that television companies and their archives might become haunted, and that the production of programming, from documentary to drama, can sometimes act as a form of exorcism, or at least a working through, of the traumas and hidden histories that the spectral figure represents. It explores the discourse of haunting that permeates the reception of Savile’s posthumous image, and thinks about what viewing Savile as a spectre reveals about the television archive. The article not only looks at documentary programming about Savile and his crimes, but also thinks about how dramas such as National Treasure (Channel 4, 2016) and the Sherlock episode The Lying Detective’ (BBC1, tx. 1/8/17) are haunted by his spectre.

The Social Camouflage and Everyday Masks of the Con-Style Serial Rapist: A Sociological Analysis of Newspaper Accounts

Research suggests that serial rapists use more sophisticated techniques and possess more specialized awareness than average single-victim offenders (Park, Schlesinger, Pinizzotto & Davis, 2008). Although there is a substantial body of literature on the attack styles of offenders, data and theoretical models on the interactional styles and performance rituals of serial rapists are relatively scarce. The current study uses a qualitative analysis of major American newspaper accounts to discuss the behavioral patterns and performance styles of the con-style serial rapist as depicted by crime reporters. The con rapist uses deceptive persuasion and everyday disguises (e.g., posing as a police officer or as someone in need of assistance) to gain the trust of potential victims in order to isolate them, reduce capable guardianship, and to amplify their vulnerability. Guided by an analysis of coverage in major American newspapers from 1940-2010, we develop a con-rapist typology organized around the special forms of deceit and social camouflage used by offenders. Our typology includes the Working Con (42% of con rapists), the Good Samaritan (31%), the Supplicating Con (17%), and the Transactional Con (10%). We discuss each variation on the con-approach in terms of the premise, performance, and props used to accomplish the act.

The jurisdictional return on investment from processing the backlog of untested sexual assault kits

The economic problem for the forensic laboratory is a problem faced in all arenas; limited resources are available to address seemingly unlimited desires. This is as true for entities in the public sector as it is for any private concern. To assist decision-makers in the allocation of those scarce resources, we synthesize existing research on the benefits of additions to the DNA Database and the potential benefits from diverting resources to analysis of the backlog of sexual assault kits. We offer some guidance for the optimum use of limited resources, through the measurement of the return on investment (ROI) at the jurisdictional level (i.e., that is, the net benefits to society relative to the investment itself). These net benefits include those to survivors from a resolution to their assaults, the benefits to others from the prevention of repeated assaults from serial rapists, and the prevention of societal costs external to those directly victimized. Those external costs extend from the effects on friends and family to expenses for preventive measures to anyone aware of sexual assaults. Such metrics surrounding ROI will assist the public sector in the optimal allocation of scarce resources to the justice system by providing a measures of the marginal social welfare improvement from alternative allocations of these scarce resources in light of objectives of public sector entities. The analysis demonstrates that the societal return on investment from the testing of all sexual assault kits ranges from 9,874% to 64,529%, depending on the volume of activity for the laboratory conducting the analysis. There are extreme economies of scale in effect that are suggestive of some policy alternatives.

Research on classification of individuals committing serial rapes based on their decision-making behaviors before a crime

Research on classification of individuals committing serial rapes based on their decision-making behaviors before a crime

Reconstructing Violence: The Southern Rape Complex in Film and Literature by Deborah E. Barker (review)

Reviewed by: Reconstructing Violence: The Southern Rape Complex in Film and Literature by Deborah E. Barker Michele Curran Cornell Reconstructing Violence: The Southern Rape Complex in Film and Literature Deborah E. Barker Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015, 288 pages, Hardcover, $47.50, ISBN: 978-0-8071-6062-6 During the Jim Crow era, all-white juries and white vigilantes defended white supremacy by using the southern rape complex to justify violence against African American men in the name of protecting the so-called honor and purity of white women. Court-ordered executions and lynch mobs killed thousands of black men in the 19th and 20th Centuries, who were accused of raping or even flirting with white women. The southern rape complex vilified black men as rapists and threats to southern culture, and provided white men a discourse to support the actions they took to reinforce white male privilege and racial hierarchy. In Reconstructing Violence, Deborah Barker shows how variations of the southern rape complex in American film and literature racialized cinematic conceptions of violence throughout the 20th Century. Across an introduction, six chapters, and a coda, Barker explores how six film—Birth of a Nation (1915), The Story of Temple Drake (1933), Sanctuary (1961), Touch of Evil (1958), Cape Fear (1968), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1968). —all of which were adapted from literary novels, reconstructed ideas about sexual violence and race for American audiences from the 1910s through the 1960s. Barker explains how authors, directors, and film studios influenced the process of adapting books into movies. Through this process, she distinguishes the similarities and differences between the original stories and final theatrical cuts to show how tropes of southern rape culture influenced each film's development. The films all take place in the American South during times of national crisis such as Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights Movement. Barker uses D. W. Griffith's Reconstruction tale, Birth of a Nation, as a point of origin for many of the themes she discusses. She explains that Griffith's earlier Civil War films presented "troubling images" of former Confederates dealing with "cowardice and shame" after the Civil War (25). In Birth of a Nation, however, Barker argues that Griffith used southern rape culture to reconfigure "the defeated Confederate as the victorious Klansman" (26). In the film, southern men create the Ku Klux Klan to protect white women from the sexual aggression of black men and to protect southern whites from black rule when the government failed to do so. Using Birth of a Nation as a point of comparison, Barker shows how the tropes of the southern rape complex "are used across genres, in different time periods, in different stylistic modes, and with significant variations in narrative and character" (4). In the remainder of the book, Barker explores racial symbolism within other films by employing theoretical concepts such as racial coding and the "state of exception," both to be explained below. In most of the films Barker analyzes, white actors play the cinematic rapists, but Barker argues, "a character can be encoded as one race while visually signifying another" through "such things as speech, dress, and behaviors" (74). For example, the plot of Cape Fear explores Max Cady, an ex-convict and serial rapist who stalks and attacks the family of Sam Bowden, the prosecuting attorney who convicted him. Barker asserts that filmmakers encoded Cady as black through his defiant behavior, the familiar language he uses with black workers, his casual dress, and objects "'supercharged' with primitive power," such as Cady's "ever-present cigar and rakish Panama hat" (159-160). Furthermore, the police refer to him as "boy," and attempt to use vagrancy laws—originally designed to control the movements of black men—to force Cady to leave town (161). Barker suggests that Cady's ability to outmaneuver the legal measures Bowden [End Page 84] takes to exile him, create a frightening character for white audiences because, "as a bestial, white male rapist, Cady evades the restrictions of Jim Crow segregation" (155). Likewise, in The Story of Temple Drake, the setting is the Depression Era south where Barker explains that hillbillies, gangsters...

Thomas Thistlewood’s Libidinal Linnaean Project

Surveyor, penkeeper, overseer, slaveowner, and landholder Thomas Thistlewood (1721–86) was a white English immigrant to British colonial Jamaica who lived there from 1750 until his death. Canonical readings of Thistlewood's archive quarantine his intellectual pursuits from his brutal plantation oversight, which included serial rapes of enslaved women. Taking a necessarily integrative approach, this essay analyzes Thistlewood's diaries in conjunction with his reading notes, identifying the literary-scientific valences of his perpetration and documentation of rape. It argues that violence against enslaved women was central to Thistlewood's Enlightenment thought and plantation management, in addition to considering the political stakes of choosing a language to describe his interactions with enslaved women. It proposes that antiracist feminist theory and art have the potential to critically disrupt analyses of slavery's archives that threaten to reproduce or even exacerbate their violence.

News Briefing

Updated HEA would allow colleges to delay sexual assault proceedings Right‐wing blogger arrested after speech at UConn Southern California wildfires prompt closures of campuses University faces allegations of ignoring serial rapists