Sexual Predators Research Articles

"I'm Already Seen as a Sexual Predator From Saying Hello": Black Men's Perception of Sexual Violence.

Sexual violence is a severe and rampant issue plaguing college campuses. However, the lack of research pertaining to underrepresented students calls into question the generalizability of university education and prevention efforts. Consequently, there is a gap in the literature regarding African American men's understanding of sexual violence. This study seeks to address this gap by examining African American university men's conceptualization of sexual violence from their own racial and cultural perspectives. Ninety-minute semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight male African American students attending predominantly White institutions. Data were analyzed by three coders using an interpretative phenomenological approach and intersectional framework. Data were then presented to an auditor and the coders revised the themes based on the auditor's feedback. Four themes emerged from this analysis: aggressive and violent stereotypes of Black men, othering of male survivors, racial considerations when responding to survivors, and awareness of racial injustices. These results provide evidence supporting the need for culturally grounded sexual violence education and prevention efforts to effectively reach African American men on university campuses. For example, universities may consider having African American confidential advocates and a committee of racially diverse members to run reported instances of sexual violence to reduce bias. In addition, universities may benefit from partnering with Black fraternities to empower men to be allies for social change against rape culture within their communities. For clinical work, such efforts could include incorporating explicit discussions of the impact of gendered racism on Black male survivors into session. Also, clinicians could aim to combat the internalization of the gender racist stereotypes with clients.

Reproduction, predation, sexual dimorphism and diet in Agama anchietae (Reptilia: Agamidae) from Namibia

AbstractAgama anchietae is one of eight species of agama found in Namibia, its distribution range in the upper half of the country covers desert, Karoo and savannah type biomes and overlaps with that of some of its congeners. Here, we describe its sexual dimorphism, reproductive traits, predation, diet and nematode infection, and compare and contrast each aspect among the three biomes as well as to published findings for three other Namibian congenerics, Agama etoshae, Agama aculeata aculeata and Agama planiceps planiceps. Interesting similarities and differences were found among the biomes as well as with the three congenerics. Our hypothesis that the aspects studied in A. anchietae would be more in line with those of A. a. aculeata and A. etoshae, with which it shares similarities in body colouration, social organisation and microhabitat utilisation, was only partially confirmed. This cautions against using morphological and ecological similarities between agamas as proxies for making life‐history strategy inferences.

Weeds Among the Wheat: The Impurity of the Church Between Tolerance, Solace, and Guilt Denial

Weeds Among the Wheat: The Impurity of the Church Between Tolerance, Solace, and Guilt Denial Meinolf Schumacher Pope Benedict and sexual abuse in the Catholic Church During his visit to Germany in September 2011, then pope Benedict XVI met with victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and was expected to address this subject publicly. He did so only indirectly in a sermon in the Berlin Olympic Stadium, speaking in a soft voice about the “painful experience that there are good and bad fish, wheat and weeds in the Church.”1 Almost eight years later, the pope, meanwhile retired, returns to these metaphors in a comprehensive article entitled “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse”: Jesus Himself compared the Church to a fishing net in which good and bad fish are ultimately separated by God Himself. There is also the parable of the Church as a field on which the good grain that God Himself has sown grows, but also the weeds that “an enemy” secretly sown onto it. Indeed, the weeds in God's field, the Church, are excessively visible, and the evil fish in the net also show their strength. Nevertheless, the field is still God's field and the net is God's fishing net. And at all times, there are not only the weeds and the evil fish, but also the crops of God and the good fish. To proclaim both with emphasis is not a false form of apologetics, but a necessary service to the Truth.2 For Benedict, the situation of the Church has evidently gotten so dire that one must be grateful to still find some good fish in the net and to spot some kernels of grain amidst all the weeds! The disturbing element in this article is not so much what the media focused on, namely Benedict's assessment of sexual revolution in the West since the 1960s or the crisis of twentieth‐century Catholic moral theology; it is doubtful that these trends contributed to sexual abuse in the Church. What is upsetting is the fact that the pope emeritus does not question the leniency of Church authorities and its exceeding forbearance, for which he himself bears responsibility, a failure that accrued grave guilt. From a secular external vantage point, the Catholic Church appears as little more than a secret society of celibate men whose first priority consists of the protection of their members from legal prosecution of most depraved crimes and whose arcane clerical disciplines prevent any information sharing with the public. But this fails to fully explain the silence of so many bishops and priests as well as of laypersons holding church offices when questioned by state prosecutors. It is not sympathy with the perpetrators, although that complicity is less astonishing in those cases where bishops or cardinals themselves acted as sexual predators. There are other reasons, why church leaders failed to intervene energetically although they condemned and suffered the consequences of these offenses. It remains baffling why a pope who evidently feels ashamed cannot come to a consciousness of guilt, recognize and confess it, in order to make it “productive” for the victims as well as the future of the Church.3 In the following, I will argue that it is, among others, the suggestive power of certain Biblical metaphors that restrain the response by Benedict and others. Corpus Permixtum: pure and impure in the Church Since its beginnings, Christianity had to deal with the fact that many of its followers and functionaries did not live up to the high ethical demands, which they themselves proclaimed on the basis of the Gospels. Early on, one had to decide what should be done about “impurity” in local congregations and the Church at large, when brotherly admonitions and ecclesial penalties failed to stop minor trespasses and even serious infractions.4 In principle, there are several possibilities: First, one can deny the existence of evil in oneself and one's group and pretend that everything is fine. This leads to duplicity and hypocrisy. The second possibility calls for violent suppression of evil in one's own ranks—which gave rise to religious terror as soon as church and state linked...

Guilt and Its Purification: The Church and Sexual Abuse

Guilt and Its Purification: The Church and Sexual Abuse Katharina von Kellenbach Amidst the horror of ongoing revelations about the Roman Catholic Church's complicity in sexual predation, a theological reflection on Christian teachings about guilt and reconciliation is enlightening. Flawed notions of Christian forgiveness have brought us to this point where priests are absolved of crimes by their colleagues and reassigned to different posts in blind faith in their resolve to begin anew. The mystery of redemption is at the heart of the Christian message, which makes this systemic failure sadly predictable and particularly painful. What is wrong with the Christian theory and practice of sin and forgiveness that it fails to resist devastating complicity? Shifting focus from redemption to guilt invites reflection on the problematic metaphors that facilitate quick release and premature closure. The language of guilt invokes the imagery of stains and impurities that must be purified (by the sacrificial blood of Christ) or of burdens and weights that can be lifted and carried away (by a substitutionary scapegoat). In either case, guilt disappears as if by magic. This essay questions this imagery and draws on ecologically informed, sustainable practices of purification in order to propose a sequence of ritual steps to transform personal and collective guilt in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis. We rarely stop to define guilt, because it is immediately linked to forgiveness. Guilt and forgiveness, sin and redemption are paired concepts that are mentioned in the same breath. But what is guilt? Is it an individual feeling or an objective condition? The term is often used interchangeably, although the emotion and the state of being guilty are, unfortunately, very different experiences. In fact, it is one of the cruel ironies that victims feel guilty, while perpetrators remain indifferent to and oblivious about the harm they caused. It is the victims who are wracked by guilt feelings, sometimes severely so. Depression, anxiety, trouble sleeping, and nightmares are common experiences among survivors. The symptom of survivor guilt would eventually be incorporated into the emerging concept of “trauma” and its official clinical diagnosis as PTSD, post‐traumatic stress syndrome.1 Among its four symptoms, listed by National Institute of Health, are “distorted feelings like guilt or blame” and “negative thoughts about oneself or the world.”2 Much of the psychoanalytic discourse on guilt is victim‐centered since research is driven by patients who consult psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.3 And it is the victims of traumatic violence who are plagued by intense emotions of guilt, rage, shame, and powerlessness. Perpetrators rarely consult therapists, counselors, or confessors. As long as perpetrators do not present with symptoms or are required by law to sign up for therapy [as pedophiles and sex offenders must do according to German law],4 there are few empirical studies on the symptomology of a “perpetrator syndrome.” The diagnosis of “post‐traumatic stress syndrome” describes the experience of victims rather than perpetrators. Martin Buber insisted on the difference between “real” or “ontic” guilt and guilt feelings in a lecture at a Conference on Medical Psychotherapy in 1948, which was subsequently published as “Guilt and Guilt Feelings.”5 A therapist, Buber warned, should not ignore the “external life of his patient and especially the actions and attitudes therein, and again especially the patient's active share in the manifold relation between him and the human world.”6 There is a difference, Buber argued, between the emotional (neurotic) response and the actual violation of the order of being (Seinsordnung). Guilt and guilt feelings are inversely related: Perpetrators lack feelings of guilt, while victims are wracked by self‐blame, shame, and guilt feelings. The symptoms of guilt manifest as lack of empathy, an absence of sensitivity, an obstruction of moral response to the suffering of others.7 To harm another requires a barrier that shields against responsiveness to suffering. Every act of violence involves a hardening of the heart, to use the Biblical concept, on the part of the perpetrator. We will leave aside the theological question of ultimate responsibility and whether it is “The LORD [who] hardened Pharaoh's heart” (Ex 10:20; 10:27, 11:10; 14:8; Jos 11:20). Psychologically, denial is...

Guilt and Its Purification

Guilt and Its Purification

Sexual Harassment NDAs: Privacy, Complicity, and the Paradox of Blackmail

Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement focused public attention on both sexual predation and the non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that help it to persist. NDAs help repeat perpetrators avoid detection and punishment, increasing the risk of harm to future victims. At the same time, NDAs are thought to have benefits. They protect informational privacy interests of both perpetrators and victims, facilitate dispute settlement, and provide victims with larger settlement awards. This article offers moral arguments against the supposed virtues of NDAs. Guilty perpetrators are not entitled to informational privacy about their wrongs. It might be thought that NDAs protect perpetrators from excessive social punishment in ways comparable to felony expungement statutes. But this analogy is not persuasive. The privacy interests of people who are falsely accused of wrongdoing are somewhat stronger. But NDAs are an excessively broad way to protect this interest. While victims have an interest in not being identified, this does not justify taking money in exchange for keeping the perpetrator’s secret. Victims who agree not to disclose in exchange for money differ from victims who remain silent without payment because the former are complicit in the harassers’ wrongdoing and because they sometimes offer to violate a moral duty in exchange for payment. In advancing these claims, I draw on theories about the immorality of blackmail, which seek to explain why it is sometimes wrong to offer silence in exchange for payment. I also provide reasons to doubt that NDAs are important for facilitating dispute resolution and guaranteeing adequate victim compensation.

Men teaching young children: “you can never be too sure what their intentions might be”

ABSTRACTThe teaching of young children (aged between 5 and 9) or Foundation Phase (FP) as it is known in South Africa, is highly gendered and is labeled a ‘woman’s’ job. Globally there have been calls to lessen the gender disparity within the profession by increasing the participation of men. However, apprehensions about men teaching young children can counteract such efforts. In this paper we highlight the concerns emanating from a group of male and female South African primary school teachers about men teaching young children. We focus on a dominant discourse employed by the teachers that invokes essentialist notions of men as violent sexual predators, and simultaneously reinforces notions of children as vulnerable and in need of protection from men. These notions of men conjured up feelings of apprehension amongst the teachers about men as FP teachers. South Africa’s high levels of male sexual violence had especially compelled them to exercise caution when ratifying men as FP teachers. Based on these findings we argue that in order to increase men’s participation as FP teachers, there is need to address the essentialist and homogenising versions of masculinity whilst promoting alternative versions of men and masculinity by shifting away from the reproduction of men as sexual predators.

Predator-Prey Interactions and Eavesdropping in Vibrational Communication Networks

Due to human perceptional bias in favour of air-borne sounds, substrate-borne vibrational signalling has been traditionally regarded as a highly specialized, inherently short-range and, consequently, a private communication channel, free from eavesdropping by sexual competitors and predators. In this review, we synthesise current knowledge pertinent to the view that most animals live in a rich vibratory world, where vibrational information is available to unintended receivers. In recent years, we realized that vibrational signalling is one of the oldest and taxonomically most widespread forms of communication by mechanical waves and that receptors detecting substrate vibrations are ubiquitous. In nature, substrate vibrations are reliable source of information readily available to all members of the animal community able to detect them. Viewing vibrational communication in more relevant ecological context reveals that animals relying on substrate vibrations live in complex communication networks. Long evolutionary history of this communication channel is reflected in varied and sophisticated predator-prey interactions guided by substrate-borne vibrations. Eavesdropping and exploitation of vibrational signals used in sexual communication have been so far largely neglected; however, existing studies show that generalist arthropod predators can intercept such signals emitted by insects to obtain information about prey availability and use that information when making foraging decisions. Moreover, males which advertise themselves for longer periods than females and with vibrational signals of higher amplitude face higher predation risk. It is likely that eavesdropping and exploitation of vibrational signals are major drivers in the evolution taking place in the vibratory world and we believe that studies of interspecific interactions guided by substrate vibrations will, in the future, offer numerous opportunities to unravel mechanisms that are central to understanding behaviour in general.

Online Dating and the Risk of Sexual Assault to College Students

Background: Advances in technology have created different platforms, such as online dating, where college students can meet other people. One serious risk factor of using online dating is the risk of sexual assault. Many sexual predators will use online dating as a method to connect with potential victims who are often vulnerable and trusting.Aim: This paper discusses the risk of sexual assault among college students who use online dating sites. Faculty can be pivotal in educating students on the dangers of online dating and sexual assault. In addition, faculty members are in a position to recognize signs students may be exhibiting after a sexual assault, offer advice, and provide linkage to necessary services.Results: Risk factors of sexual assault are explored in depth, including predatory tactics and the vulnerability specific to college students. Provided are key safety tips for online dating as well as recommendations regarding resources and reporting to law enforcement.Conclusions: Online dating is popular among college students. Educating students in safety factors will enable them to consider the potential dangers and risk of sexual assault. In addition, higher education institutions must consider the needs of students and provide links to resources, support systems and reporting mechanisms.

Manipulation of Color Patterns in Jumping Spiders for Use in Behavioral Experiments.

In the field of behavioral ecology, many experiments are designed to investigate the evolutionary purposes of colorful traits in the context of sexual selection and predation. Methods are various but mostly consist of modifying the color patterns of individuals with diverse colorants. Such techniques have been used across many vertebrate taxa, particularly in birds, but have remained underdeveloped for invertebrates because of the difficulty of effectively manipulating color in small organisms. Instead, to manipulate the appearance of invertebrates, scientists have usually modified the lighting environment to filter out certain wavelengths. However, such a method affects not only the phenotypic trait of interest but the entire appearance of the individual and its surrounding. Here, scaling down the techniques previously used on colorful birds, we present ways of manipulating the colors of small arthropods, using equally emblematic but understudied species: the colorful jumping spiders.

A text classification framework for simple and effective early depression detection over social media streams

With the rise of the Internet, there is a growing need to build intelligent systems that are capable of efficiently dealing with early risk detection (ERD) problems on social media, such as early depression detection, early rumor detection or identification of sexual predators. These systems, nowadays mostly based on machine learning techniques, must be able to deal with data streams since users provide their data over time. In addition, these systems must be able to decide when the processed data is sufficient to actually classify users. Moreover, since ERD tasks involve risky decisions by which people’s lives could be affected, such systems must also be able to justify their decisions. However, most standard and state-of-the-art supervised machine learning models (such as SVM, MNB, Neural Networks, etc.) are not well suited to deal with this scenario. This is due to the fact that they either act as black boxes or do not support incremental classification/learning. In this paper we introduce SS3, a novel supervised learning model for text classification that naturally supports these aspects. SS3 was designed to be used as a general framework to deal with ERD problems. We evaluated our model on the CLEF’s eRisk2017 pilot task on early depression detection. Most of the 30 contributions submitted to this competition used state-of-the-art methods. Experimental results show that our classifier was able to outperform these models and standard classifiers, despite being less computationally expensive and having the ability to explain its rationale.

Behaviour before beauty: signal weighting during mate selection in the butterfly Papilio polytes.

Mating displays often contain multiple signals. Different combinations of these signals may be equally successful at attracting a mate, as environment and signal combination may influence relative signal weighting by choosy individuals. This variation in signal weighting among choosy individuals may facilitate the maintenance of polymorphic displays and signalling behaviour. One group of animals known for their polymorphic patterning are Batesian mimetic butterflies, where the interaction of sexual selection and predation pressures are hypothesized to influence the maintenance of polymorphic wing patterning and behaviour. Males in the female-limited polymorphic Batesian mimetic butterfly Papilio polytes use female wing pattern and female activity levels when determining whom to court. They court stationary females with mimetic wing patterns more often than stationary females with non-mimetic, male-like wing patterns, and active females more often than inactive females. It is unclear whether females modify their behaviour to increase (or decrease) their likelihood of receiving male courtship, or whether non-mimetic females spend more time in cryptic environments than mimetic females, to compensate for their lack of mimicry-driven predation protection (at the cost of decreased visibility to males). In addition, relative signal weighting of female wing pattern and activity to male mate selection is unknown. To address these questions, we conducted a series of observational studies of a polymorphic P. polytes population in a large butterfly enclosure. We found that males exclusively courted active females, irrespective of female wing pattern. However, males did court active non-mimetic females significantly more often than expected given their relative abundance in the population. Females exhibited similar activity levels, and selected similar resting environments, irrespective of wing pattern. Our results suggest that male preference for non-mimetic females may play an active role in the maintenance of the non-mimetic female form in natural populations, where males are likely to be in the presence of active, as well as inactive, mimetic and non-mimetic females.

Mentally ill, HIV-positive, or sexual predator? Determining myths perceived as representative of transgender people

The present study explored possible stereotypical beliefs, or myths, related to prejudice and discrimination toward transgender individuals in the US. In a 5 x 2 x 3 mixed factorial design, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers ( N = 1,450) read a description of a target depicted as a sexual predator, HIV-positive, having a mental illness, an ally of transgender people, or unfair to others. They then completed an intuitive judgment task regarding the target’s gender (male or female) and identity stigma detail (transgender, sexual minority, or no stigmatized detail), and provided feeling thermometer ratings for various groups. Results indicated that participants perceived mental illness as relatively representative of transgender people, but not HIV-status or sexual predation. Feeling thermometer ratings for transgender people were significantly lower than those for other gender/stigma categories and were negatively correlated with participant religiosity and conservatism. We discuss these findings in terms of gendered assumptions and present implications for gender-related stigma and the role of perceived mental illness in antitransgender prejudice.

Naming Violence in United States Colonialism

Abstract This article reexamines a highly public dispute between a powerful and well-connected Episcopal bishop and his missionary priest, men both central to the government’s campaign of war and assimilation against Indigenous Peoples in the Northern Great Plains of the nineteenth-century United States. The bishop claimed that the priest had engaged in sexual intercourse with a Dakota woman named “Scarlet House,” and used this allegation to remove the priest from his post. No historian ever challenged this claim and asked who Scarlet House was. Employing Dakota-resourced evidence, government and church records, linguistics, and onomastics, this study reveals that in actuality there was no such person as Scarlet House. Furthermore, at the time of the incident, the person in question was not a woman but a child. The church created a fictional personage to cover up what was taking place at the agency: sexual violence against children. After “naming” this violence, this article makes four key historical contributions about the history of US settler colonialism: It documents Dakota Peoples’ agency, by demonstrating how they adapted their social structures to the harrowing conditions of the US mission and agency system. It situates the experiences of two Dakota families within the larger context of settler-colonial conquest in North America, revealing the generational quality of settler-colonial violence. It shows how US governmental policies actually enabled sexual predation against children and women. And, it argues that “naming violence” means both rendering a historical account of the sexual violence experienced by children and families in the care of the US government and its agents, as well as acknowledging how this violence has rippled out through communities and across generations.

El burlador de Sevilla

El burlador de Sevilla

“Weird Melancholy” and the Modern Television Outback: Rage, Shame, and Violence in Wake in Fright and Mystery Road

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Marcus Clarke famously described the Australian outback as displaying a 'Weird Melancholy' (qtd. in Gelder 116). The strange sights, sounds, and experiences of Australia’s rural locations made them ripe for the development of the European genre of the Gothic in a new location, a mutation which has continued over the past two centuries. But what does it mean for Australia’s Gothic landscapes to be associated with the affective qualities of the melancholy? And more particularly, how and why does this Gothic effect (and affect) appear in the most accessible Gothic media of the twenty-first century, the television series? Two recent Australian television adaptations, Wake in Fright (2017, dir. Kriv Stenders) and Mystery Road (2018, dir. Rachel Perkins) provoke us to ask the question: how does their pictorial representation of the Australian outback and its inhabitants overtly express rage and its close ties to melancholia, shame and violence? More particularly, I argue that in both series this rage is turned inwards rather than outwards; rage is turned into melancholy and thus to self-destruction – which constructs an allegory for the malaise of our contemporary nation. However, here the two series differ. While Wake in Fright posits this as a never-ending narrative, in a true Freudian model of melancholics who fail to resolve or attend to their trauma, Mystery Road is more positive in its positioning, allowing the themes of apology and recognition to appear, both necessary for reparation and forward movement.

Engaging with Cultural Sport Psychology to Explore Systemic Sexual Exploitation in USA Gymnastics: A Call to Commitments

In this article, we engage with cultural sport psychology (CSP) to explore sexual exploitation in USA Gymnastics. Specifically, using critical reflexivity on the Larry Nassar case, we bring to life how systemic abuse in sport is more than a tragedy. We argue that perpetration of abuse persists in sport spaces largely because athletes train and compete in relations of force that privilege structures and practices to which athletes are subordinate. A return to recenter discussions on the significance of oppression and power in the larger discourse and ethical practice of CSP became imperative with the news of U.S. doctor Larry Nassar’s sexual predation. As tools in our advocacy for the reduction of sport sexism and sexual exploitation and abuse, we offer four ethical commitments to the field as we examine the ways systemic gendered violence and oppressions in sport are perpetrated in systems, decision-making, and every practices. We invite CSP scholars and sport psychology practitioners to interrogate and disrupt systemic intersectional disempowerment and cultures of sexual exploitation.

Frado, Linda, Ellen, and Iola

Frado, Linda, Ellen, and Iola Cherene Sherrard-Johnson Like many other budding scholars and writers, I was a voracious reader prone to solitude and imagining "castles in the air" (117). It's no surprise that I would declare publicly that my favorite character from Louisa May Alcott's classic was Jo; however, in secret I also admired Amy's frank penchant for luxury and material comforts. I was never attracted to Meg's dutifulness or Beth's transcendent morality. Yet the scene I most remember is when the Moffats make over Meg into a "newly dressed doll" (76) in "borrowed plumes" (77) in chapter 9, "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair." As one of the few black girls in my private primary school, and later as the only black student in honors classes in my public high school, I knew what it was to constantly feel out of place, to be reminded subtly and overtly of your difference, and to want desperately to belong. That is why this scene at the "small party" (73), where, despite her desire to fit in, Meg has the "queer feeling" (77) of being made a spectacle, is memorable. It's where she and her sisters learn the importance of not judging yourself by the barometers of others but "to know and value the praise which is worth having" (83). Not until I was in graduate school at Cornell University in Lois Brown's class on nineteenth-century black women writers would the names of heroines from African American women's literature become as familiar to me as those from Little Women. The groundbreaking recovery work of Hazel Carby, Ann duCille, Frances Foster, Claudia Tate, and others would exponentially widen my literary landscape. While the March sisters are bemoaning how "dreadful to be poor" and a "Christmas without any presents" (11) in the midst of Civil War, Linda Brent's chapter "Christmas Festivities" describes enslaved women's attempts to "gladden the hearts of their little ones" despite the slave auction that presages "the Slaves' New Year's Day" (Jacobs 118, 15). Slowly, memorable exclamations like Amy's "Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty" (132) in response to Jo's sacrifice of her abundant chestnut hair to bring her father home from the Civil War hospital would be supplanted by Iola Leroy's declaration that she was "tried but not tempted" by white men's propositions (Harper 115). Alcott's autobiographical novel set the standard for a decidedly American, New England girlhood, but nineteenth-century black women authors would deploy sentiment and sensation in their autobiographical fictions for a different objective. [End Page 99] In their hands, Alcott's tropes (with influence from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child) became powerful tools of resistance, shining the spotlight on "little women" who were not allowed a true or intact childhood; whose plot trajectories forked not between artistic spinsterhood and marriage, but who became adolescent mothers confronted with a choice for freedom with or without their children; whose domestic labors served others, toiling like the unaffectionately nicknamed Frado as "Nig" under the constant threat of a beating; and whose adventures abroad involved stowing away on a ship (Linda Brent) or gendered and racial passing on a train (Ellen Craft). I'm glad that on its 150th anniversary Little Women can be read intertextually alongside new classics that portray the diversity and texture of what it meant to grow up female in a nation besieged by racial injustice and sexual predation, but with the grounded hope that like Marmee's daughters they would have the opportunity "to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected, to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send" (84). [End Page 100] Cherene Sherrard-Johnson University of Wisconsin–Madison Copyright © 2019 University of Nebraska Press

An "Indyan Called Nangenutch or Will": Indian Identity and Identification in a 1668 Long Island Rape Trial

An "Indyan Called Nangenutch or Will":Indian Identity and Identification in a 1668 Long Island Rape Trial Jason R. Sellers (bio) ON MARCH 19, 1667/68, in the town of East Hampton on the southeastern tip of Long Island, Nangenutch, a Montauk Indian also known to the English as Will, met Mary and John Miller as he approached their home. A bound laborer delivering a bag of corn for grinding, Nangenutch accompanied Mary back to the house while John continued onward to visit a neighbor. Once inside "the Indian came and pulled her down into the floore, and pulled up her Coates, and stopped her mouth with his hand, and thrust her against a block, and being too strong for her, against her will hee committed the act of uncleannesse upon her body" amid her continued protests before eventually desisting. Fleeing her home, Mary encountered a neighbor, to whom she related the attack, and by the following day local magistrates had indicted Nangenutch and deposed Mary and two previous victims. They referred the case to a higher court, which examined Nangenutch on March 28. He largely confirmed Mary's account, and the case proceeded to trial the following month. Despite concluding unanimously that the defendant had not committed the capital crime of rape because he had not ejaculated, the court found him guilty of attempted rape, ordering him publicly whipped and sold into slavery in the Leeward Islands "that all Indyans may bee deterred to attempt the like." However, Nangenutch evaded his punishment by escaping his Manhattan jail and rejoining his natal community at Montauk. Frustrated by their inability to apprehend the fugitive as he occasionally appeared near East Hampton over the next two years, English officials issued orders barring him from entering the town and levied a fine on the Montaukett that was later used to extract land concessions from the struggling community.1 A rare instance of documented Indian sexual assault on an English woman, this episode provides a unique opportunity to consider the fate of Native individuals and communities forced to grapple with a shifting matrix of social relations as a succession of colonial regimes undermined Native [End Page 1] American economic independence, political and legal sovereignty, and cultural autonomy. As Nangenutch tried to negotiate the new colonial order, his attack was shaped by dramatic upheavals in the world around him. Moreover, the persistent ties between Nangenutch and his natal community and the consequences of his actions for the Montauketts as a whole reinforce the impression that his experience was indeed more than simply personal. By the late seventeenth century, the Montauketts—like other Natives in England's growing North American colonies—struggled to define the relationship between themselves and the newer colonial communities as they positioned themselves in a developing regional social landscape.2 None of these considerations excuse the violence Nangenutch inflicted on Mary and at least two previous victims, and it is certainly reasonable to view him as a sexual predator and serial offender. But to so simplify his story would be to dismiss—to borrow a phrase from Wendy Warren—a "life in need of reconstruction" and to neglect an opportunity to carefully consider the influence of complex forces on a historical actor. The result would caricature an individual who appears in the documentary record only in relation to this single incident and thus frame his historical experience entirely in European American legal terms that obscure other aspects of his fuller life. Ashley Glassburn Falzetti has argued that archival absences erase the complex identities and histories of Native individuals in order to explain and justify settler colonialism; Nangenutch's subsequent disappearance from the historical record reflects not just his individual erasure but also the diminished stature of the Montauketts on English Long Island. Nangenutch's case, then, offers a chance to examine rather than reproduce the historical forces that largely silenced Nangenutch himself and ultimately the Montaukett as well.3 The documentary record produced by English colonial authorities most transparently reflects their concerns about governing Indian subjects and English legal procedures and standards of evidence surrounding the crime of rape. A series of legal records details the sequence of events that spanned just...

Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Reviewed by: Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar David N. Gellman Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. By Erica Armstrong Dunbar. ( New York and other cities: 37 INK/Atria, 2017. Pp. xviii, 253. Paper, $16.00, ISBN 978-1-5011-2641-3; cloth, $26.00, ISBN 978-1-5011-2639-0.) "Never caught" is a phrase that aptly describes the escaped Ona Judge's efforts to avoid her far more famous masters, George and Martha Washington. In May 1796 Martha's enslaved maid surreptitiously boarded a sloop in [End Page 672] Philadelphia bound for New Hampshire. Despite placing a runaway slave advertisement and arranging two concerted attempts to retrieve Judge from Portsmouth, George failed to lure his wife's dower property back to Virginia. In 1845 an elderly, long-widowed Ona Judge Staines recalled telling one of Washington's would-be slave-catching agents, "I am free now and choose to remain so" (p. 166). She was, indeed, never captured. By implication, history has also never fully captured the turpitude of the revered founder and his wife. For the Washingtons, slavery was not merely an inheritance but also a personal prerogative consciously exercised, even as some of their black and white contemporaries worked to weaken slavery's grip. Judge was part of a retinue of slaves attending the president and his wife in Philadelphia, where the gradual emancipation legal regime granted freedom to enslaved people who remained in Pennsylvania for six consecutive months. Accordingly, the Washingtons periodically rotated Judge and other enslaved people out of the state. Regardless, Judge's extensive time in the northern city during Washington's presidency showed her alternatives to plantation slavery. When she learned that her mistress intended to make her a wedding present to a tempestuous granddaughter, Judge planned her escape. She departed the Executive Mansion while her masters ate dinner, soon thereafter embarking for the Granite State, where slavery was in terminal decline. The engaging, fast-paced narrative places Judge, not George Washington, in the role of protagonist. Her calculations and emotions matter most in this story, even though, or especially because, Washington left behind mountains of papers and Judge only scraps, specifically two abolitionist newspaper articles based on late-in-life interviews. Her mother, Betty, was Martha's enslaved seamstress, and her father, Andrew Judge, was a white servant whose indenture was purchased by George Washington. As author Erica Armstrong Dunbar makes clear, Ona's status as a favorite of Martha's in a presidential household on the move, first to Manhattan and then to Philadelphia, did not mean that Ona could ignore the dangers of being an enslaved female coming of age. The possibilities of sexual predation and the potential disruptions of a master's death or displeasure fueled fears that burdened even the most well-placed enslaved people. Turning fugitive as a young woman, Judge had to keep her wits about her, most dramatically when the now-retired president sent Martha's nephew to Portsmouth to bring Judge back to Mount Vernon. Judge fled her home, child in tow, before the slave-catcher's dissembling promises of future freedom could turn into forced rendition. Dunbar draws on what historians have learned about slavery in a variety of early American settings for context and deploys informed inference to recreate what Judge "must have" or "would have" thought or felt (p. 79). The book aims for a popular audience. Points of contention are confined to the citations, and overt academic theorizing is avoided. The author does not stake out explicit positions on the ever-growing historiographical debates on slavery, the Revolution, the founders, and the Constitution; she also does not attempt a comprehensive assessment of Washington and slavery, either in comparison with other founders or on Washington's own terms. Even so, at a time when, from Barnes & Noble to Broadway, founders such as Washington and Alexander Hamilton claim such a prominent place in the public's [End Page 673] imagination, a compelling portrait of a black woman determined to assert her liberty in the Age of Revolution makes an important contribution to the literature and...