Rape Violence Research Articles

Memory and the Wages of Sin: Displacing Rape in Cervantes and Hardy

This essay shows that in Spanish and French iterations of the early modern force of blood plot, the violence of rape is diffused within the bounds of interior spaces, where memory is constructed and then set aside. In his 1613 novella, La fuerza de la sangre, Cervantes builds the verisimilar story of rape on the framework of artificial memory, a structure superseded by the eventual delights of the marriage bed, shared by erstwhile rapist and victim alike. Such repetition of pleasure produces offspring who joyfully retell their parents' reframed story. Ultimately, the truth of that story is located in room and womb, both places of violence transmuted to sites of pleasure. In his dramatic adaptation of the novella, Alexandre Hardy stages a reenactment of the effects of rape, a source of traumatic memory for both victim and perpetrator. In the French tragicomedy, the Spanish heroine's "stolen jewel" of virginity is transformed into the material wages of the ravisher's sin. He clears his debt to the rape victim through a process of atonement and reimbursement that leads swiftly to negation of the past and obliteration of his crime. The act of forgetting privileges the future, giving free rein to Cupid and his ludic games of love, designated by the blindfold and mask that are also the sartorial accessories to abduction.

Trends in Child Sexual Molestation, Rape and Incest: A View from South West Nigeria

Out of the blues, sexual molestation, especially rape and incest is suddenly on the increase in Nigeria. Presently, many Nigerians have lost their once cherished values of decency and responsibility, in view of several cases of adult males defiling young under-aged girls being widely reported daily in both the print and electronic media. Most times, these acts of betrayal of trust are perpetrated mostly by close neighbours, uncles, pastors, imams, teachers, fathers etc. Benefitting from documentary data accessed from the Internet/web and national newspapers, In-depth Interviews (IDIs) were conducted with some personnel of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and some victims, Key Informants techniques (KIIs) were used to elicit information from the Police and Courts for the study. The paper submits that sometimes, the victim is cajoled and deceitfully taken advantage of; oftentimes, it is forceful, violent rape that leaves the victim physically and psychologically bruised and scarred. In extreme cases, the victims – especially those who resist, lose their lives or are maimed for life. The study identifies that extant provisions in both the Criminal and Penal Codes in Nigeria, on child sexual abuse, are not stringent enough, while the Nigerian Child Rights Act (CRA) (2003) is yet to be enacted by many States of the Federation, and also the attending issue of delay in the Courts. The Police are equally hampered by lack of specialized training/skills and poor logistics for quick responses. The study strongly suggests that child sexual molestation can be significantly reduced through aggressive mass sensitization programmes; the formal punishment for sexually abusing a child should be quite severe and even to the very limit permitted by the law, to serve as an effective deterrent.

Young Africans' social representations of rape in their HIV-related creative narratives, 2005–2014: Rape myths and alternative narratives

Sexual violence is both a major human rights issue and an important driver of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa. While quantitative indicators of sexual violence have evolved to facilitate cross-national comparison and country-level decision making, qualitative findings typically remain constrained to single sites and populations. We analyzed social representations of sexual violence, specifically rape, in a sample of 1446 narratives about HIV written by young Africans between 2005 and 2014. The narratives were written at 5 discrete time points (2005, 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2014) by equal numbers of males and females aged 10–24 in urban and rural areas of Swaziland, Kenya, South-East Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal. We combined three analytical approaches: descriptive statistics of quantifiable characteristics of the narratives, thematic data analysis, and a narrative-based approach. Violent rapes by strangers occur in all country samples, but in Nigerian narratives the ‘immoral’ behavior of female characters facilitates these attacks. Swazi narratives, in contrast, often depict familial rapes that include disclosure and service seeking as key components of the rape scenario. The social representations found in the narrative data reflect rape myths, which, at the socio-cultural level, serve to trivialize sexual violence by minimizing or justifying aggression, thus shifting blame to victims and absolving perpetrators of blame. Additionally, these social representations conflict with self-report data from Violence Against Children surveys conducted in Swaziland (2007), Kenya (2010) and Nigeria (2014) in that they depict perpetrators primarily as strangers or family members as opposed to romantic partners; however, social representations and self-report concur regarding barriers to disclosure and service seeking for victims. The Swazi narratives offer potential models for the framing of sexual violence in ways that promote disclosure and support for survivors and counteract harmful rape myths.

Contextualizing the 1990 campus security act and campus sexual assault in intersectional and historical terms

PurposeResidential college campuses remain dangerous – especially for women students who face a persistent threat of sexual violence, despite passage of the 1990 Campus Security Act and its multiple amendments. Campuses have developed new programming, yet recent research confirms one in five women will experience some form of sexual assault before graduating. Research on campus crime legislation does not describe in detail the context in which it developed. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the effects of early rhetorical frames on the ineffective policy.Design/methodology/approachThe authors discuss the rhetorical construction of “campus crime,” and related “criminals” and “victims,” through content analysis and a close interpretive reading of related newspaper articles.FindingsThe 1986 violent rape and murder of Jeanne Clery at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania became iconic in media descriptions of campus crime. Media drew attention to the racial and classed dimensions of the attack on Clery, but elided the misogyny central to all sexual assaults. This reinforced a stereotype that “insiders” on campuses, primarily white and middle class, were most vulnerable to “outsider” attacks by persons of color. Colleges and universities adopted rhetoric of “endangerment” and “unreason” and focused on what potential victims could do to protect themselves, ignoring the role of students in perpetrating crime.Research limitations/implicationsThis analysis does not link rhetoric in newspapers to legislative discussion. Further analysis is necessary to confirm the impact of particular claims and to understand why some claims may have superseded others.Originality/valueThis analysis focuses critical attention on how campus crime policy is shaped by cultural frames.

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America. By Sarah Deer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 232 pp. $22.95 paperback.

The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America. By Sarah Deer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 232 pp. $22.95 paperback.Native American scholar Sarah Deer's new book is a timely and valuable contribution which offers a wide-ranging and insightful consideration of the crisis of sexual violence against Native women. The author opens by challenging the description of this problem as an epidemic, arguing that the term depoliticizes the issue by conjuring images of a mysterious, spontaneous problem of unknown origin. Deer wastes no time in convincing us that, in reality, the rape of Native women is founded upon a history of state-sponsored violence and is sustained by the very structures and institutions that purport to prohibit and prevent this crime. From the outset, it is clear that, fundamentally, this book is about the inextricable intertwining of the violence of colonization and the violence of rape.Deer establishes her priorities clearly in chapter one by noting the methodological limitations of conventional data-gathering on the rape of Native women. She questions the reliance on statistics to know the issue, and asserts that the voices and documented histories of survivors provide more real, useful, and compelling data. Indeed, throughout the book, Deer is determined to assign proper value to the experiential wisdom of women who have survived both violent colonization and violent rape, arguing that these situated knowledges provide insight into the profound and unmeasurable destruction of the harm, help to challenge the stereotypes of inferiority inscribed upon the Native population, and map a possible way out of the crisis.Chapters two through five provide a detailed historical, legal, and political overview of responses to rape from precolonialism through to the current day. Although the discussion is at times descriptive and meandering, there is no obvious prescription for covering a terrain of such vastness and complexity. Deer's narrative is consistently engaging and fascinating and is peppered with evocative and often disturbing excerpts from original historical documentation such as the diaries of colonizers. A particularly interesting point made in chapter two-and threaded throughout the entire volume-is the incompatibility of Native and colonial law in their conceptualization of women, sex, gender, identity, and rights. As Deer explains, it was patriarchal colonial law that conceived of rape as a property crime, whereby the sexual violation of a girl or woman was only recognized because it devalued a man's assets. Gendered power and worth in Native systems, on the other hand, was and is far more complex.Chapter four provides a particularly interesting analysis of government apologies to Native people, noting their omissions and silences and how they ultimately fall short through their failure to acknowledge the pervasiveness and continuing legacy of harms. …

Sexist Humor and Rape Proclivity: The Moderating Role of Joke Teller Gender and Severity of Sexual Assault.

Three experiments examined the effect of sexist humor on men's self-reported rape proclivity (RP). Pilot study demonstrated that people differentiate the five rape scenarios of Bohner et al.'s. RP Scale based on the degree of physical violence perpetrated against the victim. Experiment 1 demonstrated that men higher in hostile sexism report greater RP upon exposure to sexist jokes when a woman (vs. a man) delivers them, and that this effect is limited to rape scenarios depicting a moderate versus a high level of physical violence. Experiment 2 further demonstrated that the relationship between hostile sexism and rape proclivity in response to a moderately violent rape scenario after exposure to sexist humor generalizes beyond women in the immediate humor context to women as a whole.

Englaland

Verse Steve Ely. Englaland. Grewelthorpe, Ripon, UK. Smokestack Books (Dufour Editions, distr.). 2015. 200 pages. Steve Ely’s Englaland evokes postindustrial scenes that become more richly meaningful as he connects the present to the past. The first poem begins with an epigraph: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Despite the trans-Atlantic borrowing and the fact that Faulkner and Ely are each deeply rooted in different regions, the phrase is altogether apt. Ely’s verse sweeps from the tenth century to the twenty-first with an imperative sense that this England is continuously one language, one people, and one landscape. Ely brings ancient verse forms into contemporary English poetry in a remarkably skillful way. For example, a verse in section 1 of “The Battle of Brunanburh” reads, “Sword-slit ship-man crawling in the surge, waxy as tallow; current whips him away. Dewfall, blindlight, shouts breaking like stars in the rout to the river, tumult of thundering horsethegns.” The compounding , stress pattern, and alliteration are deeply rooted in English poetry. The form is appropriate to the tenth century, certainly, but a thousand years afterward (in section 12) the form persists: “Sheffield and Hallamshire Cup, September, ’85. Away to The Gate, at Swinton. We got beat, nine-nowt. They had back-perms and their thighs glistened with oil. We had bed-hair and beer-guts.” Within this poem, raiders become trespassing fishermen, brawling mercenaries become rowdy soccer fans— part of the reader’s pleasure is to discover what century they’re in at any moment. Englaland varies from alliterative verse to ballads, from prose poems to verse drama. “Scum of the Earth: A Play in One Act” pairs anachronistic characters Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington (1769– 1852), with a living contemporary, Peter Benjamin, Lord Mandelson of Foy. Each leads an army of working-class men known only as “First Swine,” “Second Swine,” and so forth. While Wellesley urges his men to attack through nativist and nationalistic platitudes, Mendelson rallies his troops with the promises of modernity and globalization . The men are little swayed by either; they understand they’re being used. Frustrated, the lords heap abuse on their “swine” for their proletarian ways, until at last the field devolves into a mob and both lords are lynched. But it is clear to the “swine” that they have won only a temporary satisfaction. One aspect of the work might be easy to overlook, given its rich content and skillful artistry: Englaland is fascinating to consider through the lens of ecopoetics. Designedly, the land is not mere setting or backdrop but an important character. The final poem’s eponymous yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella ) lends its image to the book’s cover. World Literature in Review 90 WLT SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2016 “Spearhafoc” is another example. The title plays upon the bellicose phrase “spearhavoc ,” but it actually means the modern sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) who speaks the poem. Norse mercenaries, medieval highwaymen, and modern outdoors enthusiasts share the protagonist’s role with the birds they watch, the fields they trespass upon, and the thousand-year-old groves on Ringstone Hill. Englaland is fertile ground for environmental literary criticism. Greg Brown Mercyhurst University Zilka Joseph. Sharp Blue Search of Flame. Detroit. Wayne State University Press. 2016. 116 pages. If the American critic Stephen Burt’s precepts for reading new poetry—look for a persona and a world, not for an argument or a plot—are to be heeded, then Zilka Joseph’s first book eminently meets those criteria. In addition to a distinct persona inhabiting a world of dual cultures, Joseph also makes an argument. Her subject matter and her language are shaped by two worlds—her Indian heritage and her residence in America—and her persona is molded by diverse influences , including Indian mythology and epic heroes, Hindu festivals, Jewish customs , growing up in Kolkata, the violence of rape and bride-burning, the experience of migration and the resulting dislocation, American folk music, and Mozart. She has a particular sensitivity to the natural world of birds, reptiles, flowers, and whales as well as the American outdoors. Joseph has a wonderful ability to combine the concerns of one poem (“Something Falls”) to echo...

I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky

“Spearhafoc” is another example. The title plays upon the bellicose phrase “spearhavoc ,” but it actually means the modern sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) who speaks the poem. Norse mercenaries, medieval highwaymen, and modern outdoors enthusiasts share the protagonist’s role with the birds they watch, the fields they trespass upon, and the thousand-year-old groves on Ringstone Hill. Englaland is fertile ground for environmental literary criticism. Greg Brown Mercyhurst University Zilka Joseph. Sharp Blue Search of Flame. Detroit. Wayne State University Press. 2016. 116 pages. If the American critic Stephen Burt’s precepts for reading new poetry—look for a persona and a world, not for an argument or a plot—are to be heeded, then Zilka Joseph’s first book eminently meets those criteria. In addition to a distinct persona inhabiting a world of dual cultures, Joseph also makes an argument. Her subject matter and her language are shaped by two worlds—her Indian heritage and her residence in America—and her persona is molded by diverse influences , including Indian mythology and epic heroes, Hindu festivals, Jewish customs , growing up in Kolkata, the violence of rape and bride-burning, the experience of migration and the resulting dislocation, American folk music, and Mozart. She has a particular sensitivity to the natural world of birds, reptiles, flowers, and whales as well as the American outdoors. Joseph has a wonderful ability to combine the concerns of one poem (“Something Falls”) to echo the contents of another one (“The Blessed”). In the first, a girl nursing a childhood crush is diagnosed with polio (“I drag my wounded body / the way I will do / for the rest of my life”), and in the second, a wounded bird is rescued and given shelter (“my wild, starved, onelegged one”). In “Dharamsala,” a pilgrimage-trek draws in the Himalayan backdrop, steep climbs, and market-square stops and blends cozily with the intimacies of conjugal love. “Prey” exposes the familiar, materialistic trap of a marriage starting wrong resulting in domestic violence. Joseph uses understatement to depict the woman’s predicament rather than employ a strident, angry tone. In “Havan,” she gets more daring , getting the poem’s structure to zigzag across the page to mimic the household chase as a young bride is set on fire. On the other hand, “What Burns” could have gained from further elaboration. Less successful are her forays into Hindu mythology and her musings on goddesses, which seem to me to be assertions of female spirituality. Similarly, her attempt at creating a word-equivalent of mudras, in “The Bharat Natyam Dancer,” doesn’t entirely come off. Where Zilka Joseph excels is in her recording of family stories; the memories are photographic in their sharpness and unflinching in their revelations. She is equally adept in her handling of form to suit the needs of each poem. Altogether, a strong debut collection. Saleem Peeradina Siena Heights University Adil Jussawalla. I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky. Gurgaon, India. Hachette India. 2015. 376 pages. Having been part of the resurgence of Indian poetry in English that was very much Bombay-centered, Adil Jussawalla brought out a brilliant debut collection called Land’s End in 1962. His precursor was Nissim Ezekiel (generally acknowledged as the founding father of postindependence Indian poetry in English), who Shauna Osborn Arachnid Verve Mongrel Empire Press Drawing threads of Comanche, Spanish, and Oklahoma culture into one eclectic tapestry, Shauna Osborn delivers a spellbinding collection in Arachnid Verse. Populated with memories that are both intimate to the writer and universally applicable, Osborn grapples with issues of gender, sexuality, and identity with equal measures of humor, anger, and grit. Only the Road / Solo el Camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry Ed. & trans. Margaret Randall Duke University Press This anthology serves as a broad, bilingual survey of Cuban poets born during the twentieth century. Special attention is paid to diversity, with women making up nearly half of the authors represented. While it’s difficult to make generalizations about style with so many on display, the sum effect is that of a time-lapse shot taken over multiple generations that shows a kind of undeniable truth about the essence of Cuban poets and their craft (see WLT...

Sharp Blue Search of Flame

“Spearhafoc” is another example. The title plays upon the bellicose phrase “spearhavoc ,” but it actually means the modern sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) who speaks the poem. Norse mercenaries, medieval highwaymen, and modern outdoors enthusiasts share the protagonist’s role with the birds they watch, the fields they trespass upon, and the thousand-year-old groves on Ringstone Hill. Englaland is fertile ground for environmental literary criticism. Greg Brown Mercyhurst University Zilka Joseph. Sharp Blue Search of Flame. Detroit. Wayne State University Press. 2016. 116 pages. If the American critic Stephen Burt’s precepts for reading new poetry—look for a persona and a world, not for an argument or a plot—are to be heeded, then Zilka Joseph’s first book eminently meets those criteria. In addition to a distinct persona inhabiting a world of dual cultures, Joseph also makes an argument. Her subject matter and her language are shaped by two worlds—her Indian heritage and her residence in America—and her persona is molded by diverse influences , including Indian mythology and epic heroes, Hindu festivals, Jewish customs , growing up in Kolkata, the violence of rape and bride-burning, the experience of migration and the resulting dislocation, American folk music, and Mozart. She has a particular sensitivity to the natural world of birds, reptiles, flowers, and whales as well as the American outdoors. Joseph has a wonderful ability to combine the concerns of one poem (“Something Falls”) to echo the contents of another one (“The Blessed”). In the first, a girl nursing a childhood crush is diagnosed with polio (“I drag my wounded body / the way I will do / for the rest of my life”), and in the second, a wounded bird is rescued and given shelter (“my wild, starved, onelegged one”). In “Dharamsala,” a pilgrimage-trek draws in the Himalayan backdrop, steep climbs, and market-square stops and blends cozily with the intimacies of conjugal love. “Prey” exposes the familiar, materialistic trap of a marriage starting wrong resulting in domestic violence. Joseph uses understatement to depict the woman’s predicament rather than employ a strident, angry tone. In “Havan,” she gets more daring , getting the poem’s structure to zigzag across the page to mimic the household chase as a young bride is set on fire. On the other hand, “What Burns” could have gained from further elaboration. Less successful are her forays into Hindu mythology and her musings on goddesses, which seem to me to be assertions of female spirituality. Similarly, her attempt at creating a word-equivalent of mudras, in “The Bharat Natyam Dancer,” doesn’t entirely come off. Where Zilka Joseph excels is in her recording of family stories; the memories are photographic in their sharpness and unflinching in their revelations. She is equally adept in her handling of form to suit the needs of each poem. Altogether, a strong debut collection. Saleem Peeradina Siena Heights University Adil Jussawalla. I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky. Gurgaon, India. Hachette India. 2015. 376 pages. Having been part of the resurgence of Indian poetry in English that was very much Bombay-centered, Adil Jussawalla brought out a brilliant debut collection called Land’s End in 1962. His precursor was Nissim Ezekiel (generally acknowledged as the founding father of postindependence Indian poetry in English), who Shauna Osborn Arachnid Verve Mongrel Empire Press Drawing threads of Comanche, Spanish, and Oklahoma culture into one eclectic tapestry, Shauna Osborn delivers a spellbinding collection in Arachnid Verse. Populated with memories that are both intimate to the writer and universally applicable, Osborn grapples with issues of gender, sexuality, and identity with equal measures of humor, anger, and grit. Only the Road / Solo el Camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry Ed. & trans. Margaret Randall Duke University Press This anthology serves as a broad, bilingual survey of Cuban poets born during the twentieth century. Special attention is paid to diversity, with women making up nearly half of the authors represented. While it’s difficult to make generalizations about style with so many on display, the sum effect is that of a time-lapse shot taken over multiple generations that shows a kind of undeniable truth about the essence of Cuban poets and their craft (see WLT...

Book Review: Ian Shapiro and Kahreen Tebeau (Eds), After Apartheid: Reinventing South Africa?

Ian Shapiro and Kahreen Tebeau (Eds), After Apartheid: Reinventing South Africa? University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2011, 376 pp., ISBN 9780813930978, ₹ 2,994.

The Seducer and the Rapist

Abstract The rule of Exod 22:15–16 refers unequivocally to an act of seduction and its legal ramifications. Its cognate rule in Deut 22:28–29 is regularly interpreted as referring to an act of rape and its legal ramifications. 11Q19 (11QTa) LXVI:8–11, however, integrates the two biblical decrees, applying the legal implications from Deuteronomy to the seducer. This paper examines the terms in the deuteronomic decree, demonstrating that they do not absolutely indicate violent rape; this, in turn, explains the Temple Scroll’s treatment of the text as referring to an act of seduction. A variety of practical differences result from the two disparate interpretations. Finally, the paper examines the conceptual distinctions between modern criminal law and ancient Israelite divine law.

The Seducer and the Rapist

The rule of Exod 22:15–16 refers unequivocally to an act of seduction and its legal ramifications. Its cognate rule in Deut 22:28–29 is regularly interpreted as referring to an act of rape and its legal ramifications. 11Q19 (11QTa) LXVI:8–11, however, integrates the two biblical decrees, applying the legal implications from Deuteronomy to the seducer. This paper examines the terms in the deuteronomic decree, demonstrating that they do not absolutely indicate violent rape; this, in turn, explains the Temple Scroll’s treatment of the text as referring to an act of seduction. A variety of practical differences result from the two disparate interpretations. Finally, the paper examines the conceptual distinctions between modern criminal law and ancient Israelite divine law.

State Prisoner Elasticities and Integrated State Policies Using Non-Prison Alternatives

Research Summary: This study estimates national and state prisoner elasticities for violent crime, property crime, murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny, and auto theft, benchmarking the results against previous studies. The state elasticities vary widely across states, implying that the use of national estimates at the state level will often lead to misallocations of state funds. In modeling crime, experiments are conducted to assess the use of first-differences and lagged dependent variables. The initial results here suggest that it may be possible to closely approximate national and state prisoner elasticities using lagged dependent variables as substitutes for control variables. Policy Implications: The main purpose of the paper is to demonstrate an integrative approach to state policymaking aimed at reducing crime and costs. For each state, the prisoner elasticities are combined with current data on crime and imprisonment, prison maxouts, time served, and high school education in an effort to formulate coordinated policies based on recent research on the criminogenic effects of prison, deterrence, social and other non-prison alternatives, and compulsory education. Broad-brush policies are proposed for 19 states, with special attention to Louisiana and Florida.

Regulating Sexual Harm: Strangers, Intimates, and Social Institutional Reform

The criminal regulation of sexual harm in the United States is afflicted by deep pathology. Although sexual harm appears before the law in a variety of forms—from violent rape, to indecent exposure, to the sexual touching by an older child of a younger child—the prevailing U.S. criminal regulatory framework responds to this wide range of conduct with remarkable uniformity. All persons so convicted are labeled “sex offenders,” and most are subjected to registration, community notification, and residential restrictions, among other sanctions. These measures purport to prevent the perpetration of further criminal sexual harm by publicizing the identities and restricting the residential opportunities of persons presumed to be strangers to their victims. But even as these measures render many subject to them homeless and unemployable, sexual abuse remains pervasive and significantly underreported in our schools, prisons, military, and between intimates in families. Thus, at once, the U.S. criminal regulatory regime constructs a peculiarly overbroad category of feared persons, compels a misguided approach to this population, and neglects the most prevalent forms of vulnerability to sexual predation and assault. This Essay argues that an alternative social institutional reform framework could address

Sexual assault: a descriptive study of 2500 female victims over a 10-year period.

To describe the victims of sexual assault and the circumstances in which the assaults occur. Descriptive case study. Centre for Victims of Sexual Assault (CVSA), Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark. A total of 2541 women attending CVSA from 2001 to 2010. All women attending CVSA underwent a standardised data collection procedure. Descriptive bivariate analysis and logistic regression analysis were performed. Associations between different assault characteristics and (1) the age of the victim and (2) the relationship between victim and perpetrator. Two-thirds of the victims were aged 15-24 years. Seventy-five percent had met the perpetrator before the sexual assault and 70% reported the assault to the police. A physical injury was found in 53, and 27% sustained an anogenital lesion. Alcohol was involved in 60% of the cases. One-third of the victims had experienced a previous sexual assault(s). Women were more likely to report to the police when they were assaulted by a stranger (odds ratio [OR] 1.9, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.3-2.6) and sustained a physical injury (OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.4-2.2) or anogenital lesion (OR 1.5, 95% CI 1.1-2.0). Women aged 45 years or older were more likely to sustain a physical injury (OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.2-3.2) or an anogenital lesion (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.4-3.2). Our results challenge the typical stereotype of a violent rape attack by a stranger, which is important in creating an environment where women are not reluctant to seek help after a sexual assault. Young age and drinking alcohol were risk factors for sexual assault, and we need to address this when considering preventive strategies.

Evidence Summarized in Attorneys' Closing Arguments Predicts Acquittals in Criminal Trials of Child Sexual Abuse.

Evidence summarized in attorney's closing arguments of criminal child sexual abuse cases (N = 189) was coded to predict acquittal rates. Ten variables were significant bivariate predictors; five variables significant at p < .01 were entered into a multivariate model. Cases were likely to result in an acquittal when the defendant was not charged with force, the child maintained contact with the defendant after the abuse occurred, or the defense presented a hearsay witness regarding the victim's statements, a witness regarding the victim's character, or a witness regarding another witnesses' character (usually the mother). The findings suggest that jurors might believe that child molestation is akin to a stereotype of violent rape and that they may be swayed by defense challenges to the victim's credibility and the credibility of those close to the victim.

A Matter of Life and Death: Criminal Law and the Death Penalty in South West Africa (SWA) under South African Rule, 1915–1939

This article chronicles the history of criminal law in South West Africa (SWA) from 1915 to 1939, with a focus on the death penalty. The analysis encompasses South Africa's rule of SWA during World War I (WWI) and under the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC). The article secondarily explores the role criminal law played in South Africa's consolidation of control over SWA. It was primarily the diplomatic negotiations after WWI that granted South Africa a mandate over SWA. However, wartime legal reforms and cautious use of the death penalty helped lay the foundation for South Africa's anticipated rule of SWA after WWI. Furthermore, South Africa used its wartime record of criminal administration to convince the allies that it would administer SWA efficiently and humanely if granted a mandate. The PMC's reluctance to intervene in court procedures gave South Africa broad authority to administer the death penalty. However, South Africa did not use executions to suppress opposition to its rule, but to punish interpersonal violence of rape and murder. Judicial ideas about race, age, class, and gender guided execution decisions. Nevertheless, administrative constraints and African resistance prevented the complete consolidation of South African criminal law during the mandatory period.

Reflections on the society’s reaction towards rape victims in Delhi City

In general, most people display stronger beliefs in ?aggravated rape? or ?real rape?; including victims of such rape cases who often identify themselves as ?rape victims? than the victims of ?simple rape?, where none of the aggravating circumstances are present. Despite myths to the contrary these ?simple rape? cases in fact make up the majority of cases. This article considers the implications of ?real rape? and demonstrates how notions about what a ?typical rape? should be, in the form of rape myths, directly impact on societal attitudes towards rape victims and how the media continue to reinforce and perpetuate the notion of real rape through their selective reporting of ?serial rape?, ?stranger rape? or especially ?violent rapes?.

Considerations on the Politico-Juridical Proceedings of Genesis 34

In recent literature regarding the narrative of Genesis 34, much attention has been given to the nature of the force of the sexual encounter between the Hivite prince, Shechem, and the daughter of Jacob, Dinah. This article, however, argues that the concern with which this aspect of the narrative has been addressed is misplaced: that the violent response of Jacob and his sons has little to do with a distinction between consensual sex and violent rape and rather with political/ethnic concerns.