Forensic Psychology For Dummies (142 page)

‘It is a woman’s own fault if she is involved in some mild sexual activity and she lets it get out of hand.’

‘A woman who snubs men deserves to be taught a lesson.’

‘Women unconsciously want to be raped.’

Men who agree with many such statements would be expected to be more willing to participate in sexual assaults. Their attitudes are seen as drawing on a set of views prevalent in the subculture of which they’re a part. Certainly, men who share these attitudes and who end up in treatment programmes sometimes have great difficulty recognising that what they did was rape. I remember one such man saying eventually, ‘Oh. If that’s rape, I’ve done it quite often.’

Sadism as an explanation of rape

Although sadism is regarded as a paraphilia (see Table 15-2), it’s sometimes given as an explanation of rape when the person wants to be coercive in their sadistic activity. Those men (and some women) who get sexual gratification from hurting others and obtaining sex violently force their victims, because of the pleasure they get from doing so.

These people are, fortunately, extremely rare, but they do make the headlines when they act on their disturbing impulses. They’re likely to attack strangers and become serial offenders. They prepare for and plan their attacks, possibly getting some gratification from anticipating what they’re going to do.

Anger in rape

Some men develop a feeling for revenge against women, sometimes particular women or a type of woman. Their victims become substitutes for the people the rapist is angry with. Their anger may be fuelled by alcohol or drugs and explode when a particular possibility occurs. The sex is a way of insulting the victim and so is likely to be violently aggressive.

No deviant fantasy is usually involved here as is likely to be the case with the sadistic rapist.

Opportunity

Men who lack any sort of empathy or concern for the feelings of others, may select victims simply because they spot the opportunity for forcing them to have sex. These men are often talked of as ‘sexual predators’, accosting a woman in a bar and then assaulting her if she refuses to have sex. Their violence is used to control the women, as opposed to playing any role in deviant fantasies or desires. They just want sex and then to get away. They may even mistakenly think that after they start carrying out their sexual activity, the woman enjoys the act and wants to participate.

As with so many violent crimes, alcohol or drugs can remove the person’s inhibitions, reducing their ability to control themselves. Even if that isn’t really the case, perpetrators may use alcohol as an excuse, as in: ‘It was the drink that made me do it.’

Power

Some men see rape as a way of demonstrating their power over women, usually a result of their own feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. These men are strongly influenced by the cognitive distortions and rape myths that I discuss earlier in this section and in Chapter 14. They think of sexual conquest as an important way of demonstrating their control and significance. These views may be magnified by constant brooding on sex and developing fantasies of control and sexual prowess.

Managing and Helping the Sex Offender

The preceding section contains several possible explanations for rape, some more convincing than others. But the fact is that the great majority of men don’t carry out sexual assaults and indeed find the whole idea abhorrent. Therefore, explanations that relate directly to an offender’s particular background, upbringing and related attitudes and personality characteristics are the most useful areas to investigate and so these form the basis of most treatment programmes.

The question of whether and how to treat (or indeed simply manage) sex offenders is a difficult issue. In this section, I examine some of the difficulties involved and describe some approaches to treatment currently in use around the world.

Investigating the complexities of treating psychopaths

Unfortunately, little evidence exists that any of the therapeutic interventions that I describe in the later section ‘Appraising some sex offender treatment programmes’ are particularly effective. They may help in some cases but for many sex offenders they’re irrelevant or have little impact. As an extreme example of the difficulties involved, in this section I illustrate the complexity of the processes that need to be explored when dealing with serious serial rapists and sexual murderers.

Fred West was guilty of killing at least 10 young women and probably considerably more over a 20-year period without ever being caught. He and his wife Rose sexually and physically abused these young women before killing them and burying them in the garden of their house in Gloucester, UK under their notorious patio. What would a forensic psychology assessment have revealed of Fred West if one had been carried out before he killed himself in prison?

The first and most obvious point was that West was virtually illiterate and probably learning disabled. The police assigned an
appropriate adult
to be with him throughout their interviews with him when he was initially arrested on suspicion of murder. The law requires such a person to be present if the possibility exists that the suspect may not fully understand what’s happening to him and the legal process. The fear was that West wasn’t able to fully understand the implications of the situation he was in and what he’d done.

Indications that this was the case are located in his comments. When told that a body had been found under his patio, he said that the police should be careful how they put the paving back. His further request, after the fact that he’d committed murder had become plain, that he should now be allowed home may have been dark irony, but was more likely to be part of his lack of awareness of just how serious the situation was.

If a psychologist were able to get West to talk about his upbringing, she’d probably become quickly aware of how sexualised it was. West wrote a sort of memoir before he killed himself and although this document seems to be intended as a portrayal of the innocent loving life he lived, he does indicate in passing that his father had sex with West’s daughter and that sexual activity in general was a prevalent part of family life.

The crucial point is that West doesn’t seem to recognise the destructive quality of all the sexual activity within the family, taking it much more for granted than the very great majority of people would.