Intimate Violence

Intimate violence covers the areas of domestic violence, stalking, cyberstalking, elder abuse, child abuse, and various forms of rape. Domestic violence takes the form of murder, rape, robbery, or assault committed by spouses, ex-spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, or acquaintances of the victim. Intimate violence involves relatives, friends, significant others, acquaintances, or admirers. Approximately 13% of ALL victimization is intimate violence, and 35% of all murders are by acquaintances.

Spouse abuse is a significant area of study in victimology. The exact number of couples who experience it is a matter of speculation, but it is roughly estimated that about one-quarter (25%) of all married couples will engage in it at least once in their lifetime. Slightly less (22%) of dating partners engage in it. Other estimates put the overall figure as high as 50-66%.

There is no one good theory of spouse abuse. Explanations tend to fall into one of three (3) categories: (1) psychopathological theory; (2) feminist theory; and (3) social learning theory. The following table summarizes some of the key ideas of each theory:

Psychopathology theory	The offender is seen as a mentally disturbed individual, also usually suffering from alcohol or drug addiction, who is venting frustration or anger at a substitute target. The victim is seen as mentally disturbed by tolerating such behavior, also usually suffering from masochism or guilt, who somehow induces their mate to beat and hurt them.
Feminist theory	The offender is seen as acting upon the current patriarchal (male dominated) makeup of society. The victim is historically socialized to accept control and discipline, and keep quiet about violence in the home.
Learning theory	Three variations: (1) intergenerational transmission of violence - in which adults learn it by having seen it as a child; (2) learned helplessness -in which victim stays in relationship because of economic and emotional dependency; and (3) cycle of violence - in which victim makes excuses, believes in changing offender, and facilitates a tension - disinhibition - reconciliation cycle.

Battery is the most commonly reported form of spouse abuse, although there are a number of behaviors involved, ranging from nonviolent to violent action. The most commonly used measure of domestic violence is a survey instrument called the Conflict Tactics Scale developed by Murray Straus in 1979. The CTS represents a wide range of behaviors, and subjects are asked how many times in the past year they might have done the following in response to a family conflict, spat, or disagreement (Never, Once, Twice, 3-5 times, 6-10 times, 11-20 times, more than 20 times, Don't Know):

a. Discussed the issue calmly
b. Got information to back up (your/his) side of things
c. Brought in or tried to bring in someone to help settle things
d. Insulted or swore at the other
e. Sulked and/or refused to talk about it
f. Stomped out of the room or house or yard
g. Cried
h. Did or said something to spite the other
i. Threatened to hit or throw something at the other
j. Threw or smashed or hit or kicked something
k. Threw something at the other
l. Pushed, grabbed or shoved the other
m. Slapped the other
n. Kicked, bit or hit with a fist
o. Hit or tried to hit with something
p. Beating up the other
q. Threatened with a knife or gun
r. Used a knife or gun
s. Other (explain)

Males tend to use their fists or feet to batter their victims, and females are more likely to use weapons. Female victims tend to be young, African-American or Hispanic, poor (family income less than $10,000), and from inner city (urban) areas. Male victims tend to fit a similar profile, and are much more likely to be African-American, a factor that greatly increases the risk of homicide victimization.

1. Physical abuse -- hitting, punching, pulling hair, slapping, grabbing, biting, kicking, bruising, burning, twisting arms, throwing victims against walls or furniture, throwing objects, and using weapons.
2. Sexual abuse -- any unwanted sexual contact such as "makeup sex", sexual intercourse without consent, marital rape, forced sexual perversion, forced unprotected sex, and forced sex with others.
3. Verbal abuse -- derogatory comments, insults, humiliations, or constant put-downs, usually with the victim told they are not physically attractive, inferior, incompetent, unable to succeed on their own, and are not a good mother/wife/housekeeper. The intent is to keep the victim under total control.
4. Psychological/Emotional Abuse -- manipulation and/or intimidation intended to destroy the other's self-esteem or sense of self, usually over long periods of time, including but not limited to destroying or getting rid of other's property, deprivation of items for personal needs, food or sleep deprivation, and pet abuse.
5. Spiritual abuse -- For some victims, spiritual abuse occurs as a deep sense of betrayal by religious traditions or other agents of identification with the community where everyone seems to know about the abuse but maintain silence or enjoin the victim to endure the violence to preserve the marriage.
6. Economic abuse -- Forbidding the partner to work, insisting they turn over all their paycheck, having them beg for money, giving them insufficient funds or allowance for basic necessities, or refusing to let them participate in financial decision.
7. Social abuse -- Jokes, criticisms, or put-downs in front of other people, usually about appearance, sexuality, or intelligence; false accusations, suspiciousness, or constant monitoring and control of victim's activities, outings, friendships, or access to information; isolation.

There are typical patterns in which the various forms of abuse occur. Verbal abuse tends to occur first, followed by psychological abuse. Then, physical abuse occurs, usually followed by some sort of sexual abuse. The Verbal-Psychological-Physical-Sexual chain of events is quite common. Economic, social, and spiritual abuse tend to occur after or independently of this chain of events.

There's also something called the cycle of violence associated with domestic violence.

Technically, the cycle of violence begins with Phase 1: Tension Building, which is mostly characterized by poor communication and stressful events. Phase 2: sometimes called the "Explosion" stage consists of the actual Battering. Phase 3: the "Honeymoon" is characterized by guilt, remorse, and promises of "I'll never do it again." The actual battering incident usually takes up little time, but the apology, gift giving, and "honeymoon" phase can last weeks. Then, the batterer starts fault finding and becoming verbally abusive. Jealousy develops, and the domestic partner can usually sense the tension building. This leads to a state of fear, helplessness, and inability to control the environment which usually serves as ample ground for a precipitating or provocation incident (provocation if the partner "provokes" a scene to get it over with) which leads to another battering incident. Each incident builds on the previous incident by serving as a sort of memory disinhibition, although in some cases, alcohol or drugs are required for disinhibition.

As you can see, the cycle of violence was designed to explain repeat victimization. The thing that repeat victims and repeat offenders both share in common is denial and minimization. Studies have found that repeaters are much more likely to deny or downplay the importance of domestic violence. One in every five victims (20%) of spouse abuse are repeat victims. In fact, divorced and separated women have a higher rate of victimization than married women. Victimologists are often unsure of what to recommend about repeaters. More women who leave their batterers are killed than those who stay. The risk is 75% higher for those who leave.

There's an approach in the study of domestic violence that focuses upon risk assessment. Although there are a number of ways to do this, the most popular way is the "matrix factor" approach which doesn't use predictors, but instead uses "risk markers" or "factors". There are three areas in which such efforts have been concentrated:

Risk of Wife Beating:	Risk of Repeat Offending:	Risk of Homicide:
1. Violence in family of origin 2. Low income/education (especially if wife's is high) 3. Chronic alcoholism 4. Assertiveness deficit 5. Fear of abandonment 6. Strict disciplinarian of child 7. Workplace stress 8. Depression/low self-esteem	1. More openly aggressive or violent in public 2. Less apologetic 3. Suicide attempts/gestures 4. Stress is more and more job-related 5. More attempts to control daily activities *The earlier in the relationship the first episode, the more likely the repeat offending.	1. Increase in frequency or severity of violence 2. Threats to kill; choking 3. Suicide attempts/gestures 4. Gun ownership (prior use of gun in a fight) 5. Constant drug/alcohol intoxication 6. More and more forced sex (obsessive jealousy and excessive control)

There are neither cutoff scores nor weighting of items with these risk factors. They should be used for informal discussions between victims and nurses, advocates, or counselors. They are based on retrospective interpretations with women who have been beaten. As such, they are inappropriate as formal prediction tools or for court sentencing situations. Scientific prediction of violence is a rather inexact science that cannot be done intuitively. Prediction would require awareness on at least four different levels in recognizing events that trigger violence. At the biological level, for example, brain activity would need to be monitored. At the psychological level, how a person processes and distorts information should be considered. At the macrosocial level, interpretation of certain events in news coverage might need to be looked at. At the microsocial level, the history of communication problems and opportunities to offend without getting caught are probably the most important predictors.

Most experimental research has involved study of the police response. Such was the case with the most famous NIJ-sponsored study of 1981-2 -- the MINNEAPOLIS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE EXPERIMENT. Sherman and Berk (1984) concluded that arrest was the most effective deterrent. Replications of the experiment were carried out in Atlanta, Charlotte, Colorado Springs, Miami, Omaha, and Milwaukee in subsequent years which shed doubt on the idea of arrest as the best policy. One of the consistent findings from these replications is that arrest may very well increase the incidence of domestic violence in cases of unemployed males with low socioeconomic status. The only clear deterrent effect of arrest comes from issuance of a warrant after the suspect has already left the household. Offenders who are steadily employed, married (as opposed to cohabitating), better educated, and have a stake in conformity are slightly more likely, however, to be deterred by arrest. Deterrence also tends to only have a short-term effect, because in the long-term, the abuse may reoccur several years later.

The MINNEAPOLIS EXPERIMENT required police, when responding to a domestic violence call, to pull out a color-coded card from a deck. The color of the card (red, blue, yellow) determined whether the police should (a) arrest somebody; (b) send somebody away for a cooling off period; or (c) give advice and mediate the dispute. The experimenters then tracked whether police had to return to the residence for another dispute within a six-month period, and also telephoned the victims to obtain their self-reports. Here are the results of the experiment with the recidivism rates expressed as percentages :

Intervention type	Police recontact:	Victim Self-Report:
ARREST	10%	19%
COOLING OFF	24%	33%
COUNSELING	19%	37%

The results clearly show arrest to be the most efficient method, and this resulted in widespread adoption of MANDATORY ARREST policies across the nation. A mandatory arrest policy originally meant the police arrest somebody even if the victims didn't want an arrest. To be sure, some police departments went a little overboard with mandatory arrest policies, and were sued for false arrest. Other police departments in the 1984 time period did nothing, and the landmark case that year of Thurman v. City of Torrington allowed victims who received no help to get awards in the multi-million dollar range.

By 1989, 84% of police departments in the country had some form of mandatory arrest policy, by this time, calling them "pro-arrest" or warrantless policies. Warrantless arrest policies became the most common, and still exist in about 10 states. Warrantless arrest requires an arrest if a protection order is violated, and it allows individual police officers to size up the situation and make their judgment (judgmental policies) based on corollaries to the legal doctrine of the in-presence requirement. Much more common today as a form of "pro-arrest" policy is the "preferential policy" (presumptive policies) which states that in domestic violence situations, arrest is the preferred recommended action, and the department's policies and procedures spell out exactly what the officer is supposed to consider and not consider. Essentially, preferential policies boil down to police determining whether there's a weapon involved and if some other pretext (like intoxication) can be used for an arrest. Preferential policies do not allow the police to consider financial situation, emotional pleas or assurances, or other situational factors. This is the current state of domestic violence policing today, although there is a great contemporary interest in various other trial-and-error approaches. Many victims actually liked the judgmental policies and preferred to have the police officers engaging in lay scientific prediction, something along the lines of: "Just tell me when he'll hit me again, and how likely he'll do it if I do X, Y, Z"? Other victims want a return to times when the officer just took the offender out and gave him a taste of his own medicine.

Viable solutions are hard to come by with domestic violence. The criminal justice system is the only societal institution with enough clout to do something about the problem, which occurs about every 18 seconds. Only a small number (10%) of police officers themselves think arrest works. Perpetrator treatment programs only have a success rate of about 2% at counseling wife beaters. Many jurisdictions rely on protection orders, and have eased the availability of getting them by creating 24-hour night courts or thru some other procedure. Women's shelters tend to work best as a long-term solution as this almost always results in permanent dissolution of the abusive relationship and a degree of empowerment (economic, social, emotional) inside the victim. Mediation centers often take cases that have been deferred to them by the criminal justice system, but such activities are better described as arbitration than mediation. Long-term solutions are probably going to require sweeping societal changes. The Federal Violent Crime Control Act of 1994 addresses domestic violence to an extent by providing grant money to set up programs, building battered women's shelters, increased penalties (20 years) for things like interstate kidnapping, and decertification of law enforcement officers who beat their wives.

Prior to it being called stalking, this crime was referred to as harassment, threats, annoyance, or domestic terrorism (as well as a number of other names). It all started in 1990 in California with the first antistalking law. Since then, all 50 states have something similar. Famous celebrities have been killed or injured by stalkers, and have led the victim's movement in this regard. Even women in domestic violence shelters often report being stalked. There are an estimated 200,000 serial stalkers in America, and there are an estimated 1.4 million people who are the victims of stalking. Women are four times more likely to be stalked than men. The majority of stalkers have been in relationships with their victims, but a significant percentage either never met their victims, or were just acquaintances - neighbors, friends or co-workers.

Stalking can be considered a type of antisocial behavior bordering on sociopathy. Many serial killers and rapists engage in stalking. Stalking is like a long-term rape. The following is a list of stalking behaviors:

Stalking always begins innocently, in what appears to be a chance encounter. Initial contacts are at the most innocent of places -- health clubs, church meetings, schools, day care centers, etc., and then the relationship quickly becomes a nightmare. After about three weeks or so, the would-be stalker typically asks the victim to marry him. Then, the stalker begins to invade the victim's place of work. Then, the stalker tries to take control of the victim's finances, the victim's vehicle, the victim's house or apartment, any and all possessions or things that need fixed up or taken care of. Stalkers try to move quickly (possibly in order to be quicker than the criminal justice system) and are continually forcing the victim into early decisions, yes or no situations, and then they do what they want anyway.

Most stalkers fit into three broad categories: (1) intimate partner stalkers; (2) delusional stalkers; and (3) vengeful stalkers.

1. Intimate partner stalkers are usually the guy who "can’t let go." They are men who refuse to believe that a relationship has really ended. Often, other people - even the victim - feels sorry for them. Many have extensive criminal histories. About 50% of all stalkers fall into this category. With these types, the victim often unwittingly encourages the stalker by trying to "let him down easy," or agreeing to talk to him "just one more time." Such stalkers are just interested in dominance and control.

2. Delusional stalkers frequently have little, if any, contact with their victims. They have major mental illnesses like schizophrenia, manic-depression or erotomania, and come from an abusive or emotionally barren family background with a poor sense of their own identity. They hold tight to some false belief that keeps them tied to their victims. In erotomania, the stalker’s delusional belief is that the victim loves him. This type of stalker actually believes that he is having a relationship with his victim, even though they might never have met. The woman stalking David Letterman, the stalker who killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer and the man who stalked Madonna are all examples of this.

Another type of delusional stalker believes he is destined to be with someone, and that if he only pursues her hard enough and long enough, she will come to love him as he loves her. These stalkers know they are not having a relationship with their victims, but firmly believe that they will some day. John Hinckley Jr. and his obsession with Jodi Foster is an example of this type of stalker.

Delusional stalkers are typically unmarried and socially immature loners who are unable to establish or sustain close relationships with others. They rarely date and have had few, if any, sexual relationships. Since they are both threatened by and yearn for closeness, they often pick victims who are unattainable in some way; married women, a therapist, clergyman, doctor or teacher. Those in the helping professions are particularly vulnerable to delusional stalkers. Any kindness shown to this kind of stalker will be blown out of proportion into a delusion of intimacy. What these stalkers cannot attain in reality is achieved through fantasy

While some seek out a victim of higher status (doctors, lawyers, teachers), others seek out celebrities. Celebrity stalkers often psychotically "hear" or "see" something in the words or appearances of the victim. They are often convinced that the celebrity is sending them cryptic messages intended only for them to understand. Erotomanic delusions last an average of ten years.

3. Vengeful stalkers are angry with their victims over something, real or imagined. Politicians, for example, get many of these types of stalkers who become angry over some piece of legislation. Disgruntled ex-employees also stalk their former bosses, co-workers or the entire company. Some of these types are psychopaths; others are delusional (most often paranoid), and all believe that they are really the victims. They stalk to "get even."

In general, for any type of stalker, the less of a relationship that actually existed prior to the stalking, the more mentally disturbed the stalker.

In most states, protection orders are available to stalking victims, but violation of a stalking protection order is only a misdemeanor resulting in civil or criminal contempt charges. Double jeopardy provisions of the constitution often prohibit the bringing of additional charges. Conviction on a stalking charge is also difficult. Several states require fairly rigorous mental states of maliciousness, and at least 10 states still require a documented or recorded threat of harm, some over a repeated period of time. By then, it may be too late for the victim. Some police departments (like the LAPD) have created Threat Management units to assist victims to help themselves, but still, victims must assume 100% of the responsibility for action.

It is therefore important that stalking victims (a) document every incident; (b) inform others; (c) do not antagonize the stalker; (d) obtain a protection order; (e) do not meet with the stalker; and (f) prevent any further contact with the stalker.

Michigan was the first state to pass a cyberstalking law in 1998. Congress is currently (2000) considering making it a federal crime. Cyberstalking is defined as repeated threats or harassing behavior over email, the Internet, or other electronic communications. Most perpetrators are men and most victims are women who have met them before, but cyberstalking can be carried out anonymously. The technology makes it easy. Fewer than half of the states currently have cyberstalking laws, and most offenders, if caught, face only a misdemeanor. Police departments are fairly untrained in how to investigate these types of crimes.

There are no clear statistics on the number of cyberstalking victims, but the Department of Justice estimates that there could be hundreds of thousands affected, and the numbers are growing. Cyberstalkers typically conceal their identities, and often do things like post fake web pages with doctored (or nude) photographs of their victims. They have usually researched their victim's geneology, hacked into their computer, and know everything there is to know about their victim that is available via the Internet. They sometimes hang out in chat rooms with sexy or sophisticated screen names.

Typically, the cyberstalking victim is new online, and inexperienced with the rules of netiquette. Pedophiles, in particular, prey on new, inexperienced kids online. The more a child displays cyber-smarts, the less likely they will appeal to a predator online. Pedophiles look for loners. Many parents buy their children a computer because they don't have many real life friends. These kids are easy prey, since it's less likely they'll talk about the overtures to their friends, and they are more susceptible to someone trying to befriend them. They're lonely, and the pedophile poses as a much-needed friend. Pedophiles look for kids who are having problems at home. The pedophile tries to win the child over by further separating the child from their family, complaining about "parents" generally.

Other cyberstalkers are just angry, young people. They are often paranoid, delusional, obsessional, self-centered, arrogant, manipulative, extremely jealous and possessive. They are usually "control freaks" and enjoy manipulating other people. They typically display behaviors associated with low self-esteem: they crave power over others, and enjoy the power to hurt others. The stalker mentality cannot take NO for an answer and cannot conceive that they might themselves be in the wrong. They are regulars in the online "flame wars" (wars of verbal abuse) and are about as rude and obnoxious as can be. Their idea of fun is to hurl obscene abuse at other users to try to upset them. These kind of harassers are often loners who don't have a girlfriend or boyfriend. Their attempts to "hit" on a female will be clumsy and crude, but they are highly sensitive to rejection and humiliation. Turn down the cyberstalker and he will remember you, and will come back after you another day.

Not all cyberstalkers are poor communicators who can't spell and can only speak in four-letter words. There are also suave and sophisticated abusers online, who initially appear as educated, articulate, sensitive people. Only later after private information has been revealed does it become apparent that they regularly violate anything entrusted to them. There appear to be at least four (4) different motives and perhaps types of cyberstalkers:

Sexual harassment is the most common form of cyberstalking. Female users will receive lots of unsolicited private messages in any chat forum, for example, that contain derogatory messages toward women in general.

Love obsessions sometimes start in real life and carry over into cyberspace, but they also develop from online romances. Some cyberstalkers enjoy "breaking hearts" as a pastime; others are truly interested in love but live in a fantasy world where they get highly possessive and once they realize they can't have their fantasy come true, they start sending death threats.

Vendatta cyberstalking starts out as a flame war, or the result of something somebody has said to offend another user. It's never clear what started it all in the first place, and this is the type of cyberstalking that's done about equally by both males and females.

Ego cyberstalkers have nothing against you at all. They're just showing off their technological skills at your expense. Some of them use automated procedures to do their work for them.

Anti-cyberstalking laws run the risk of violating the 1st Amendment. Any such law will probably have to be worded so broadly as to conceivably stifle a lot of forms of expression. That is, unless the wording is very specific. Another problem besides trying to formulate law is the tremendous variety of legal doctrines in the whole area of stalking that do not apply to cyberspace. Some states have followed the lead of other states in their stalking laws by allowing a "reasonable fear of risk" on the part of the victim to qualify for probable cause at least. Other states, the majority of them, slap a different kind of standard on cyberstalking; one that requires "credible threats".

With "credible threats", it's usually not good enough that the victim feels the stalker is capable of carrying out their threat, but physically able to do so. A threat coming from 2,000 miles across the country is less "credible" in a court of law than an email from someone living 50 miles away, or across town. While the legalities are being worked out, the Justice Department's main recommendation (as well as Congress' attitude) is to let the whole Internet industry regulate itself. That's why victims, again, must take 100% responsibility for documenting incidents, and for working with their ISPs (Internet Service Providers). It's extremely likely that cyberstalking is going to end up as a business crime rather than the crime of intimate violence that it is.

One of the lesser-known victimizations is elder abuse. Reliable statistics about the problem are hard to come by, and most studies fail to distinguish between abuse and neglect. "Elderly" in victimology generally means over the age of 75, but gerontologists dispute this definition. Most victims are female (as are the perpetrators), usually in ill health or some state of impairment, and residing in a household with their perpetrator. African-Americans have higher victimization rates than Whites, as do those with incomes under $7,500 a year and are urbanites. Victimization usually takes place in households that have unlisted phone numbers (or no phone), lack any means of transportation, and may be physically shuttered from the gaze of outsiders. Often, the motive for abuse is to collect a substantial life insurance settlement. It's estimated that at least half of the one million cases of elder abuse a year are related to some kind of financial exploitation scheme.

The problem of elder abuse came into public attention around the year 1977. The problem area presents a number of unanswered questions; such as when passive neglect (being financially unable to provide care) turns into active neglect (a deliberate withdrawal of care, food, medicine, or other necessities) and turns into elder abuse (the willful infliction of mental or physical anguish, or unreasonable deprivation of care or confinement).

As a group, the elderly make up about 14% of the population but only account for about 2% of all reported victimizations. Their fear of crime rates are heavily influenced by the mass media. Victimologists refer to this as vicarious victimization. Fraud, scams, and cons are also prevalent against the elderly, and those who live in dilapidated neighborhoods certainly have a right to be afraid, but even the safest of elderly people are afraid of crime. The elderly who live at home alone are three times at more risk of being the victim of a break-in. Offenders who prey upon the elderly tend to be under 30 years of age, but when it comes to intimate violence among the elderly, a son, a daughter, a nondistant relative, and in most cases, an elderly spouse is the perpetrator. Victims often blame themselves for any crime perpetrated against them. Elderly people rarely have social support systems. Victims rarely report their family members as abusers out of love.

The typical cause of elder abuse is caregiver stress. Caregivers simply give up trying to meet the economic and emotional needs of the elderly person under their care. Workplace stress can also add to this. In some cases, the perpetrator is financially dependent upon their victims, so a sort of "symbiotic relationship" develops in which the offender is using abuse as a way to get money or exert power. Again, financial exploitation is a common pattern, and this is sometimes called material abuse by some victimologists.

Another pattern is self-abuse (harm that arises from a failure to care for one's own needs). In this scenario, the caregiver simply lets the elderly person deteriorate to the point where they get used to a rather unsanitary level of living, and the victim comes to expect a lessened standard of care, internalizes it, and deteriorates even further. One of the more interesting relationships between social service workers and the police is that when social workers identify any degree of self-abuse (not an uncommon thing to find), the police are instantly removed from any further involvement.

A heavy reliance on drugs or alcohol characterizes most offenders. Abuse is more likely when the caregiver harbors a grudge or long-standing resentment against their elderly relative. Caregivers also suffer from a sense of inequity in that they feel they are getting nothing in return for their services rendered.

The typical state-level response to the problem of crimes against the elderly is to form a task force. These task forces hold periodic meetings to discuss legislative remedies to issues confronting the elderly. Few victim's rights issues are discussed, however, as the focus is almost always on how to improve home service, nursing programs, or crackdown on nursing homes (only 5% of the elderly live in nursing homes; 7% of such homes are regularly cited for abuse). Some courthouses have loosened the testimonial requirements for elderly victims. Groups such as AARP and others tend to operate a "silver hair" lobby which politicians respond to with symbolic (feel-good) legislation.

Law enforcement operates about 600 TRIAD programs across the country in which sheriffs partner with other community groups to work towards more effective law enforcement services for the elderly.

Most states have mandatory reporting laws for elder abuse. Several problems exist with these laws. For one, they violate doctor-patient confidentiality. They represent data collecting mechanisms with few resources to follow up on each and every report. They intrude on privacy. They reinforce ageism by focusing on the victim rather than the offender. A good deal of further research is needed on how to properly address the problem of elder abuse.

Child abuse, or maltreatment (a broader term that includes neglect), is an area of victimization law that grew out of "cruelty to animals" provisions. Until recently, child abuse was difficult to detect. John Caffey, a pediatric radiologist, published a study in 1946 showing bone damage of mysterious origin that he found in his younger patients. He unknowingly started the whole child abuse victims movement with his diagnosis of "unspecified trauma." By 1960, professionals were referring to it as the "battered child syndrome." A wave of legislation was passed in the 1960s and early 1970s to criminalize any nonaccidental injuries to children, and allow conviction on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone.

A "child" is generally defined in victimology as anyone under the age of 9. Every year, there are over two million reports of maltreatment against this age group, but only about 200,000 arrests are made. More victims come from the 1-4 age bracket than the 5-9 age bracket. Official statistics show that the problem is largely confined to the lower class in America, but this may be because other social classes have the resources to avoid detection.

There are several theories about the causes of child abuse. Victimological research has also looked into profiling both perpetrators and victims. Theories about child abuse tend to fall into one of three general categories:

Psychopathology theory	Offenders represent the whole spectrum of psychological disorders. No one mental disorder predominates. It's believed they have some kind of personality deficit, but most are able to "beat" psychological testing ("sick but slick"). Low frustration tolerance and infantilism are common as well as perceiving a child's crying and soiling as a child's rejection and lack of love.
Sociological theory	Stressful live events, family size, child spacing, and social isolation, as well as frustration, helplessness, and a feeling of being out of control are common variables of study that merit some empirical support.
Learning theory	Conventional wisdom holds that rewarded or unpunished activities creep into the offender's repertoire of what is acceptable behavior. Other learning theorists apply a "cycle of violence" thesis (that abused children grow up themselves to become abusers). Yet another, less supported idea, is the notion that abusers are playing out a "script", and are programmed to abuse.

The construction of psychological profiles is a fairly new development in victimology. Profiles are intended to be logical (deductive and/or inductive) inferences for use in conducting an investigation when there's nothing else to go on. Few, if any, of the profile characteristics contained in the following chart have been validated by compiling and analyzing data:

Abuser profile:

Victim profile:

1. Isolated from family and community support systems
2. Consistently failing to keep appointments
3. Extremely distrustful
4. Reluctant to give information about child
5. Overreaction or underreaction to queries about child
6. Refusal of consent to diagnose child
7. Delay or failure to obtain medical care for child
8. Overcritical of child
9. Unrealistic expectations for child
10. Belief that children should be harshly punished
11. Seldom look or talk to child
12. Ignore child's crying or react with impatience
13. Keep child confined for long periods of time
14. Lack any understanding of child's emotional needs
15. Seem to be hard to locate when away on trips
16. Appear to be misusing drugs or alcohol
17. Appear to lack control or have fear of losing control
18. Appear to be irrational or cruel and sadistic

1. Appear physically or emotionally different
2. Seem afraid of their parents
3. Display bruises, welts, sores, or other injuries
4. Have been given inappropriate medication(s)
5. Are often left alone unsupervised
6. Are chronically unclean
7. Exhibit extremes in behavior (crying, laughing)
8. Wary of physical contact by adults
9. Show sudden changes in behavior (shyness)
10. Have undiagnosible learning disorder
11. Habitually truant or late to school
12. Often tired and sleep in school
13. Are not dressed appropriately for weather
14. Have unusual eating habits
15. Engages in pet abuse or firesetting
16. May exhibit self-mutilative behaviors
17. May exhibit sexual interests or activity
18. Trouble sleeping, nightmares, or bedwetting

Children are treated differently than any other group of victims. The law, for example, clearly defines crimes against children separately from the same offenses committed against adults. The crimes against children usually fall into one of five categories:

The assumption behind differential treatment is that children need additional sensitivity and guidance as they move through the criminal justice process. To better meet the needs of child victims, some states are requiring the use of multidisciplinary teams in the investigation and treatment of child abuse cases. Such teams combine the expertise of a variety of professionals, including child abuse investigators, social workers, child psychiatrists and legal professionals. A few states, like Illinois and Louisiana, have adopted a special "Children's Bills of Rights". Within the court system, many states rely upon a guardian ad litem system to protect the best interests of the child in legal proceedings especially in proceedings adverse to the child's parents or legal guardian. Other states use court-appointed special advocates to both protect the best interests of the child and to assist the court in making discretionary decisions such as the best placement for the child victim as well as to determine questions concerning the child's competency to testify. The duties of special advocates frequently include guiding the victim and victim's family through the investigative and judicial processes. He or she may also assist the child and the child's family in coping with the emotional impact of the offense. In addition, the Child Abuse Protection Act of 1990 allows children to submit victim impact statements in a manner "commensurate with their age and cognitive development" such as hand-drawn pictures or letters.

Mandatory reporting laws exist all across the country. Child abuse must be reported by educators, child care workers and medical professionals. Reporting by other people is encouraged, but not required. State law specifies the agency to which the report must be made, usually the police or a child protection agency. Typically, the law requires a telephone report, followed by a written report within a few days. Most states give immunity for any report made in good faith, and frequently claim confidentiality will be ensured, but this will not prevent the reporter from being identified in any legal proceedings which result from investigation of the initial report.

Several states are experimenting with child abuse offender registries, much as sex offender registries are constructed. The purpose is to assist in the investigation and prevention of child abuse and neglect. By enabling officials to see a pattern in complaints of child abuse or neglect, states hope to make their protection programs more effective. Such registries also serve a purpose in conducting employment background screens.

Police and other officials are authorized to take a child into protective custody in emergency cases. Courts can also issue protective orders on behalf of child victims. Child protection laws are continuing to evolve and change in this rapidly expanding area of victim's rights.

In the vast majority of cases (78% of the time), the victims knew their rapist. Acquaintance rape is a sexual assault by an individual known to the victim. The term "date rape" is a sexual assault by an individual with whom the victim has a "dating" relationship and the sexual assault occurs in the context of this relationship. Marital, or spousal, rape was not a crime until the late 1970s (1993 in North Carolina). Currently, rape of a spouse is a crime in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

The perpetrators of acquaintance rape do not fit an easily recognized profile. Some similar characteristics of acquaintance rapists include: (1) a propensity toward violence in problem-solving; (2) aggressiveness in intimate relationships; and (3) being overly demanding of partners. There is disagreement among scholars as to whether rape is motivated by the power achieved or by the sexual excitement, or both. It's sometimes assumed that people with violent sexual preferences are sexually aroused by violence, but conversely, it's also assumed that sometimes sexual motivation is disguised in certain cases of assault, homicide, and even burglary. Others suggest that pornography inculcates a mindset that is conducive to a deviant sexual preference for violence, but support for this idea is weak or absent. The main research problem is that sexual preference is not equivalent to sexual acting out.

Men who rape tend to have a history of alcohol abuse, and often a lengthy criminal history of alcohol-related charges. They are generally the products of unstable families, and may have been abused or neglected as a child. Some biological research points to temporal lobe dysfunction in the brain and hormonal imbalance. Ordinarily, they are not the smartest of offenders; at one time, mental retardation was suspected as having a causal relationship to rape behavior. From a learning perspective, rapists appear to develop their attitudes at about the time of puberty. Their sex-role socialization is, therefore, fairly well locked into attitudes that see aggression toward females as appropriate behavior, and something that society approves of.

Childhood sexual victimization is also quite common among rapists, child molesters, prostitutes, drug addicts, and criminals in general. Antisocial personality disorder is diagnosed in sex offenders between 40-80 percent of the time.

Most victims of acquaintance rape are female, but males can also be the victims of this type of sexual assault. Victims of acquaintance rape come from every socio-economic, cultural, religious and racial background. Many myths incorrectly characterize rape victims as "sexually loose" individuals who are "asking for it." On the contrary, victims of acquaintance rape are victims of violence and domination. The prejudicial myths and attitudes surrounding rape victims are what hinder the criminal justice system. Quite often the evidence depends on the victim's word against that of the rapist's; therefore, instead of the offender being tried, the victim's morals, lifestyle, dress and actions are put on trial. As a result, convictions are difficult to get, and police and prosecutors are often reluctant to pursue acquaintance rape cases.

Victims of acquaintance rape face problems which are very specific to their type of victimization. Because the rapists may have been a part of their lives or someone with whom they socialize, victims often have to face their assailants long after the rape. Victims of acquaintance rape frequently blame themselves. Because the assailants are previously known to them, many victims hold themselves accountable for not having better judged the character of their perpetrators, or for allowing themselves to be in the situation in which the rape occurred. Acquaintance rape victims also experience an extreme violation of trust.

The trauma caused by acquaintance rape is no less severe than the trauma that is associated with rape by a stranger. Victims can suffer physically, emotionally and financially. Rape-related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (RR-PTSD), a condition suffered by almost one-third of all rape victims, includes sleeping and eating disorders, nervousness, fatigue, withdrawal from society and distrust of others. Many victims suffer from one or several of these symptoms, and some victims are affected for many years.

Many acquaintance rape victims never reach out for the services and assistance they need in the aftermath of their victimization. Only 16 percent (16%) of acquaintance rape victims report the crime to police. Acquaintance rape victims have the fear of being blamed, fear of their families, fear of friends or the general public knowing about their victimization, or a sense of futileness due to the belief that justice will not be served. Preventing secondary victimization to acquaintance rape victims by the criminal justice system and society is a major concern of the victims' rights movement.

Over the years, psychologists have learned a great deal about the trauma, or crisis, reactions of rape victims. Much of what we know about victim trauma in general is based on rape victims. With rape trauma, something called the crisis repair cycle posits a very predictable sequence of recovery. It consists of three stages.

1. Impact - This stage is characterized by shock. Victims run the gamut of emotions, including denial. Others are outraged and obsessed with revenge.

2. Recoil - This stage is characterized by the onset of rape trauma syndrome or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Flashbacks and nightmares start occurring, as well as chronic headaches and avoidance of people, fear, and anxiety. Victims often make major lifestyle changes in this period of recovery. Sometimes, suicide is committed by rape victims.

3. Reorganization - This stage is characterized by the moving on to other activities. Victims never attain a total or complete cure, but they learn to live with the emotional scars they carry.

Prosecuting persons who know the victim for rape is difficult. Consent is often ambiguous. Also, police are often reluctant to take seriously charges of acquaintance rape, or when alcohol or drugs are involved. Historically, rape law required at least two independent sources of evidence: the sworn testimony of the victim that they were coerced or did not give consent; and the collection or recovery of semen. In about half of the states, the victim must make a special request that her offender be tested for HIV/AIDS; in others, the prosecutor files the petition on behalf of the victim. Testing for HIV/AIDS almost always requires medical proof that bodily fluids were exchanged. Standard procedure for handling a rape case always requires two medical examinations (one for the treatment of injuries, disease and pregnancy testing; and another for the forensic collection of evidence using "rape kits").

Some states do not require the recovery of semen, and they go with the victim's testimony only. So-called "shield laws" prevent the victim's sexual background from being used against her, but this doesn't prevent defense lawyers from doing what they have to do -- impeach the testimony of the rape victim on the stand. The overall thrust of the criminal justice system response is to find ways to treat the victim with more dignity and sensitivity. Police departments are starting to use female investigators to handle all rape cases, and referral to community support groups takes place with some regularity.

Most date rapes, or nonconsensual sexual encounters, occur on college campuses. Some 16% of college coeds report being the victim of date rape, and other estimates run as high as 50%. It tends to occur at the end of an unplanned date or when the woman has been picked up in a social setting. Typically, sexual innuendo and verbal aggression are used by the perpetrator, with both victim and offender usually intoxicated.

Rophypnol, an anesthetic prescribed for insomnia, has been a factor in date rapes. Men have allegedly slipped it into their companion's drinks, rendering them unconscious. When the woman wakes up, she often is able to tell she's been sexually assaulted.

Most research into date rape has focused on the miscommunication that takes place in dating customs. There are distinct differences in perception between men and women in regards to what kind of clothes are worn, how much money is spent on a date, and what a "nightcap" means, for example.

Estimates are that 1:10 marriages involve at least one incident of marital rape.

The states use four different techniques for criminalizing spousal rape. The majority of states simply remove the marital rape exemption, without adding any other language. Other states replace the exclusionary language with text specifying that marriage to the victim is not a defense. A few states have created a separate offense of spousal rape. In jurisdictions where the law does not specify spousal rape, courts generally interpret the law to include spousal rape. Marital rape cases are difficult to prosecute. Some states still grant the husband absolute exemption, or immunity, from spousal rape charges because of the privilege that a wife cannot testify against her husband. Partial exemptions, excluding violence between intimates, is much more common.

The area of lesser known victimizations includes sexual assaults and abuse by people in positions of trust and authority over a victim. Such cases include: doctors, therapists, priests, police officers, prison guards, custodians, and teachers (to name a few). Activities such as "sex for an A" in the teacher-student context is clearly a type of rape. A newly emerging area of study is school violence, where rapes, robberies, assaults, and even homicides occur between intimates.

Scandals since 1985 have plagued church officials. The Catholic Church, with 63 million U.S. members and 1 billion worldwide, has been particularly involved, having paid more than $500 million for the misdeeds of more than 100 priests. It all seemed to start in 1985 when a Lafayette (Louisiana) priest admitted the sexual abuse of about 70 altar boys and boy scouts. A 1990 case in Minneapolis showed willful indifference to a 20-year history of abuse by a priest there. In 1992, it was discovered in Chicago that some 50 priests were involved in child sexual abuse going back at least 40 years. Multimillion dollar settlements became commonplace in 1997, starting with a case in Dallas that year. In 2001, incidents in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon (the latter involving the Mormon Church) came to light. During 2002, there have been scandals within both Boston and Philadelphia dioceses involving revelations of pedophilia. Church officials are normally exempt (unlike doctors, lawyers, and other professionals) from mandatory reporting laws regarding suspicion of child sexual abuse.

INTERNET RESOURCES:
Sexual Assault Information Page
Spousal Rape Laws: 20 Years Later

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