I Want to Get This off My Chest: When Perpetrators Publicly Disclose how They Raped Their Victims

Women live in a world where nearly one in four will experience sexual assault. In fact, sexual violence is now so common that the World Health Organization recently declared it a global epidemic. Despite the prevalence of such incidents, few perpetrators self-identify. In the cases where they did acknowledge their infractions, many perpetrators said they acted as they did because they misconceived a partner’s sexual intention. This current article will argue that confusion about consent serves as more than a potential risk factor; it also provides a reason for disclosing details about the assault. By using the social media website, Reddit.com, we found a connection between confusion about consent and the perpetrators’ desire to recount their actions. Researchers gathered 77 first-hand sexual assault accounts from Reddit.com and then thematically analyzed perpetrators’ statements using an inductive qualitative method, which allows researchers to start with a broad area of study and let theory emerge from the data set. Findings supported the notion that perpetrators’ emotions about consent affected their decisions to disclose. Many expressed a need for catharsis, to “get it off (their) chest.” Others described feeling guilt or remorse, expressing that they felt “sick” with themselves. Still more questioned whether they had crossed a line and wondered whether their experience constituted sexual assault. For these stated reasons, perpetrators turned to Reddit, telling fellow users that they would “like to hear (readers’) opinions.” This study demonstrates that tools such as social media can be used to gain a greater insight into a perpetrator’s mindset. Public policy, education curricula, and prevention programs can implement better language and more effective content by better understanding what confuses perpetrators about the definition and implications of consent

SEXUALLY VIOLENT PEERS STRENGTHEN THE LINK BETWEEN AGGRESSION-RELATED PERSONALITY TRAITS AND SEXUAL PERPETRATION

Sexual violence is endemic on U.S. college campuses. On average, one out of three college women reports experiencing sexual violence during their college years. It is vital to understand what factors increase the likelihood of sexual violence perpetration, so we have potential targets for prevention programs. Two studied risk factors are aggression-related personality traits (e.g., psychoticism) and having sexually violent peers. Despite these two findings being well-supported, the extent to which these two factors interact to predict sexual violence perpetration remains unclear, which was the goal of this study. We hypothesized that the link between personality traits and perpetration would be stronger in men with sexually violent peers. Participants (N=696) were a nationally representative sample of male 4-year college or university graduates who answered questions related to personality traits, their peers’ and their own sexual behavior in college. Results suggest that 12.4% of college men engage in behaviors while in college that meet legal definitions of sexual assault. Additionally, there was a significant interaction between personality traits and sexually violent peers F(3,693) = 95.22, p\u3c.0001, r2= .30. Specifically, aggression-related personality traits were a stronger predictor of sexual aggression among men with sexually violent peers (b=.34, p\u3c.0001) compared to men who did not have sexually violent peers (b=.11, p\u3c0001). These findings suggest that future research and prevention programs should consider how someone’s individual traits and peer norms interact to create an environment where sexual violence is normalized. Future studies should include prospective methods to assess how personality traits and peer attitudes and behaviors co-evolve across a lifetime and whether association with prosocial peers might reduce the link between aggression-related traits and sexual violence

Trajectories of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization

Introduction: The purposes of this study were to assess the extent to which latent trajectories of female intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization exist; and, if so, use negative childhood experiences to predict trajectory membership.Methods: We collected data from 1,575 women at 5 time-points regarding experiences during adolescence and their 4 years of college. We used latent class growth analysis to fit a series of personcentered, longitudinal models ranging from 1 to 5 trajectories. Once the best-fitting model was selected, we used negative childhood experience variables—sexual abuse, physical abuse, and witnessing domestic violence—to predict most-likely trajectory membership via multinomial logistic regression.Results: A 5-trajectory model best fit the data both statistically and in terms of interpretability. The trajectories across time were interpreted as low or no IPV, low to moderate IPV, moderate to low IPV, high to moderate IPV, and high and increasing IPV, respectively. Negative childhood experiences differentiated trajectory membership, somewhat, with childhood sexual abuse as a consistent predictor of membership in elevated IPV trajectories.Conclusion: Our analyses show how IPV risk changes over time and in different ways. These differential patterns of IPV suggest the need for prevention strategies tailored for women that consider victimization experiences in childhood and early adulthood. [West J Emerg Med. 2012;13(3):272–277.

Trajectories of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization

Introduction: The purposes of this study were to assess the extent to which latent trajectories of female intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization exist; and, if so, use negative childhood experiences to predict trajectory membership.Methods: We collected data from 1,575 women at 5 time-points regarding experiences during adolescence and their 4 years of college. We used latent class growth analysis to fit a series of personcentered, longitudinal models ranging from 1 to 5 trajectories. Once the best-fitting model was selected, we used negative childhood experience variables—sexual abuse, physical abuse, and witnessing domestic violence—to predict most-likely trajectory membership via multinomial logistic regression.Results: A 5-trajectory model best fit the data both statistically and in terms of interpretability. The trajectories across time were interpreted as low or no IPV, low to moderate IPV, moderate to low IPV, high to moderate IPV, and high and increasing IPV, respectively. Negative childhood experiences differentiated trajectory membership, somewhat, with childhood sexual abuse as a consistent predictor of membership in elevated IPV trajectories.Conclusion: Our analyses show how IPV risk changes over time and in different ways. These differential patterns of IPV suggest the need for prevention strategies tailored for women that consider victimization experiences in childhood and early adulthood. [West J Emerg Med. 2012;13(3):272–277.]

Speak Up! Prosocial Intervention Verbalizations Predict Successful Bystander Intervention for a Laboratory Analogue of Sexual Aggression

This study evaluated a mechanism by which men’s self-efficacy to intervene increases their likelihood of preventing a laboratory analogue of sexual aggression (SA) via specific verbalizations and whether alcohol inhibits this mechanism. A sample of 78 male peer dyads were randomly assigned to consume an alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverage and complete a laboratory paradigm to assess bystander intervention to prevent SA toward a female who had ostensibly consumed an alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverage. Participants’ verbalizations during the task were subjected to quantitative analysis. Regardless of alcohol use, bystander self-efficacy increased the likelihood of successful bystander intervention via participants’ use of more prosocial verbalizations. Findings highlight prosocial verbalizations within the male peer context that may effectively prevent SA

Measuring campus sexual misconduct and its context: The Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Consortium (ARC3) Survey

Objective: In response to The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault’s recommendations, the Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative (ARC3) has curated an empirically sound, no-cost campus climate survey for U.S. institutions of higher education. The ARC3 survey contains 19 modules that assess a range of Title IX violations, including sexual harassment, dating violence, and sexual misconduct victimization and perpetration; sexual misconduct prevention efforts, resources, and responses; and key predictors and possible outcomes of sexual misconduct. This article describes the ARC3 survey development and pilot test psychometric data. Method: A total of 909 students attending one of three U.S. universities responded to the survey; 85% of students who began the survey completed it. Students completed the ARC3 survey in slightly less than 30 min, on average. Results: The majority of measures produced evidence for at least acceptable internal consistency levels (.70), with only two short item sets having marginal reliability (.65–.70). Correlations among scales matched expectations set by the research literature. Students generally did not find the survey distressing; in fact, students viewed the climate assessment as important and personally meaningful. Conclusion: The survey performed sufficiently well in pilot testing to recommend its use with U.S. college populations