Featured Content: Sexual Assault Perpetrators' Tactics

"Since the 1980's, many researchers have collected self-reports of sexual assault perpetration to obtain a broader representation than is possible with adjudicated offenders.  These researchers are less concerned with whether the acts met legal definitions of sex crimes than with identifying individuals who knowingly used any type of coercive tactic to obtain sex from someone who was unwilling.  This study expands upon past research by 1) using a large community-based sample of young men instead of a college sample, 2) including a broad range of risk factors for sexual assault perpetration, and 3) comparing nonperpetrators, perpetrators who used verbally coercive tactics (for example, getting angry, making the woman feel guilty), and perpetrators who used the victim's impairment to obtain sex (for example, giving a woman alcohol or drugs or having sex with a woman who is passed out).  Forty-three percent of this representative sample of young, single, men from one large metropolitan area reported that they made a woman have sex against her wishes since age 14.  As hypothesized, sexual assault perpetrators (regardless of the tactic used) scored higher than nonperpetrators on a wide range of risk factors including hostile and stereotypic attitudes toward women, positive attitudes about casual sex and number of sex partners, subclinical levels of personality traits associated with psychopathy, antisocial behavior, and drinking problems.  As compared to nonperpetrators on their worst dates, both groups of perpetrators used more isolating and controlling behaviors, misperceived the woman's degree of sexual interest longer, and engaged in more consensual sexual activities during the interaction.  For several measures, perpetrators who used the victim's impairment as their tactic also had more extreme scores than verbal coercers including how much alcohol they consumed and the victim consumed during the incident.  These findings demonstrate that acts of sexual aggression are committed by a large proportion of young men.  Although many of these acts would not meet legal criteria for sex offenses, the fact that perpetrators scored higher than nonperpetrators on a wide range of risk factors demonstrates that the use of any strategy to obtain sex from someone who is unwilling is associated with a pattern of personality characteristics, attitudes, and experiences that are antisocial and hostile toward women.  Prevention programs are needed that focus on high risk individuals and provide skills based training. "

-Antonia Abbey and Angela J. Jacques-Tiura, regarding "Sexual Assault Perpetrators’ Tactics: Associations With Their Pers... published in the December 2011 issues of Journal of Interpersonal Violence.