The backcloth of sexual assault: The consequences of contextual factors on sex crime outcomes

Sexual assault is a crime that requires further exploration to determine exactly what takes place during incidents with differing results. Why do some sexual assaults end in rape completion, others in injury to the victim, and still others in either both or neither of these outcomes? Why are some crimes more violent or sexually invasive than others? The current collection of studies attempts to answer these questions through analyses that delve increasingly deeper into the event of sexual assault. A secondary analysis of correctional case files and interviews conducted with 613 sex offenders was performed using sequential logistic regression methods to determine the factors most relevant to different victim resistance patterns, violent crime outcomes, sexually intrusive crime outcomes, and combinations of particularly undesirable, tangible crime outcomes (specifically, rape completion and victim injury). Variables related to the offender’s lifestyle, disinhibitors prior to the crime, the vulnerability of the victim, situational impediments to the crime, offender modus operandi (MO), and the level of victim resistance were examined as they relate to each dependent variable. The final study goes further to provide the crime sequences most likely to lead to various outcome combinations. Implications in terms of sex crime prevention – particularly secondary prevention, or harm reduction – are discussed, with relevant suggestions for policy and education directed towards potential victims, potential offenders, and convicted sex offenders.