Holcomb Sexual Violence

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-61334-333-3
Verlag: Hogrefe Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 102 Seiten

Reihe: Advances in Psychotherapy - Evidence-Based Practice

Authoritative, evidence-based guidance on treating sexually coercive and violent men.
This book presents both a compact summary of the voluminous research on sexual violence and a practical, evidence-based "how-to" treatment guide for mental health practitioners working in clinics and institutions that treat men who are sexually coercive and violent toward others.
Those needing intervention may be college students, individuals seeking outpatient help, family batterers, or those who sexually abuse women and children. They may have been arrested for sex crimes or be incarcerated or on probation in sex offender treatment program, though most will never have been arrested. This clearly written and well-structured resource will help clinicians deal with all.
The book first reviews research on the prevalence of sexually abusive behavior, along with diagnostic issues, assessment strategies, and risk assessment approaches, and then presents current integrated theories on the causes of sexually violent behavior.
The primary focus, however, is the specific emotional and behavioral targets of treatment and the therapist skills and strategies that are effective in reducing sexual victimization. Cultural factors that influence treatment are identified and effective prevention programs for sexual violence are also described and evaluated.
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Autoren/Hrsg.

Holcomb, William R.

Holcomb, Bill

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizinische Fachgebiete Forensik, Rechtsmedizin, Gerichtsmedizin
• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Rechtsmedizin, Forensik
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Kriminalpsychologie, Forensische Psychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Sexualpsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychotherapie / Klinische Psychologie

Leseproben

1
Description of the Problem
Sexual violence remains a significant problem in our society. Mental health professionals too often confront the immediate consequences of sexual assault in emergency rooms, victim support centers, correctional institutions, mental hospitals, and outpatient clinics. Law enforcement personnel and child protective agencies are persistently faced with child sexual molestation, incest, intimate partner sexual violence, and rape. The good news in this horrific story is that the prevalence of sexual assault seems to have been going down in the United States since the mid-1970s, according to the National Victimization Survey (Catalano, 2005), but the incidence remains high and a significant presenting problem for mental health professionals. This book will present an overview of sexual violence as seen in many clinical settings, review key diagnostic guidelines, and assessment strategies, outline some of the current theories for understanding sexual violence, and then focus on effective treatment processes, and strategies. I will focus primarily on adult male perpetrators of sexual violence with both child and adult victims. Although there is growing awareness of female perpetrators (Schwartz & Cellini, 1995), the focus will primarily be on male perpetrators since males commit the vast majority of sexual violence incidents. Most important, I will use a broad definition of sexual violence to include not only the use of physical force, but sexual coercion utilizing position authority and verbal aggression. An important goal of this work will be to provide tools that mental health professionals can use in different institutional and community treatment settings to be more effective when working with perpetrators of sexual violence. Another goal of this book will be to inform clinicians and the public with the most recent science on sexual violence. Unfortunately, there are many myths about sexual violence, and in particular sexual crimes, which are promoted by the monster archetype in our culture’s unconscious. This book will review research that challenges some of these myths. Among these myths are that sex offenders cannot be treated, that most sex offenders are arrested and not in the community, that sex offenders are almost sure to commit other sex offenses if released, that pornography causes sexual violence, and that all sex offenders are psychopathic and narcissistic. I strongly believe informed clinicians can make better decisions about prevention and effective intervention with sexually violent individuals. 1.1 Definition
Sexual violence can be defined in several ways. We will use the definition of Lalumiere, Harris, Quinsey, and Rice (2005) who provide definitions of rape and of sexual coercion. Rape is defined as, “The forceful act of sexual intercourse against a person’s will and/or any physical sexual contact performed with the use of threat or physical force” (p. 10). Sexual coercion is defined as, “Any physical sexual contact performed without a person’s consent using any coercive methods (e.g., using a position of authority or verbal pressure” (p. 10). There have been some notable trends in official reports of rape crimes over the last few years that are supported by results from self-reported national survey data of victimization. Between 1982 and 1992, the prevalence of rape increased dramatically from 24 per 100,000 to 43 per 100,000. However, the rate of forcible rape then precipitously declined by 26% from 1992 to 2001 to a rate of 31 per 100,000. There was a more dramatic decrease of approximately 68% in victim-reported rapes in the National Crime Victimization Survey. The rate of rapes that were self-reported but that did not lead to arrest dropped from 250 per 100,000 in 1983 to approximately 54 per 100,000 in 2001 (Catalano, 2005). Confidence in this decrease in reported rapes is bolstered by the fact that during this same time there was a parallel drop in most criminal activities (Lalumiere et al., 2005). The rate of reported rapes has decreased in the past decade to 31 per 100,000, but remains unacceptably high. The number of sex crimes and self-reported victimizations not leading to arrest remains unacceptably high. Approximately 95,000 forcible rape crimes occurred in 2004 (US Department of Justice, 2006). The National Crime Victimization Survey reported that approximately 200,000 rapes were self-reported during this period (Catalano, 2005). The majority of sexual assault victims are minors and female (La Ford, 2005). In addition, the number of sex offenders in prisons has dramatically increased in recent years at a much faster rate than other kinds of offenders. Departments of correction are supervising over 240,000 sex offenders, with approximately half being supervised in the community at any one time (Greenfield, 1997; La Ford, 2005). These prevalence and incarceration rates clearly illustrate the tremendous costs to society in both human suffering and the expense associated with criminal justice intervention. 7 out of 10 rape/sexual assault victims are intimate partners of the offender. One of the assumptions of this book is that sexual violence occurs both in the commission of sex crimes that lead to arrests and in cases of violent and coercive behavior in the community in which arrests do not occur. Some of the settings in which arrests may not occur are date rape, intimate partner violence, and child sexual abuse. In 2005, seven out of ten female rape or sexual assault victims stated that the offender was an intimate, rather than a relative, friend, or acquaintance (Catalano, 2005). The prevalence of intimate partner sexual violence underscores the importance of understanding noncriminal or nonarrest sexual violence (Bennice & Resick, 2003). One national self-report survey found that 7.7% of women report being raped by their intimate partner (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998, 2000). Another researcher estimated that between 10% and 14% of married women are raped by their partner (Russel, 1990). When questioned about why their intimate partners rape them, 78% of victims reported that their husbands needed to prove their manhood (Frieze, 1983). Others have reported that their partners felt they had an entitlement of sex or that their partners used sex to control them (Bergen & Bukovec, 2006). The perpetrators in this later study were in a court-ordered domestic violence treatment program. Of these individuals, 33% had white-collar jobs, 56% were married to or currently living with their partners, 84% admitted to physical acts of violence against their partners, and 40% indicated that their use of physical violence had been increasing. It cannot be assumed that perpetrators of intimate partner violence are different from those arrested for sex crimes. Groth and Gary (1981) reported that marital rapists share a number of characteristics with incarcerated rapists, including prior histories of sexual violence, deficient communication skills, problems with emotional intimacy, and the view that refusal of sexual intimacy by their partners is intolerable. Intimate partner sexual violence is a prime example of a situation in which victimization occurs, but there is no arrest or criminal conviction. 20% of women seen in health clinics report being victims of recent sexual violence. A common setting in which sexual violence and its effects are all too often seen is in health clinics. In one study of 1401 adult women who attended a family practice clinic, 20% experienced intimate partner violence in current or recent relationships (Coker, Smith, McKeown, & King, 2000). Women who experienced both sexual and physical abuse had higher scores on a battering scale and a spousal abuse scale, which led the authors to suggest that sexual abuse could be a marker for severe violence and even violence escalation. Both the victims and the perpetrators in this study tended to be unemployed, suggesting to the authors that unemployment of the victim could be a sign of the extreme control exercised by the perpetrator of violence. Family violence often brings both partners and the children into contact with mental health professionals. 1.2 Epidemiology
Approximately 9 out of 10 child sexual abuse incidents are not reported. Establishing the true incidence and prevalence of sexual violence is difficult to determine because of the variations in definitions used in epidemiological surveys. Also, the under-reporting of victimization further contributes to inaccuracy of prevalence estimates of sexual violence. In one random selection survey in San Francisco, only 2% of incest offenses and 6% of child sexual victimization by nonfamily offenders were reported (Russel, 1990). Henry and McMahon (2000) estimate that 91% of cases of child sex abuse are unreported. Kilpatrick (1996) estimated that 56% of women who are sexually assaulted do not report the crime. 56% of women who are sexually assaulted do not report the crime. The prevalence of self-reported sexual violence in community samples is high. A quarter of college women report either being raped (15%) or resisting an attempted rape (12%) (Koss, Gidyez, & Wisniewski, 1987). Of a random sample of women in San Francisco, 44% indicated that they had been raped (Russel, 1990). Self-reported sex abuse as children also is high. Peters, Wyatt, and Finkelhor (1986) reviewed the literature and estimated rates of sex abuse for children at 34% for females and 17% for males. There is a continuum of sexual violence that can extend from sexual exploitation to sadistic sexual murder. Sexual exploitation can be expressed in many ways, but a frequent form is that of...