A Negative Relationship Between the Age of the Offender and the Age of the Victim - Essay Example

The Mind of a Child Molester al Affiliation: The Mind of a Child Molester Offenders who target little kids or rather children are seen as the worst of the worst criminals in the society and top in the priorities of the investigators who are working to mitigate these crimes against children as soon as possible. This piece of work attempts to portray the modus operandi (MO) and the spatial patterns among these offenders. Similar spatial patterns among these offenders will be of importance to the individuals who are working with crimes against children. A more detailed knowledge is needed on how child molesters choose their victims as well as how they commit their crimes (Beggs & Grace, 2008). This is actually evident for the cases where the offender is unknown to the victim (non-familial). This study explores the characteristics of the non-familial child molesters and the geographical patterns of their offences as well as the relationship between these two cases. About sixty cases of child molestation committed by 25 different child molesters were collected from the police’s archives of the offences. The combined results showed that the mean distance traveled from home base was 5.6 km for the child molesters who did not travel. Although, many offences were committed at the home of the offender to which the victims were lured by the offender or by other victims who are recruited by the offender (Eastvold, Suchy & Strassberg, 2011). The results were recapitulated as follows: the offenders who target the children usually commit their crimes at home or close to their homes. They tend to lure the children to go with them by bribing them or using former victims. Girls are more vulnerable to the crime relative to the boys. Molesters who had children committed less serious actions like kisses, fondling and hugging whereas the ones who had children committed more severe offences like oral sex (Beggs & Grace, 2008). Introduction Seemingly crimes are as old as mountains with people committing crimes of all sorts in the society and in the country as a whole. This means that there are as many crimes in relation to the number of criminals. Forensic psychology a discipline of psychology focuses on studying the minds of criminals and attempting to answer the questions like how, why, where, what and when (Eastvold, Suchy & Strassberg, 2011). The crimes committed against children are seen by people as the worst of all crimes and everyone wants to catch the criminal behind the heinous act as quickly as possible when the innocence of the child is violated. In order to effectively arrest these offenders, we need to understand the places where they commit these crimes and their modes of operation as well (Beggs & Grace, 2008). The purpose of this project is to clarify the modus operandi or rather how they operate, their crime site and their offences when they target children and at the same time test the reliability of the children as witnesses. The criminal spatial behavior and the MO of the child molesters have been discussed and the strategies these offenders use to get the attention of the victims. Criminal Spatial Behavior and MO Offenders prefer a crime site from the premises that deem comfortable to them. The offender then searches for a potential victim within the selected crime site and wait for the correct situation to come along. These sites are close to the offender’s usual travel paths at home, workplace or even leisure locations (Firestone, Bradford, Greenberg & Serran, 2000). These offenders seem to stay at the crime sites after committing a crime. Learning how cognitive maps are established and the relationship between cognition, behavior and perception is crucial and more research is needed within these cases (Beggs & Grace, 2008). The homes of the child molesters deem the best place to commit such crimes similarly to other crimes such as burglary and violent robbery. This is because it takes into account of the child feeling more secure in a home setting where the child is easily lured to engage in sexual activities (Firestone, Bradford, Greenberg & Serran, 2000). The distance decay pattern or the least-effort principle influences the offender’s choice to engage into offences in sites that require little efforts to accomplish. When the offender has to travel a subtle distance to access his/her target, he will be forced to use more violence than the case at home meaning that the attack is swift and ambush in style and prone to increasing the level of violence in the crime (Eastvold, Suchy & Strassberg, 2011). Pedophiles choose a four step model as; 1) They first choose the hunting ground which has a high potential of the targeted victims. 2) They then chooses the best time when to commit the crime by considering the moments when their care takers are not within 3) They then select their target based on their preferences such as gender, sex or even age as well as the vulnerability of the victim 4) They finally select the appropriate strategy to get into contact with the victim and how to proceed to initiate sexual actions. The commonly used strategies by these offenders include enticements, bribes, manipulation, threats as well as seductions. Interfamilial offenders use bribes and violence to force their victims to sexual activities with girls being the vulnerable to such traps (Firestone, Bradford, Greenberg & Serran, 2000). Child molesters listen to the children and share secrets by encouraging them to talk of everything that was on their minds. They usually want to spend more time with the children and inadvertently provide them with all that they needed to know about their personal vulnerabilities in order to victimize them. When children are given the chance to talk about themselves, they love to do so and will sit and tell absolutely everything about themselves and their families (Eastvold, Suchy & Strassberg, 2011). A child molester uses secrecy as a critical tool to both ensnare and entice their victims. Having a secret in childhood is the ultimate status symbol. It adds the feeling of importance, sense of control and prestige too. Child molesters intend to slowly build the acceptance of the child of the need of secrets. They get the opportunity to make the child believe that they are the only individuals in the whole world who really cared and looked out for them. They usually test the child to see whether they have the ability to keep secrets like for instance swearing in front of them and then keeping quiet about the incident. If they don’t keep the secrets, the victimizers would immediately end their attempts to ensnare the child (Hammel-Zabin, 2013). However, if after a period of say one week it is evident that the child kept the secret, the victimizers escalate their process. A feeling of equal responsibility and guilt in the totally innocent child is built when these minor secrets are kept. Secrets become the proof of mutual trust between the two parties. The child’s possible reservations and inhibitions usually shed and they come to the victimizer with every complaint, request or question (Hammel-Zabin, 2013). Vision To apply knowledge from psychological science as a psychology practitioner to address the needs of the society in numerous sectors like child molesting, health, education and environment. To make distinctive contributions to health care that is evidence based and can be recognized by other health professions, policymakers and the public. Goals To provide services that are patient centered, sensitive to the culture of the society, effective and informed by population-based data through integrating knowledge from other bodies like biology, sociology or genetics as it deems necessary. Conducting practice-based outcomes research and program evaluation as well as staying current with psychological research, and are also able to conduct it, especially. Putting aside the psychology conflicts over professional education and training models and focusing on specifying the competency to be attained, applying psychology science in teaching and learning process as well as promoting excellence along with defining minimum standards. Conclusion There is usually a negative relationship between the age of the offender and the age of the victim as the older the molester, the younger the victim. I would be interested to investigate in future, the relationship between the age of the molesters and the innocence and the youthfulness of the victims. An important limitation of this study was the small number of the cases studied and it could be interesting to replicate the same results with a larger number of cases to see whether the same patterns emerge. It was also difficult to catch detailed research data from protocols of crime investigations as they are not always synonymous with items for conducting research. The findings of this paper found few interesting leads that can help the child molesters’ movements and simplify the matters for the police. Child molesters usually commit their crimes at their own home base and when they are forced to travel, they do not travel far away from their home bases. They also stay in the vicinity of the crime site during the course of their crimes. Older child molesters seem to prefer youthful children and this would offer the police helpful indications for investigations to narrow down the search field of the suspects. References Amy Hammel-Zabin, Dr. Amy Hammel-Zabin (2013). Conversations with a Pedophile: In the Interest of Our Children: Barricade Books, Incorporated, 7 Aug 2013 - Social Science. Beggs, S. M., & Grace, R. C. (2008). Psychopathy, intelligence, & recidivism in child molesters: Evidence of an interaction effect. Crminal Justice & Behavior. Eastvold, A., Suchy, Y., & Strassberg, D. (2011). Executive function profiles of pedophilic and nonpedophilic child molesters. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. Firestone, P., Bradford, J. M., Greenberg, D. M., & Serran, G. (2000). The relationship of deviant sexual arousal and psychopathy in incest offenders, extrafamilial child molesters and rapists. 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