Sexual murderers - Essay Example

Sexual murderers By: Foundation College: Department: Table of Contents Chapter Introduction 2 Chapter 2 – Literature Review 5 2.1 Sexual Murderer Profiling 5 2.2 The SOTP 6 Chapter 3 – Methodology 8 3.1 limitations of the study 10 Chapter 4: Analysis of media Items 12 Chapter 5 – Data and Analysis 14 5.1 Questionnaire Data 14 5.2 Semi-Structured Interview Data 16 Chapter 6: Conclusions 17 Chapter 7: References 19 Appendix 20 Chapter 1 – Introduction In the United Kingdom, the Sex Offender is supposedly an unusual person as far as Criminal Justice System is concerned. They are defined so because as they have proven at times to be difficult to manage and to handle. Brown (2005) asserts that the repercussions of the actions of the Sexual Offender on their victim, as well as the society are far reaching, lifelong and indelible. For that reason, writers, the Sexual Offender is treated in a special way by the Criminal Justice System. Craissati (2004) seems to agree that this is unavoidable as a result of the dreadfulness of some of the reported crimes committed by these offenders. He further claims that these crimes are constantly in the face of the public for long periods and thus arousing public interest to demand tough and also harsh responses by the criminal justice agencies. According to the BBC (2008), from the 1970’s, Sexual Offenders have emerged into being the “Folk Devils” of British Society. They say this is due to the constant attention given to their cases and crimes by the media houses of the UK. They outlined that in the 1980s the main focus of the media was the serial rapist while in the 1990s the media focused on the paedophile. In both cases, according to the BBC (2008) report, the media houses dictated to the society what the main sexual culprit was. It was in light of the above that the Sex Offenders Treatment Programme (SOTP), originally developed in Canada, was introduced in the UK. The SOTP served to rehabilitate Sexual Offenders with custodial and non-custodial sentences, according to Evenden (2008). There is very little known of the extent of the effectiveness and the success of the SOTP courses that are run once per week across London at designated locations. The scope of the effectiveness of SOTP is a significant issue as public funding is being used to perform rehabilitative work on Ex-Offenders who the literature mentions are likely to re-offend anyway. The public may thus question as to whether the funds could be put to more useful means. It is in the light of these issues that this study is being conducted. In particular is the assessment about the extent to which the SOTP actually reduces offending, or at least reforms the thinking of the Sexual Offender. The purpose of this piece of work is therefore to explore the effectiveness of the SOTP adapted to England and Wales for sexual Offenders released from a custodial sentence via a mixture of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. An SOTP cohort of interviewees who had just ended the two-year stint of the programme was issued a 10 instrument questionnaire that sought to find out how helpful the programme was in changing their offending behaviour and thinking, while, the semi-structured interview was geared toward one the SOTP presenters. The main objectives are: a) To determine whether the SOTP is effective in the reduction of the offending behaviour of the sexually deviant offender. b) Suggest and make recommendations on ways to improve the SOTP provision to Ex-Offenders. The questions to be addressed during this particular study are as follows: 1. Why do you believe that the SOTP is effective in reducing the offending behaviour of the sexually deviant ex-offender? 2. What can be done to improve the SOTP provision for the sexually deviant ex-offender? Chapter 2 – Literature Review 2.1 Sexual Murderer Profiling According to the writers of www.csom.org there is a typical notion that a sexual offender has a typical profile that is easily recognisable by the public. In fact, Gray et al. (2009) argues for the etiological importance of such offenders as a result of the unusually high prevalence of certain experiential as well as behavioural characteristics found among sexual murderers. These authors were able to find a link between being a sexual murderer and sadistic sexual fantasies. Gacono (1992) mentioned that the sexual murderer will tend to have interests and preferences for one or all of the following behavioural practises: 1) Engaging in sexual contact with young children or adolescents 2) Inflicting pain or humiliation on others 3) Exposing oneself in a public setting 4) Participating or watching acts of physical aggression or violence 5) Having sexual contact with others against their will or without their consent 6) Secretly watching others who are undressing, unclothed or engaging in sexual activity In their study, Beauregard and Proulx (2002) found that there were two pathways to the sexual offending of a sexual murderer. They found that sexual murderers used either the sadistic or the anger pathway. They found that when the sadistic pathway was chosen, such offenders often planned their crime while executing it with the use of physical restraint on their victims. According to the researchers, during this pathway, the offenders would humiliate as well as mutilate their victims and then hid their bodies. The other pathway chosen by sexual murderers, the anger pathway, usually involves the lack of pre-meditated crime planning. They also found that mutilation, pre-meditation and physical restraint was not as common as in the sadistic pathway. In this pathway, as well, the sexual murderer is likely to leave the body to be found. But what is common in both instances, regardless of the pathway, clearly, is the use of some level of force on the victim to force the victim to commit act beyond their wishes. In Habermann et al. (2006), reference was made to the inclusion of other ways of looking at sexual murders. In their study they were able to conclude that multiple sexual murderers are characterized by disorders in three major psychopathological domains: sexual as well as ‘character’ sadism, anti-sociality and schizoid personality. According to Briken et al. (2006) the sexual murderer is usually aware that their actions are criminal. They mention that these types of offenders are aware that rape and child molestation are not only criminal and unusual behaviour but in addition are harmful to the victim emotionally as well as physically and socially, and are likely to linger with the victim for a long period. These authors were also able to mention that offenders also use the permission routine of thought to determine the “rightness” of their behaviour. It is mentioned by these writer that in both cases of offending, the criminal behaviour is usually excused while the offender gives themselves permission to offend so that they do not feel guilty in themselves or in the eyes of others that enjoy significant relationships with them. This clearly shows that the offender is fully aware of their guilt but is unwilling to be a social outcast and so invent ways of performing damage control techniques to limit the decline to their image to themselves personally or in the eyes of the public. These writers mention that although all offenders tend to perform permission indulgence, the incidence of this mental pattern is more prevalent among sex offenders and even more so among sexual offenders. 2.2 The SOTP According to Evenden (2008) the Criminal Justice Act (2003) and the Sexual Offences Act (2003) were both brought on the public scene after the media raised the profile of certain cases. The cases raised certain areas of concern that were brought to the attention of the government and the public. He mentioned in particular the role played by the Sarah Payne abduction and murder in 2000 by Roy Whiting. Roy Whiting had previously refused the SOTP as a course of treatment for his previous conviction for a similar crime committed 2 years earlier. He argued that the Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPP), being open-ended, led to the indiscriminate treatment of sexual offenders without the use of evidence based approaches. He blamed this on the politicians using the issue to play politics during election campaigns. The SOTP grew out of the concerns for lack of evidence in the treatment of the sexual offender and as a result of this use of Cognitive Behavioural Theory (CBT) as its foundation was adopted. CBT has grown in acceptance by the public as an effective treatment tool for certain types of offenders including the sexual offender. However, according to Evenden (2008), there is some doubt in the minds of criminology experts and the Criminal Justice System over the efficacy of the rehabilitation claims made by the providers especially the National Offender Management System (NOMS). According to him, the criticism arises from the difficulty in providing adequate evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of this type of rehabilitation. In fact, Brown (2005) concluded “Due to the nature of social science research and the nature of these programmes, it is unlikely that researchers will ever be able to demonstrate the efficacy of this form of treatment.” Evenden (2008) studied the likely reason for the lack of CBT to demonstrate its effectiveness in the area of offender management programmes. He mentioned that the crime statistics gathered and reported by the police would not necessarily contain any figures to do with the sexual offences. He further asserted that they tend to be omitted and seen as being unrecorded “dark figures”. It is as a result of this that the argument put forward by Evenden (2008) seems to be plausible as he mentions that as a result of the existence of “black figures” it is hardly likely that the case of the Criminal Justice System would be able to justify claims that the SOTP is working or not working. So the need for a qualitative approach to the issue should be able to reflect light into the issues at hand in a more effective way than the use of crime statistics. Chapter 3 – Methodology The purpose of this study, as mentioned in Chapter 1, was to explore the effectiveness of the SOTP adapted to England and Wales for sexual Offenders released from a custodial sentence. The intention was to collect primary data via a mixture of semi-structured interview and questionnaires with subjects from a cohort of five interviewees who had just completed the 2 year SOTP course, and, one of the SOTP presenters. It was the understanding of the current researcher that the nature of the offences of the sexual offender would make these individuals to be regarded as being relatively dangerous high profile individuals. The nature of the proposed method of the collection of the primary data carries with it certain methodological and ethical challenges that made it difficult to access the data the way it ought to be accessed during a semi-structured interview. According to Brymer (2005) some of the challenges and ethics involved in a research of this nature and with the primary data collection methods suggested had to do with the potential mental trauma that the current researcher could experience as well as the potentialities involving the disclosure of further offences of a similar nature that are unknown to the police. He mentions that the issue with this is that a consideration would then have to be given to how much information must be disclosed and to which of the relevant agencies. The above mentioned issues as well as the effect of scarce resources with time and monetary availabilities should conclude that secondary data collection should be the best option. However, the current researcher was able, with the help of an SOTP presenter, to identify a cohort of five candidates who would be available to answer questions on the questionnaire while the presenter himself volunteered to answer questions to do with the semi-structured interview. The interview and the questionnaires took place a week after the end of the SOTP course for the subjects at the course presentation office in Central London and with the help of the course presenter acting in a way to ensure that there was a balance in the behaviour of the interviewees and that there was scope to handle disclosures that were of material import related to their offending behaviour. Copies of the interview schedule as well as the 10 – instrument questionnaire are attached at the end of the paper in Appendices 1 and 2 respectively. The questionnaire consists of the following indicator of cognitive and behavioural change with respect to sexual offending: 1) The Sexual Knowledge Assessment (SAKS) 2) Victim Empathy (VESA) 3) Cognitive Distortions (SOSAS and QACSO) Progress in relation to the SAKS is indicated by higher scores while that for the rest is indicated by lower scores. These instruments were administered to the cohort of 5 as they were administered to the cohort 2 years ago to assess their situations prior to the course and then compared to their current situations 2 years after the programme. 3.1 limitations of the study As a result of the word limit of the current study, it will only focus on a simple interview with one of the SOTP presenters along with a questionnaire to be done by 5 subjects of the SOTP programme. The particular SOTP subjects were chosen by the SOTP presenter who was personally known to me previously and who with the appropriate protocols was able to secure the cooperation of the subjects for this particular study. The location was chosen due to its easy access and safe as well as secure environment. The data from this will be sufficient for a simple analysis and therefore repetitive themes may be absent. In the absence of interviews with sexual ex-offenders, for reasons mentioned earlier, the need to apply Thematic Analysis to identify repetitive themes was unnecessary for the purposes of the current study. Needless to say, this would have severe implications for the reliability of the data which would be reduced as a result of lack of Thematic Analysis. This would mean that the claims made in the interview cannot really be seen to be applicable to other SOTP cohorts even though the findings may be supported by the literature review. Therefore for a more complete picture of what is happening with the SOTP’s effectiveness it would be more relevant to have done at least some semi-structured interviews with the 5 ex-offender subjects. According to ward et al. (1995) the sexual murderer would recurrently possess attention or social deficits while in their growing years and that they would tend as a result of this to be unable to communicate effectively with members of the opposite sex. This would have led to these offenders having social deficit issues as well as being unable to successfully negotiate themselves into an appropriate relationship. They believe that this is the reason for the development of their sexual distortions in their unusual behaviours. Sexual Murderers tend to lack victim empathy, according to Hanson (2003). They tend to display this trait more so than other offenders, according to this writer who also mentions that the sexual murderer is unable to display victim empathy especially toward their victim. It would clearly be the case that this is different depending on the motivation of the sexual offence in the first place. As, from what was mentioned earlier, this would likely be the case for sexual murderers motivated by anger and hatred toward women, as they would tend to commit the sexual offence and go on further to demonstrate their lack of empathy by mutilating their victim and then preventing their body from being found. However, for the person whose motivation may have been to hide his crime after a sexual offence via murdering their victim, this may necessarily not be the case. The literature also mentions that when looking at other descriptive studies concerning sex offenders, and sexual murderers, a lack of healthy or effective coping skills is often mentioned. For example, some of these offenders have difficulties managing their emotions appropriately, and some are highly impulsive and tend not to think carefully about the consequences of their behaviours before they act. They may have difficulty resisting their urges from time to time. It is an intuitive notion that many people in the general public have difficulties managing certain emotions at times, and many a person can and do act in impulsive ways occasionally. Among the studies that have examined childhood maltreatment (including sexual victimization) among sex offenders, there is quite a bit of variation, according to them. However there seems to be a relatively high prevalence of sexual or physical abuse among samples of sex offenders who are murderers. This they say seems to suggest that there may be some sort of relationship between having been maltreated and later engaging in sex offending behaviours, especially when other kinds of vulnerability or risk factors are present. But in and of itself, there is no research that supports the notion that it actually causes sex offending, they argue. Intuitively, as it is known that there are many people who have been subjected to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse during their childhood or adolescence, it is clearly the case that they never go on to commit sex offenses, and so this may be a bit weak. Chapter 4: Analysis of media Items A number of reporters have pointed to the greatly gendered coverage of male sexual aggression against women. Soothill and Walby (1991: 22) claim that throughout the sensationalist wars of the late 70s sex offense was portrayed by a number of newspapers as a type of ‘soft pornography’ to augment sales. Twenty years later, Lees (1995: 125) confirmed little alteration and established plenty of rapes coverage in a section of four British newspapers. He claimed the reporting was ‘prejudiced, inexact and irresponsible’, and regularly ‘directed at marking down women’s claims of rape, as well as mitigating the camouflaging of rape as seduction’. Benedict (1992) emphasized the propensity for reports media to polarize women in the cases of sex crime. They polarize them into either ‘whores’ or ‘virgins’ or, in this chapter, ‘undeserving’ and ‘ideal’ victims. These double conflicts do not essentially result from personal journalistic malevolence. Rather, they come up from nature that is gender-biased of language along with existing myths concerning sex, women and rape. The myths utterly direct news-making in a way that can manipulate even the majority of well-meaning reporters. ‘A myth-inundated woman will be merely as unfeeling to rape issues as a myth-inundated man, particularly given the situation and practice of the newsroom behavior.’ (Benedict, 1992: 6) and Meyers (1997: 119) has established a likewise predisposed coverage of female fatalities of sexual aggression. He indicates that news reporting is subjective heavily to the ‘virgin–whore’ mentality. Additionally, it is subjective to ideas of race, class along with age which consequence from the union of ‘male as well as white supremacist beliefs’. The results across the studies, as well as others, are amazingly reliable. News media depictions of adult fatalities of sex crime, if rarely portrayed as soft pornography today, are regularly structured as well as implied in masculinity terms. Such tales do much to uphold customary patriarchal labels of femininity, manliness and ‘suitable’ female sexuality. The stories do so little to confront current myths concerning rape and deal with the crisis of male sexual aggression against women. Maybe the most important swing in media coverage of sex crime in current times has been the surfacing of child fatalities as news broadcast staple, and the turn down in concentration to adult rapes. There is some further, novel feature to the case, for instance, the participation of celebrities, or numerous fatalities or offenders (Greer, 2003). Although child sex violence reporting has thrived, it is only convinced types of crimes that get standard and continued reporting. News accounts have a tendency to feature very young fatalities – well under the age of approval and thus effortlessly presented as totally ‘innocent’. They are presented as those who have been mistreated by an alien, somebody in a position of power like a youth leader, teacher or member of the clergy or, more lately, groomed online. Sexual oppression often occurs inside the home, and it is further possible a child will be mistreated by somebody they are related than by an alien or somebody just met. Descriptions of ancestral abuse are almost absent from normal media accounts. Kitzinger (1999) indicates that even as people could on some level be conscious that the utmost dangers to children regularly emanate from inside the home, their doubts center on outside threats. They focus on bushes rather than living rooms, foreigners rather than relatives since this is both and psychologically more controllable on a daily basis. Whereas such fears could be comprehensible and are without doubt shared by numerous of the reporters who make the news, they however add to supporting a highly discriminatory and deceptive depiction of child sexual maltreatment in the media. Particularly, the importance on the gravest examples of child sexual persecution by strangers strengthens fears of the indefinite voracious ‘other’. It also restrains complete and informed debate concerning the nature as well as an extent of sexual aggression in society and the measures that could best be taken to defend those at risk. In his debate of paedophilia as an ethical terror, Critcher (2003) points that there are a small number of academic as well as secondary information sources on paedophilia. He adds that an assessment of newspaper reporting is the clearest method of indicating how the dread came up and developed. He classifies diverse stages of this development, though the phrase paedophilia was hardly ever used prior to the 1990s. Initially, in the late 70s and early80s the phrase was initiated in connection to child pornography as well as the idea of prearranged paedophile rings. He argues that later in the 1980s, paedophiles were connected with the kidnap and assassination of children. It was demonstrated by the police exploration ‘operation stranger’ into 15 children that were killed. The terror surrounding this offense climaxed in the 1990s, stimulated by the media reporting of sexual violence in Ireland and Belgium. Chapter 5 – Data and Analysis What now follows are elements of the questionnaire data as well as form the semi-structured interview. 5.1 Questionnaire Data Table Showing Pre-group, Post-group and Follow-up Mean Scores The entries for the SAKS showed an increase in the scores and so indicate an improvement in the sexual knowledge assessment of the offenders. This was the case for all aspects of the SAKS. This indicates an improvement of the behaviour of the cohort of 5 ex-offenders and so indicates ex-offenders who are less likely to re-offend in was done previously. An improvement of the cohort with respect to victim empathy is indicated by a lowering of the scores of the interview. So also is the case with cognitive distortions measured by SOSAS and QACSO. In both instances of the data shown above, the mean score reflected a decrease as time progressed. This indicates that the ex-offenders responded positively to the stimuli provided in the SOTP and so it indicates that, as the ex-offenders displayed indicators of improvements in their sexual offending thinking, then it also should mean that the SOTP has some merits because the improvements in the sexual offending views of the ex-offenders could easily be attributed to the positive and intended effects of SOTP on the offending thinking of the ex-offending. 5.2 Semi-Structured Interview Data The questionnaire data presented above may have indicated that the offending behaviour of the ex-offenders may have effect in terms of their behaviour as well as their thinking. This data does not show the extent to which the ex-offenders were clear of relapsing into offending behaviour. The semi-structured interview was therefore performed to ascertain the extent of the offending behaviour of the cohort over the two year period of the SOTP course so that better judgement could be made about the actual reoffending behaviour of the cohort. Question 1 Has any of the subjects committed any non sexual offences during the period of the treatment programme? To this question the response was that none of the offenders knowingly offended in any way during the SOTP. Question 2 Has any of the subjects committed any sexual offences during the period of the SOTP? The answer to this question was the same as that found above and so was in the negative The above mentioned answers indicate that the SOTP was very effective, at least in this particular cohort of subjects, as far as reported crimes are concerned. It could however be the case that the SOTP has made the subjects more aware of their crime and taught them how to avoid being caught, and so may not have improved the offending behaviour of the subjects Question 3 How can the SOTP provision be improved for the sexually deviant ex-offender? The interviewee mentioned that the SOTP provision is proving to be a successful and effective as far as he is concerned. He mentioned however that the effectiveness of the programme can only be measured with the help of the data received by the criminal justice system as far as offences are concerned. He mentions that it is only hoped that whenever subjects are making contributions during the SOTP provision that they are telling the truth. Therefore the SOTP provision could be improved with tighter links made with the criminal justice system and the Probation system to ensure that offences made by the subjects will be fed through the system as quickly as possible so that the SOTP programme’s effectiveness could be ascertained. Chapter 6: Conclusions The purpose of the study was to explore the effectiveness of the SOTP adapted to England and Wales for sexual Offenders released from a custodial sentence via a mixture of semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The main objectives were: a) To determine whether the SOTP is effective in the reduction of the offending behaviour of the sexually deviant offender. b) Suggest and make recommendations on ways to improve the SOTP provision to Ex-Offenders. With respect to the first objective, it can be concluded that the SOTP provision, as far as the current set of subjects were concerned, the SOTP provision was seen to be extremely effective as far as the data from the Criminal Justice System was able to demonstrate for this particular group of subjects. It was also mentioned that there is a possibility that the subjects, having learned how painful it is to be caught in the prison system, may have learnt to how to avoid being caught by the criminal justice system. It may not necessarily be the case that the subjects are now posing less of a threat to the public as a result of the SOTP provision. It is as a result of this point that the recommendation to be made here is for the links between the various agencies that work with the subjects, for the sake of the authenticity of the SOTP provision, be closer. This will enable better judgements to be made of the effectiveness of the SOTP provision as well as necessary adjustments on how improve its effectiveness. Chapter 7: References Beauregard, E., & Proulx, J. (2002). Profiles in the offending process of nonserial sexual murderers. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 46(4), 386-399. Beech, A., Fisher, D., & Ward, T. (2005). Sexual murderers implicit theories. Journal of interpersonal violence, 20(11), 1366-1389. Briken, P., Habermann, N., Kafka, M. P., Berner, W., & Hill, A. (2006). The Paraphilia‐Related Disorders: An Investigation of the Relevance of the Concept in Sexual Murderers. Journal of forensic sciences, 51(3), 683-688. Brown, S. (2005) Treating Sex Offenders: An introduction to sex offender treatment programmes. Cullumpton: Willan Publishing. Craissant , J. (2004). Managing High Risk Sex Offenders in the Community: A Psychological Approach. East Sussex: Brunner -Routledge . Evenden, L. (2008). An Evaluation of Sex Offender Treatment for Offenders Sentenced to Custody. Internet Journal of Criminology. Gacono, C. B. (1992). Sexual homicide and the Rorschach: A Rorschach case study of sexual homicide. British Journal of Projective Psychology. Gray, N. S., Watt, A., Hassan, S., & Macculloch, M. J. (2003). Behavioral indicators of sadistic sexual murder predict the presence of sadistic sexual fantasy in a normative sample. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 18(9), 1018-1034. Hanson, R. K. (2003). Empathy deficits of sexual offenders: a conceptual model. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 9(1), 13-23. Hill, A., Habermann, N., Berner, W., & Briken, P. (2006). Psychiatric disorders in single and multiple sexual murderers. Psychopathology, 40(1), 22-28. Marshall, W. L., Laws, D. R., & Barbaree, H. E. (1990). Handbook of sexual assault: Issues, theories, and treatment of the offender. Plenum Press. Ward, T., Hudson, S. M., Marshall, W. L., & Siegert, R. (1995). Attachment style and intimacy deficits in sexual offenders: A theoretical framework. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 7(4), 317-335. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/sex-offender http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sex-offender http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/offender Appendix Appendix 1 Interview Schedule 1. Why do you believe that the SOTP is effective in reducing the offending behaviour of the sexually deviant ex-offender? 2. What can be done to improve the SOTP provision for the sexually deviant ex-offender? Read More