Children make up the segment of society that is the most defenseless, vulnerable, and completely dependent on adults. It is the fault of adults when children end up in areas of natural disasters and catastrophes or zones of military combat operations and become the hostages and victims of physical, sexual, and emotional violence. As E. Fromm…

This study explores the roles of benevolent sexism (BS), hostile sexism (HS), and gender-role traditionality (GRT) in minimizing rape, blaming the victim, and excusing the rapist. As predicted, hostile sexists minimize the seriousness of the rape in both stranger and date-rape scenarios. In the victim-blame scale, both BS and GRT significantly…

This study examined the co-occurrence of childhood sexual abuse, adult sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and sexual harassment in a predominantly African American sample of 268 female veterans, randomly sampled from an urban Veterans Affairs hospital women's clinic. A combination of hierarchical and iterative cluster analysis was used to…

The authors used qualitative research methods to explore the context and sexual risk behavior associated with sexual intercourse involving multiple males and one female, commonly called "running a train." Participants were 20 adolescent males aged 14 to 22 years who were either perpetrators of dating violence or perceived by teachers to…

Research has found that approximately half of women who report an experience that meets the legal definition of rape do not label it rape. It has been assumed that labeling the experience as rape is necessary and beneficial for recovery; however, conflicting findings have been reported. In the present study, a longitudinal design was utilized to…

Whether satisfaction or dissatisfaction is experienced is a function of the type of comparisons against which the outcome is evaluated. Something appears good because it seems better than something else. This study examined the consequences of downward comparisons, or worse-world counterfactuals involving evaluations of both the victim and…

This study compared the moral development of solo juvenile male sex offenders (n = 20) and juvenile male non-offenders (n = 76), aged 13-19 years, from lower socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. The Moral Orientation Measure (MOM) was used to assess punishment- and victim-based moral orientation in sexual and non-sexual situations. Moral…

Surveys and focus groups were administered to two samples of US university undergraduates to compare sexual aggression prevalence as assessed based on the Power-Assertion model (n = 139) versus the Confluence model (n = 318). Men were more likely to commit all illegal acts, especially conventional rape. Women also committed illegal acts,…

Understanding factors that affect the severity of a juvenile-stranger sexual assault has implications for crime prevention, and potentially, the assessment and treatment of juvenile sex offenders. This study investigated how victim characteristics and the number of suspects affected the use of physical violence and weapons and the occurrence of…

Reviews models developed to identify cognitive mediators of rape judgments. Recent models examine perceptions of perpetrator's violent behavior and of victim's desire for intercourse as mediators of effects of violence levels and victim's behavior upon rape judgments. Sex differences in models suggest that female evaluators may be more likely to…

Compares male and female rape reporting behavior using data from the National Crime and Victimization Survey for 897 rape victims. Data indicate that the situational characteristics of rape and factors that influence reporting a rape differ by sex. Women reported victimization more frequently than did men. (SLD)

Over the past 20 years, research has uncovered the many types of sexual victimizations women experience. Findings regarding the victim-offender relationship in such incidents have undoubtedly been among the most striking. Particularly salient is the revelation that the sexual abuse of and violence against women - including rape - most often are…

Researchers have established that alcohol is a risk factor for date rape for both victims and perpetrators. Objective: The authors tried to experimentally address the link between alcohol consumption and women's risk detection abilities in a risky sexual vignette. Participants: The authors recruited 42 women from undergraduate classrooms at a…

The present study utilizes the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey to examine the relationship between health-risk behaviors and sexual victimization among a sample of college women. A prospective design is utilized to examine the relationship between health-risk behaviors as measured at baseline and sexual victimization during a 3-month…

There is a paucity of research on the influence of racist and sexist stereotypes in rape blame attribution, including the jezebel and matriarch stereotypes of Black women. This study extends the literature by examining how victim race, perpetrator race, and participant sex affect perceptions of a rape survivor's promiscuity (jezebel stereotype)…