[p.523]
Sexual behavior deviant from societal norms is usually discussed with mild, unconscious apprehension (pp.47). Furthermore only aaprently rational arguments invariably appear in the debate (pp.52) for decades, criminal lawyers have repeatedly deplored the irrationality of such discussions. A differential picture of the sexual offender, his crime and the victim is often lacking. Among other things, this has to do woth the fact that sexuality - despite the so-called Sexual Revolution - is still largely tabu. There remains an awkwardness in speaking about sexuality and, therefore, problems related to sexuality are not presented objectively.
The diffuse opinions and attitudes, the prejudices, the lack of information concerning deviant sexuality (pp.51), either totally or parially affect our day-to-day lifes
What the victim's situation actually looks like, and where the real dangers for the sexual victim lie were the subject of an empirical, comprehensive longitudinal study in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The main question posed in this survey were (pp.54, pp. 84, pp. 137):
[p.524]
(pp.87, pp.127 and pp.205)
The victimological analysis was based on a 4-year questionaire study (1969-1972) of virtually all sexual victims known to the police in the German State of Lower Saxony (n=8058). In this study (p.127) victims were persons who either had declared themselves as victims or had been declared by others as being a victim. Both were considered here to be "declared victims". The age of female victims was up to 20 years, male victims up to 14 years. Nearly all of the declared sexual victims were subjected to a questionaire consisting of 29 items. The assertions of the 8058 declared sexual victims contained in the comprehensive investigation were evaluated victimologically. As the distribution of the reported indecent assaults in the Stae of Lower Saxony do not differ significantly from the corresponding distribution in the Federal Republic of Germany, the results of this longitudenal study characterise the situation in West Germany.
In a sexond phase conducted in 1979 and 1980, 112 sexual victims randomly selected from the total were asked to participate in a follow-up study performed six to ten years after the offense had been reported to the police (p.127). The follow-up study consisted to a large extend of a standartized in depth interview which integrated reliable psychodiagnostic tests and victimological items.
Depending on the age of the subject four psychodiagnostic inventories were used:
The interviews normally lasted from two to four hours and were face to face-talks between the victim and a male of female psychologist in the home of the victim.
In addition, in a third part of the project, 131 files of cases of indecent assault, which had been tried in court were studied for comparison (pp.132). In this victimologically [p.525] oriented document analysis, only those files were selected which contained a thorough psychological report on the credibility of the victim's testimony. These sexual assaults had occured during a period comparable to that of the comprehensive study. The purpose of this third phase was to compare cases of sexual contacts merely reported to the police with condemned cases. This is in contrast to almost all previous studies, which had only dealt with condemned sexual contacts (pp.109).
(pp. 215)
Sexual victims are, in 80-90% of the cases, girls and women (pp.215). The age group varies according to the nature of the offense (p.227). In sexual assault on children, nearly two-thirds were between 7 and 13 years of age. In the area of forcible rape, primarily young women between the ages of 14 and 20 were endangered. The age range of women who encounter an exhibitionist was more widespread, but the incidence was higher in the younger age groups.
99,6% of the suspects and perpetrators were men, primarily between ages of 25 and 35 (pp.234). The still widespread opinion that the majority of indecent assailants are older or aged men is incorrect. The age difference between the victim and suspect was, on the average, 25 years; in cases of violent sexual assault, however, only 7 years. Sexual victims are therefore mainly young women and girls threatened by men who are "in the best years of their lives" (pp.237).
The most important groups of sexual offenses registered in this study were (pp. 218):
exhibitionism (Par. 183 German Penal Code) 23.9% sexual assault on children (child molesting) (Par. 176 German Penal Code) 35.5% forcible rape (Par. 177 German Penal Code) and sexual assault under duress (Par. 178 German Penal Code) 22.2% other 18.4%
Under "other in this study were: sexual assault of foster-children or wards (Par. 174 German Penal Code), sexual intercourse between relatives (Par. 173 German Penal Code), with a total of ca. 8%. If injuries of victims of incest are diagnosed, one has to face the fact that victims of incest often live in broken homes and that there are many causes in such families to injure the child. In such cases the sexual contact is another symptom of a disturbed family but not the only cause for the injury. An extremely small group was that of reported seduction (Par. 182 German Penal Code). Per year only about ten to fifteen offenders are charged in the Federal Republic of Germany under this paragraph.
Homosexual contacts played no important statistical or criminological role in this study. On the none hand, they composed only 10-15% of the cases, and on the other, the sexual contacts were described by the victims themselves as "harmless", almost exclusively without the use of violence by the suspect (pp. 287), and as a result, none [p.526] of the male victims questioned felt themselves to have beeen injured. In addition no injury could be determined in these cases with the help of test procedures.
The exhibitionists were men unknown to the women and children in 92,97% of these cases. In the other reported sexual contacts, however, the sexual perpetrator was either known previously or even related to the victim (70.33% of these cases). This means that warnings against unknown sexual assailants is preventively ineffective and, as far as sexual education and up-bringing is concerned, higly dubious, as a feeling of being threatened by strange men is conveyed, while for example, rape was usually performed by an acquaintance in the close social environment. With increasing asquaintanceship between victim and perpetrator, there was an increase in the internsity of the sexual contact, (CC=0.53), and often in the psychosocial injury to the sexual victim.
If the incident was reported to the police at all (the estimated dark figure is 1:10; pp.90), then it was the cases of violent sexual assault and exhibitionism that were more quickly reported by the victim or relatives (pp.287). Among the victims of rape, this declaration is usually an expression of indignation, fear, anger and affliction on the part of the victim. With exhibitionism, in contrast, it is more the indignation of the relatives of the victim about the deviant sexual behavior of a strange man. As the accusedis a stranger, there is less scruple about reporting him.
The situation is quite different in cases of child molesting (Par. 176 of the German Penal Code). In many of those cases the sexual contacts are not given much importance by the children, and sometimes they do not even tell anyone so that the delict becomes known accidentally. Even in serious delicts in this area, parents are often reluctant to report the incident as the accused is often an acquaintance. In both cases it is possible that - for different reasons - secondary injury to the victims may easily occur, i.e., the child incurs additional injury from the behavior of persons in the environment, or injury even first results from this behavior (pp.461).
Studying the literature is was very interesting to note that only few attempts have been made to set up a definition for the term "injury", which could be operationalized for diagnostic purposes (pp.163). Therefore injuries caused by sexual offences were defined for this study as follows (pp.201):
Injury as a result of a sexual contact is a reactive, sexual, social, psychological and/or physical disturbance, which at the injured person is subjected to by a guilty party. This disturbance can either be subjectively recognized by the injured person, him- or herself, or it can be diagnosed by specific scientific methods. The disturbance can be caused directly by the event itself, or indirectly.
The measurement of injury was operationalized in an index of injury (pp.409) ranging from 0 (no injury) to 100 (maximum injury). Half of this index was supposed to be determined by symptoms reported actively by the victim when questioned whether s/he had noticed, at any time afterwards, any physical, social, psychosocial, or sexual [p.527] problems which were caused by the sexual offense. 25% of the index contained the answers to a check-list of possible injuries, drawn from the literature, and another 25% the extreme results (SN < 4 or > 6) in the above-listed psychological tests.
This method of operationalizing the measurement of injury emphasizes the subjective judgement of the victim, as we think that the victim knows best whether s/he was hurt or not. This method is in contradiction to that of a few authors who have reported on injuries without having asked the victims themselves about the symptoms and their causes.
In the present study about half of the victims of indecent assault (48.2%) showed no injury at all, about 18% a lower index and about 34% a higher or very high index of injury. On an average the index of injury was 8.7. In cases of forcible rape it went up to 22.3. The highest index explored in this survey was 50.0 (pp.459).
Of the reported sexual contacts, half of the sexual victims claimed the sexual act itself to be the main cause of their injury, one-third the behavior of the suspect and one-tenth each the behavior of relatives/friends or the police (pp.461). This indicates that the police is less often responsible for psychological injuries of sexual victims than some have assumed up to now, but even these few cases should encourage reflection and improvement of police work. In the tried cases, the sexual victims could not be diagnostically followed-up. It can be assumed however that the distribution of primary and secondary victimization would be different if tried cases had been studied exclusively. In tried cases it can be expected that relatively more victims are secondarily injured by the behavior of family members or representatives of the authorities.
In addition to the main causality for the injury, the victims were also asked to judge all conversations they had about their experience with other people (pp. 438).
Talks with friends, the boyfriend, siblings, teachers, psychologists, the own lawyer, specialists and teh interviewers of this study were generally experienced as pleasant and helpful. Talks with school acquaintances and parents on the other hand, were generally rated as neutral. Closer analysis showed that some of the parents had behaved in an injurious, other in a helpful manner. In such situations, the parents assume an important role, as they are particularly close to the sexual victim emotionally, as they are the conveyors of moral values and as they spend the most time with their children. Therefore, they contributed highly to whether or not the child or young woman was able to work through the incident with or without long-term injury.
[p.528]
Conversations with medical doctors and officials of the Department of Juvenile Welfare, the police and the courts, as well as the attorney of the accused were experienced as mildly to very injurious.
It must be taken into consideration here that in a large proportion of the reported sexual contacts, there was no court proceeding. The situation of the victims in court and the effects of the proceedings on the victim require an additional analysis.
Specialists in the field of police work are becoming increasingly aware of this problem. This can be attributed to groups which have specialized in victim assistance and publicized these ill-circumstances (pp.505).
In Germany, some of these organizations are the women's movement with its Rape Crisis Centers, Houses for Battered Women, Hotlines for Children in Trouble, and to some extend the so-called "White Ring".
The following characteristics of injured victims as opposed to the group of non-injured victims were determined. These variables correlated significantly to the degree of injury (pp.148):
To recapitulate, only half of the declared victims (51.8%) of indecent assault suffered from injuries or even severe trauma. The other 48.2% had no problems in connection with the experience. In most of the cases the sexual offense was relatively superficial and harmless and/or the "victim" consented to the offence (pp.459).
[p.529]
Many experts in the field of prevention have assumed that sexual victims without primary injuries are rare. It certainly appears that this opinion must be re-evaluated. Adults who have the opinion that any sexual behavior is traumatic for children and young people have to face the fact that in many cases the young person becomes a victim only because grown-ups expects him or her to become a victim. On the basis of this expectation they act in such a way that the child really is victimized. This behavior then has a labeling function. It leads to the labeling of a victim (pp.501).
This kind of secondary victimization can easily occur after exhibitionistic and other non-violent sexual contacts if the child comes from a family with particularly strict sexual attitudes, or a family in which fear is created about "immoral assaulters", or a family which, out of helplessness and fear, dramatizes the victimization. As a further source of secondary victimization, members of prececuting authorities, like policemen and -women can unfortunately not be excluded (pp. 461).
In this study it was not possible to determine a typology of victims ofindecent assault, nor was it possible to determine a typology of the sexual offender in general (pp.406).
In the field of icdecent assault it seems to be necessary to differentiate on the offender's side between violent assailants and nonviolent offenders. In all probability violent sex assailants have more in common with other groups of violent perpetrators. In addition it could not be proved that a criminal career of the perpetrator begins with exposing the genitals and leads to forcible rape. This result should have much influence on preventive interventions. Up to now, many parents and educators in general fear that an exhibitionist or fondler is a potential violent rapist or even murderer. The contrary is true. In situations of exhibitionism and superficial fondling, similar to doctor games, the perpetrator's behavior almost never becomes ciolent (pp.299).
As most of the offenses of indecent assault, are no matter whether they are violent or non-violent first of all interactions between two or more persons, the situation should be analysed as a unit. We expected to find a typology of victimizing interactions or situations rather than a typology focused on the isolated participants. To find an answer to this question we calculated a cluster analysis with 47 variables for each case (pp.386). Here it was found that the reported indecent assaults could be devided into three groups (pp.406):
[p.530]
The typology of interactions and cases discovered differs very much from the typology suggested by the German Penal Code (pp. 407). It also is in contradiction to the commonly held ideas about indecent assault, especially as the two large groupings of cases (the first and the third) have nearly nothing to do with each other.
Any preventive, legislative, prosecuting, or victim-supporting activities should be influenced by these findings (pp. 467). All of the opinions and wellknown bits of advice are misleading and can injure victims secondarily or even make victims out of persons who would not have become a victim by dramatizing situations which are not really dangerous (p. 479).
(pp. 467)
For the future it is urgent to pay more attention to the situation of the exclusively female victims from group three and some of those in group two (see above). Political, preventive and social measures to improve their situation are discovered as absolutely necessary (pp. 501).
With respect to the prejudicial attitudes towards the assailant, his deed and the sexual victim, it should be stated that there is no homogenous type of indecent assault. Rather there are three clearly different constellations of deviant sexual interactions. Until recently conventional opinion has confused infringements of sexual norms and violent assaults in the sexual sphere. Other studies have revealed however that there are very ambivalent attitudes regarding sexual violence: While there is a formal ban on sexual violence it is, at the same time, tacitly tolerated. Sexual violence, like other types of violent behavior is very common and belongs, criminologically, more to the group of violent crimes than to the group of sexual assaults. The ambivalent attitudes of the general population towards sexual violence may pose problems when measures are undertaken (pp. 473). It is difficult to outlaw sexual violence effectively it at the same time violent behavior is tolerated in the society at large. These problems fall basically in the fields of sociology and politics and can only be effectively solved if tackled as a whole. The results of this survey suggest that the situation of the victims of violent and indecent assaults should be improved by applying suitable short- and medium term measures.
[p.531]
Objective und unbiassed information about the phenomenology of indecent assaults and their after-effects would reduce dramatization in case groups a. and b. and elucidate the violent character of the other assaults in group c. Especially for the protection of potential victims it is necessary to differentiate between disagreeable or undesirable sexual molestation or menacing and brutal sexual attacks. In addition it should be made clear that generally speaking nearly no criminal career starts with exposure of the geitals and leads up to forcible rape and murder. The present survey reveals that - contrary to the German Penal Code - the situation of forcible rape has much in common with other violent offenses and that recidivism of any violent assailant can rather be expected in offenses like forcible rape and sexual duress than in exhibitionism and fondling. If non-violent child molesters and exhibitionists relapse, the probability is high that they will resort to their previous form of deviant behaviour. It is unprobable that a relapsed exhibitiiionist will display violent sexual behavior. These results should have a strong influence on prevention programs, prosecuting strategies and victim assistance programs. The police can work more effectively and should cooperate on a more friendly basis with the victim if the results are taken into consideration in day-to-day work.
(pp. 508)
The objective description of the phenomenology of punishable sexual contacts, their causes and consequences should influence the following areas:
[p.532]
The different institutions which professionally deal with the problems of sexual victims should cooperate more effectively. In the Federal Republic of Germany many officials responsible for victims still do not know that there are many organizations in most German cities which partially or fully deal with crisis intervention. There are for instance capable institutions for psychotherapy; there is a widespread organization called "pro familia" which gives advice in cases of sexual problems (especially birth control), there are rape crisis centers in larger cities with their telephone hotlines ("Notrufe für vergewaltigte Frauen") and houses for battered women ("Frauenhäuser"); there are hotlines for children and youth ("Sorgentelefon"). In nearly every town there is a day and night hotline for acute problems ("Telefonseelsorge"). During the last few years a private organization, the "White Ring" has developed and specialized in granting financial aid to victims of criminality. In addition to that there is a special federal law which guarantees financial aid to victims of violent offenses.
The victim in need and the experts in the field however are usually not aware of the existence of appropriate institutions for the different problems. There is not enough cooperation and exchange of information. We still need to learn a lot from the various American victim assistance programs.
If victim assistance programs are initiated, care should be taken not to treat the victim as a sick person. Labelling the victim as mentally ill is another form of structural victimization. The aim of victim assistance programs should be the reintegration of the victim into her or his social environment, which is just as necessary as the social reintegration of the offender. This reintegration should lead ot regaining or strengthening the victim's selfconfidence. For the purpose of effectiveness victim assistance programs must be linked with an information service aimed at informing the public about how structural victimization causes individual victimization.
In the Federal Republic of Germany there is still a strong need for developing and organizing training programs for professionals and voluteers as well as strengthening the organization of assistance programs for victims. The current problems in this field in the Federal Republic are as follows: