Forty Years of Rape Myth Acceptance Interventions: A Systematic Review of What Works in Naturalistic Institutional Settings and How this can be Applied to Educational Guidance for Jurors.

A systematic review of research assessing rape myth acceptance (RMA) interventions within institutional settings was conducted. The aim of this review was to inform the development of an educational intervention for jurors in rape trials that addresses rape myths, given previous evidence that RMA can affect decision-making and verdicts (Dinos et al., 2015; Gravelin et al., 2019; Leverick, 2020). 12 databases were searched, filtered to return peer-reviewed journals, published from 1980 to 2020, written in English. After removing duplicates from the 5,093 search results returned, 2,676 studies were screened for inclusion. Research studies were included in the review if they assessed the impact of a naturalistic intervention on RMA within an institutional setting. Studies that did not compare an experimental condition to a control condition or did not randomly allocate participants to conditions were excluded. Studies were also excluded if they used a non-validated, or adapted, RMA measure. 20 Research studies were included within the review and were critically appraised according to an author-created critical appraisal tool. It was concluded that RMA interventions can have a short-term impact upon individuals' RMA. Intervention types that were effective in reducing RMA included those that presented RM information; those that contained an empathy component; and bystander programmes. With regards to duration and format, short interventions led to reductions in RMA, and most successful interventions were presented via videos. Implications for policy and practice, and recommendations for future research, are discussed.

Childhood Abuse and Neglect, Exposure to Domestic Violence and Sibling Violence: Profiles and Associations With Sociodemographic Variables and Mental Health Indicators.

Research indicates substantial overlap between child abuse and neglect (CAN), exposure to domestic violence and sibling abuse, with multiple victimisation experiences conferring greater risk for adverse mental health outcomes than does exposure to a single subtype. The application of latent class analysis (LCA) to child maltreatment has gained momentum, but it remains the case that few studies have incorporated a comprehensive range of subtypes, meaning that real-life patterns in victimisation experiences cannot be accurately modelled. Based on self-report data from an ethnically diverse sample (N = 2813) of 10-17 year olds in the United Kingdom, the current study used LCA to model constellations among nine types of maltreatment in the home (physical, emotional and sexual abuse; physical and emotional neglect; exposure to physical and verbal domestic violence, or a drug-related threat; and sibling violence). A four-class solution comprising of a low victimisation class (59.3% of participants), an emotional abuse and neglect class (19.0%), a high verbal domestic violence class (10.5%) and a maltreatment and domestic violence class (11.2%) provided the best fit for the data. Associations with sociodemographic variables were examined, revealing differences in the composition of the classes. Compared to the low victimisation class, participants in the verbal domestic violence class, emotional abuse and neglect class and especially the maltreatment and domestic violence class, reported higher symptoms of anxiety and depression and an increased likelihood of non-suicidal self-injury, suicide ideation and suicide attempt. The findings carry important implications for understanding patterns of child maltreatment, and the implications for preventative strategies and support services are discussed.

Motivations for adolescent offending and truancy from school: retrospective interviews with adults recently released from a custodial prison sentence in England.

This qualitative study considers the development of adolescent offending and examines a range of potential causes rooted in the issues of truancy, peer pressure, and educational and parental disengagement. Ten adult offenders recently released from prison were accessed through a probation service in the North West of England. Participants (M age = 35.2, S.D = 8.51) were interviewed about the indictable offences that they perpetrated between the ages of 12-16. Thematic analysis uncovered several key themes related to substance misuse and broader enjoyment of risk-taking behaviours, financial gain and the desire to develop a recognised criminal status, alongside fear and rejection of authority. In general, educational disengagement led to stronger associations with anti-social peers from whom acceptance was sought and offending identities were constructed around. Longer-term consequences of time spent with anti-social peers included substance abuse, more serious criminality, and increased risk-taking behaviour. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of early interventions.

Masochist or Murderer? A Discourse Analytic Study Exploring Social Constructions of Sexually Violent Male Perpetrators, Female Victims-Survivors and the Rough Sex Defense on Twitter.

"Rough sex" can be considered an act of sexual violence that is consensual or non-consensual, often resulting in bodily harm and in rare cases, fatalities. The rough sex defense is typically advanced by male perpetrators in an effort to portray a sexual encounter as consensual, to avoid criminal sanctions for causing injury or death. Public attitudes toward this defense are often reflected on social media following high profile cases and appear to echo dominant discourses that reinforce widely held sexual violence stereotypes. Therefore, this study aims to deconstruct public attitudes surrounding the rough sex defense. Namely, how female victims/survivors and male perpetrators of sexual violence are constructed online, whilst exploring the wider implications upon society. NVivo12 NCapture software was used to collect a sample of 1000 tweets mentioning the terms "rough sex" or "rough sex defense." Data were examined using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA), underpinned by a social constructionist perspective, to elicit emergent discourses. Findings indicate that Twitter allowed women to resist harmful victim-blaming discourses and constrained binary identities. Opposingly, men were constructed as sexually entitled predators, yet resisted these subject positions by advocating support for male victims/survivors. Additional analyses examine account holders' constructions of British Parliamentarians (MP's) and their campaigns against the rough sex defense. These constructions demonstrated a cultural, heteronormative and victim-blaming understanding of sexual violence, which calls for legislative clarity.

Juror characteristics on trial: Investigating how psychopathic traits, rape attitudes, victimization experiences, and juror demographics influence decision-making in an intimate partner rape trial.

Introduction: Trial by jury is a longstanding legal tradition used in common law jurisdictions to try the most serious of criminal cases. Yet, despite hearing the same trial evidence, individual jurors often arrive at different verdict decisions, indicating that they may be impacted by more than the evidence presented at trial. This study therefore sought to investigate the role of jurors' psychopathology, attitudinal, experiential, and demographic characteristics upon individual verdict decisions. Methods: Adopting an improved mock trial paradigm, 108 jury-eligible participants took part in one of nine identical 12-person mock trial simulations depicting a videotaped recreation of an intimate partner rape trial. Pre-trial, mock-jurors completed a psychosocial survey capturing their psychopathic personality traits (affective and cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation; egocentricity), rape myth beliefs, victimization experiences and demographics. Post-trial, jurors deliberated to reach a collective group decision and individual verdict decisions were recorded pre- and post-deliberation. Results: Binary logistic regression analyses revealed rape myth beliefs and juror ethnicity were significantly related to verdict decisions both pre- and post-deliberation. Post-deliberation, decreased affective responsiveness (empathy) and experience of sexual victimization were also found to be significant predictors of guilty verdict selections. Discussion: These findings indicate for the first time that within an intimate-partner rape trial, certain psychosocial traits, crime-specific attitudes, and experiences of sexual victimization appear to predispose juror judgments and decision-making even after group-deliberation. This study therefore has important implications for understanding how individual differences among jurors may impact rape trial verdict outcomes and the need for targeted juror reforms.

Prevalence and correlates of non-suicidal self-injury, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempt among children and adolescents: Findings from Uganda and Jamaica.

BACKGROUND: Youth non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and suicide are major public health concerns, but limited data are available on the prevalence and correlates of these problems in developing countries. The aim of this study is to describe experiences of three suicidal phenomena (NSSI, suicidal ideation [SI], and suicide attempt [SA]) among children and adolescents from two developing countries. We also examine how depression, anxiety, sleep problems, child maltreatment, and other socio-demographic variables associate with the risk of NSSI only, SI only, SA only, and co-occurring NSSI/SI/SA. METHODS: We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study of school-based Ugandan and Jamaican children and adolescents. Participants were 11,518 (52.4% female) Ugandan and 7,182 (60.8% female) Jamaican youths aged 9-17 years. RESULTS: The estimated lifetime prevalence of NSSI, SI, and SA was 25.5%, 25.6%, and 12.8% respectively among Ugandan boys and 23.2%, 32.5%, and 15.3% respectively among Ugandan girls. As for the Jamaican sample, the estimated lifetime prevalence of NSSI, SI, and SA was 21%, 27.7%, and 11.9% respectively among boys and 32.6%, 48.6%, and 24.7% respectively among girls. The odds of experiencing SI only, SA only, and co-occurring NSSI/SI/SA were significantly elevated among participants with mild, moderate, and severe depression in both countries. LIMITATIONS: The current study relied on retrospective data. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that suicidal phenomena are common among youths from Uganda and Jamaica, with rates substantially higher than among youths from high-income countries. The risk of suicidal phenomena was especially high among youths with severe depression.

Gender-Based Violence-Supportive Cognitions in Adolescent Girls and Boys: The Function of Violence Exposure and Victimization.

Violence against women and girls is widespread in the Caribbean, which may be due to heightened acceptance of such acts in this specific social context. In spite of this, studies investigating attitudes toward violence and their correlates among participants drawn from the region are missing. To address this void in the literature, we examined associations between violence exposure and victimization and two gender-based violence-related cognitions (attitudes toward male physical domestic violence and social norms regarding physical violence against girls) as well as general beliefs about violence using structural equation modeling. Participants were a sample of adolescent girls (n = 661; M age = 13.15) and boys (n = 639; M age = 13.22) from two Eastern Caribbean countries, Barbados and Grenada, recruited from 10 primary schools, nine secondary schools, and two youth offender centers. In considering that girls and boys were previously demonstrated to differ in their experiences as well as tolerance of violence, structural models were specified and tested separately for the two sexes. Results indicated that violence victimization was positively strongly associated with attitudes toward male physical domestic violence and social norms regarding physical violence against girls among boys. Increased violence victimization among girls, in turn, correlated with increased acceptance of social norms regarding physical violence against girls, but this relationship was weak. Violence exposure did not have any significant associations with any of the attitudinal variables included in the study. We discuss the importance of these findings for the development of appropriate gender-based violence prevention strategies for youths from the Eastern Caribbean.

Is Female Psychopathy Linked with Child Abuse? An Empirical Investigation using a Person-Centered Approach.

Childhood abuse is associated with increased psychopathic features among girls, but most prior research is based on data from correctional samples of female delinquents and less is known about how specific forms of childhood abuse affect specific features of psychopathy. Using a school-based community sample of 696 girls aged 9-17 years from Barbados and Grenada, the current study examined latent profiles of psychopathic personality traits and their associations with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Latent profile analysis (LPA) revealed four distinct psychopathy groups among girls, including a 'low psychopathy' group (41.9% of girls), 'high psychopathy' group (4.8%), 'high interpersonal manipulation and egocentricity' group (37.4%), and a 'moderate psychopathy' group (16%). There was considerable evidence of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse among participants. Sexual abuse was associated with a 116% increased likelihood of membership in the high psychopathy group and a 57% increased likelihood of membership in the high interpersonal manipulation and egocentricity group. These results indicate that sexual abuse is a powerful distal factor in the development of psychopathic personality functioning, especially more severe variants.

Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS): Construct Validity of the Instrument in a Sample of U.S. Prisoners.

The Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS; Boduszek et al., 2016) is a personality-based psychopathy assessment tool consisting of four subscales: affective responsiveness, cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation, and egocentricity. Although the measure offers a promising alternative to other, more behaviorally weighted scales, to date the factor structure of the PPTS and differential predictive validity of its dimensions has only been tested in one study. Consequently, the objective of the present research was to assess construct validity, factor structure, and composite reliability of the PPTS within a sample of U.S. male and female incarcerated offenders (N = 772). Another goal was to test the predictive efficiency of the PPTS dimensions for different types of offences (serial killing, homicide, sex crimes, weapon-related crimes, domestic violence, white-collar crimes, property crimes, drug-related crimes), recidivism (i.e., number of incarcerations), time spent in prison, and gender. Dimensionality and construct validity of the PPTS was investigated using traditional CFA techniques, confirmatory bifactor analysis, and multitrait-multimethod modelling (MTMM). Seven alternative models of the PPTS were estimated in Mplus using WLSMV estimator. An MTMM model with four grouping factors (affective responsiveness, cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation, and egocentricity) while controlling for two method factors (knowledge/skills and attitudes/beliefs) offered the best representation of the data. Good composite reliability and differential predictive validity was reported. The PPTS can be reliably used among prisoners from the United States.

Profiles and behavioral consequences of child abuse among adolescent girls and boys from Barbados and Grenada.

The current study used latent class analysis to uncover groups of youths with specific abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) profiles in and outside the family, and identify how membership in each abuse group is associated with behavioral outcomes. Data were collected among a sample of male (n = 662; Mage = 13.02 years) and female (n = 689; Mage = 12.95 years) children and adolescents (9-17 years old) from Barbados and Grenada. Self-report surveys were completed by participants in school settings. Three latent classes of child abuse were distinguished among boys, including 'low abuse' (39.2% of the sample), 'physical and emotional abuse high outside/medium in the family' (43.2%), and 'high overall abuse' (17.6%). Among girls, four unique classes were recovered: 'low abuse' (40.7%), 'high physical and emotional abuse outside the family' (7.6%), 'high emotional and moderate physical abuse' (33.9%), and 'high overall abuse' (17.8%). Compared with members of low abuse groups, youths who reported having experienced high/moderate levels of various forms of violence, including those who were abused in multiple ways and across the two settings ('high overall abuse'), were significantly more likely to engage in violent and hostile behavior. Abused and non-abused youths did not differ on non-violent conflict resolution skills. The significance of present findings for future research and practice is discussed.

Psychosocial Correlates of Attitudes Toward Male Sexual Violence in a Sample of Financial Crime, Property Crime, General Violent, and Homicide Offenders.

Although those currently serving prison sentences for sexual violence can be identified and receive treatment, the number of prisoners with a history of sexual violence against female partners is unknown. Methods to identify prisoners with a proclivity for such violence and accurately assess the risk they pose before and after incarceration are therefore required. Here, we aimed to assess the level of sexually violent attitudes within dating relationships and to examine their associations with experiences of child abuse and neglect (CAN), psychopathic personality traits, prisonization, number of incarcerations, age, years of schooling, relationship status, and parenting among different types of offenders (financial crime, property crime, general violent, and homicide offenders). Data were collected among a large systematically selected sample of adult male inmates ( N = 1,123). We demonstrated that sexual violence-supportive attitudes appear to be a function of child sexual abuse and psychopathic personality traits, and may be developed through early socialization experiences as well as incarceration. Practical implications of current findings are discussed.

What do we know about child abuse and neglect patterns of co-occurrence? A systematic review of profiling studies and recommendations for future research.

Latent class (LCA) and latent profile (LPA) analysis represent methodological approaches to identify subgroups of maltreated individuals. Although research examining child abuse and neglect (CAN) profiles is still rare, the application of person-centered techniques to clarify CAN types co-occurrence has substantially increased in recent years. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to provide a summary and critical evaluation of the findings of LCA/LPA child maltreatment research to: (a) systemize the current understanding of patterns of maltreatment across populations and (b) elucidate interactive effects of CAN types on psychosocial functioning. A search in PsychInfo, Eric, PubMed, Scopus, and Science Direct, and Google Scholar was performed. Sixteen studies examining the co-occurrence between child physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and/or exposure to domestic violence were identified. A critical review of the studies revealed inconsistent findings as to the number of CAN classes, but most research uncovered a poly-victimized and a low abuse group. Further, multiple victimization was associated with most adverse internalizing and externalizing outcomes, especially when sexual abuse was present. Exposure to physical and emotional abuse was frequently reported to lead to behavioural problems. Based on the present study results, we provide a set of recommendations for surpassing the current methodological and conceptual limitations in future research.