A Criminological Perspective on the Sexual Victimization of Older Adults.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review presents recent research on the sexual abuse of older adults and examines this phenomenon from a criminological perspective. Much of the previous work has neglected to consider the entirety of the crime-commission process. Therefore, the work highlighted in this review showcases important information regarding the individual who committed the crime, the victim, and the criminal event as a whole. RECENT FINDINGS: Comparative studies suggest that the motivations of people who commit sexually victimize older adults are vast and can include those that are sexually and anger motivated, while the victims present with unique vulnerabilities, such as disabilities and spending most of their time at home, that make them more susceptible to excessive violence. People who commit sexual abuse against older adults are a heterogenous group, and the context of victim vulnerabilities is key to understanding why they are targeted. Specific prevention and investigative practices can be formed to better address this crime and protect older adults from future victimization.

How to get away with (sexual) murder? Unraveling cold cases in sexual homicide using a hybrid modeling probabilistic approach.

This study examines Sexual Homicide (SH) cases, analyzing the transition to cold cases through a non-discretionary lens. Utilizing the SH International Database, it explores the interplay between offender behavior, victim characteristics, and crime context. Advanced methodologies, including sequential logistic regression and Artificial Neural Networks, identify key predictors of case resolution. Results highlight the critical influence of victim intoxication, high-risk activities, and the location of the victim's body on case solvability. The study also reveals the significant role of offender forensic awareness and the complexity of crime scenes in hindering case resolution. These findings underline the multifaceted nature of SH cases, emphasizing the importance of understanding the nuanced interplay between victim, offender, and contextual factors in solving these challenging cases.

Identifying victim types in sexual homicide: A latent class analysis using interactional victimology theories.

Sexual homicide (SH) research has focused on those who commit these crimes and the crimes themselves. This leaves the victim, an equally crucial piece to the puzzle, left as a sort of afterthought, despite the valuable insight that victimology provides to the crime. For the current study, victim information related to their routine activities and lifestyles was taken from an international database containing 662 solved cases of SH. Nine victim variables were used in a latent class analysis to find hidden subgroups within the victim population. Three classes were identified-low-risk, homebody, and overt risk victims-which suggests that SH victimization varies depending on the victim lifestyles and routine activities. These groups were externally validated by examining their association with different phases of the crime commission process. Some sexual homicide offenders may be more drawn to a victim because they present as vulnerable and opportunistic, while others might be methodically targeted. The theoretical relevance of this typology, along with investigative and prevention strategies, is discussed.

Trophy, souvenir, or simple theft? Taking items from the victim in sexual homicide.

Although most people have heard the terms 'souvenirs', 'trophies', and 'mementos', discussed in books and movies on the true crimes of sexual murderers, limited research has delved into the phenomenon of theft in sexual homicide (SH). Using a sample of 762 SH cases coming from the Sexual Homicide International Database, the current study examines the crime-commission process of the pre-crime, crime, and post-crime phases of sexual homicide offenders (SHOs) who engaged in theft during a SH. Additionally, this study seeks to determine if a specific type of SHO engages in this behaviour over others. Results from the sequential logistic regression indicate that victims who are 16 years or older, were strangers to the SHO, and were sex workers were more likely to be victims of theft. Additionally, results indicate that the presence of sadism made it more likely the SHO would engage in theft from the victim and/or crime scene. Findings suggest there is a group of SHOs who engage in theft not for monetary purposes but due to the paraphilia of the offender. These findings can inform the police investigation of these crimes.

Interactions Between Offender and Crime Characteristics Leading to a Lethal Outcome in Cases of Sexually-Motivated Abductions.

Despite the widespread public concern regarding abduction, research on this type of crime is scarce. This lack of research is even more pronounced when looking at cases that end with the death of the victim. In fact, all of the research looking at lethal outcomes in cases of abductions has focused exclusively on child victims and has failed to consider the interactions at the multivariate level between the factors related to the death of the victim. Therefore, the aim of the study is to identify offender and crime characteristics - as well as their interactions - associated with a lethal outcome in sexually-motivated abductions using a combination of logistic regression and neural network analyses on a sample of 281 cases (81 cases ending with a lethal outcome, random sample of 200 comparison cases). Findings show that sexually-motivated abductions ending with a lethal outcome are more likely to be characterized by an offender who is a loner, forensically aware, and who who uses a weapon and restraints, and who sexually penetrates and beats a known victim. The neural network analysis show that three different pathways lead to a lethal outcome in sexually-motivated abductions. Such findings are important for correctional practices.

Modus Operandi in Sexual Assaults of Female Strangers Does Not Change Over Time.

Criminological theories and widespread assumptions about crime suggest that the modus operandi involved in sexual crimes should have changed over time given various contextual changes, such as better criminological knowledge (e.g., forensic awareness) as well as improved investigative techniques (e.g., forensic evidence analysis). The aim of this study was to test whether the modus operandi patterns of individuals having committed a sexual assault against female strangers have changed over time during the period of 2003-2017. More specifically, the study has identified changes in the trends of monthly counts and (relative) participations for sexual assaults during the study period in France. The measure of participations - a concept borrowed from the field of criminal career - was used to overcome the inherent limitations associated with this type of data. Results show that despite some significant changes in the modus operandi involved in sexual crimes, overall the modus operandi patterns appear to be fairly stable over time. The findings are discussed in light of their theoretical and practical implications.

Violent Partners or a Specific Class of Offenders? A Criminal Career Approach to Understanding Men Involved in Intimate Partner Sexual Violence.

The current study investigates the criminal career of individuals involved in intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV). Specifically, the goal is to determine whether men who engage in IPSV can be distinguished from those who engage in intimate partner non sexual violence (IPNSV) only and whether criminal trajectories in the resulting subgroup are heterogeneous. The sample comes from a Canadian database including a total of 12,458 individuals involved in IPSV and 32,474 individuals involved in IPNSV). Bivariate and multivariate analyses are performed to examine the differences in the two groups while latent profile analysis allows examining the heterogeneity of characteristics of men who engaged in IPSV. Findings indicate that the criminal career of men who engage in IPSV follows a pattern that is clearly distinct from that of men who engage in IPNSV only and is more specialized in terms of sexual offenses. Results also show that the criminal trajectories followed by the men who engage in IPSV are heterogeneous. Four profiles of different trajectories were identified. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Is There an "Expert" Stranger Rapist?

The concept of expertise applied to the criminal context assumes that offenders are driven by the abilities to both maximize the payoffs and minimize the risks associated with the crime-commission. This study tested the articulation between these two types of decisions taken by stranger rapists to successfully commit their crime. Specifically, this study aims to identify whether offenders whose modus operandi is indicative of criminal expertise are more likely to use forensic awareness strategies. Multivariate analyses conducted on 1,551 cases showed that stranger rapists who adopted behaviors indicative of expertise were more likely to use forensic awareness strategies to decrease the risk of police detection. Mixed associations were found between the number of forensic awareness strategies and their nature (i.e., protecting identity vs. destroying evidence) and rapists' expertise, thus leading to a four-type theoretical classification of expertise: novice, bold, opportunistic, and expert stranger rapists. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Expert Versus Novice: Criminal Expertise in Sexual Burglary and Sexual Robbery.

Although there has been considerable variation in the application of expertise to offending populations, one aspect that is widely agreed upon is that expertise is best represented on a continuum from novice to expert. The present study, therefore, investigated criminal expertise in 877 hybrid offenses that involve sexual assault and robbery (i.e., sexual robbery) or burglary (i.e., sexual burglary). Specifically, we analyzed the crime-commission processes of both these offenses using latent class analyses to determine the heterogeneity of criminal expertise among each domain. Results showed an expert to novice continuum in both domains, including a "domain-specific" expert sexual burglary subgroup who was characterized by a high degree of offense-related competencies relevant to sexual burglary. We also found an expert subgroup in sexual robbery who had more general skills (i.e., overlapping expertise) relevant to violent offending. Implications for offender decision-making, treatment, and practice are discussed.

Child sexual exploitation material offenders, one-size-fits-all for? Exploring tailored clinical dimensions based on cognitive and behavioural criminogenic factors.

BACKGROUND: Interventions for individuals involved in sexual offending behaviours are likely to be more effective if adapted to focus on their specific characteristics, suggesting that men who engage in sexual offences against children over the Internet should be treated differently from those who have actual physical contact against children. AIMS: The goal of this study is to explore possible associations between the criminogenic cognitions and behaviours of men using online child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) and variables relevant to intervention. We hypothesised that antisocial tendencies, sexual, emotional and relational problems and self-regulation problems, as well as cognitive distortions would be associated with CSEM use. METHOD: Ninety-eight men who had been convicted of at least one online CSEM-related offence, but no child contact sexual offences, at any time between 2001 and 2020 were recruited in the province of Quebec (Canada). Cases were reviewed to identify cognitive and behavioural criminogenic factors according to a coding sheet developed after reference to prior literature. Variables were extracted from official criminal records, sexological and psychological reports, as well as investigative and forensic reports and interviews. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to identify potentially relevant dimensions. RESULTS: Analysis confirmed five distinct factors which, together, accounted for 60% of the variance: dissocial traits, dysfunctional intimacy, passive alienation (internalised sense of alienation), normless alienation (social norms experienced as alien) and coping with threat. CONCLUSION: Because online CSEM-related offenders present heterogeneous risks and needs, a 'one-size-fits-all' intervention is unlikely to be optimal for most of them. Our findings suggest a way of classifying risks and needs to facilitate more focused interventions. Future research should evaluate the relative effectiveness of general interventions compared to those tailored towards the dimensions of risks and needs identified in this study.

Criminal Expertise and Sexual Violence: Comparing the Crime-Commission Process Involved in Sexual Burglary and Sexual Robbery.

Criminal expertise relates to the notion that some individuals may develop domain-specific offending skills that differentiate them from those with less skills or experience (i.e., novices). In the expertise literature, burglary has emerged as a distinct type of "expert" offense, therefore the current study sought to determine whether criminal expertise is more evident in the crime-commission process of sexual burglary compared to sexual robbery. We used binary logistic regression to compare the pre-crime, crime, and post-crime behaviors of 870 cases of hybrid sexual assault that occurred during the commission of either a burglary (N = 319) (or) robbery (N = 479), both of which involved personal theft from a stranger victim. Findings suggest that the crime commission process of sexual burglary involves a more sophisticated modus operandi and greater expertise in detection avoidance (e.g., strategies to protect their identity and destroying and removing evidence) compared to sexual robbery.

Making sense of senseless murders: The who, what, when, and where?

The phenomenon of "senseless" or "motiveless" homicide refers to homicides that lack an objective external motivation. Despite the unique challenges these homicides pose to police, few empirical studies have been conducted on the topic and existing studies are limited to clinical studies using small samples. To overcome existing empirical shortcomings, the current study used a sample of 319 homicide cases where no motive was established during the investigation to describe the "who" (offender and victim characteristics), "what" (modus operandi, crime characteristics), "where" (encounter, crime, and body recovery associated locations), and "when" (time of the crime) of the entire criminal event. Findings provide insight into the entire crime-commission process and suggest a different dynamic to "senseless" homicide from what has been described in previous literature. Implications for police investigative practice are discussed.

Universal Scaling of the Velocity Field in Crack Front Propagation.

The propagation of a crack front in disordered materials is jerky and characterized by bursts of activity, called avalanches. These phenomena are the manifestation of an out-of-equilibrium phase transition originated by the disorder. As a result avalanches display universal scalings which are, however, difficult to characterize in experiments at a finite drive. Here, we show that the correlation functions of the velocity field along the front allow us to extract the critical exponents of the transition and to identify the universality class of the system. We employ these correlations to characterize the universal behavior of the transition in simulations and in an experiment of crack propagation. This analysis is robust, efficient, and can be extended to all systems displaying avalanche dynamics.

Elderly Sexual Abuse: An Examination of the Criminal Event.

The current study investigates the modus operandi specificities for the sexual abuse against the elderly. A comparison between sex crimes against adult and elderly victims is conducted following the criminal event approach. The comparison is based on the precrime, crime, and postcrime phases of the modus operandi, operationalized through 53 variables. The sample comes from a French national police database including a total of 1,829 cases-including 130 cases of elderly sexual abuse and 1,699 cases of sexual abuse against victims aged between 18 and 45 years. Bivariate and multivariate analyses are performed to examine the differences in the two groups. Several differences are observed between the two modus operandi. Findings indicate that the precrime phase is the most important to explain these differences, and this phase of the criminal event affects the rest of the decisions taken during the crime and postcrime phases. Specifically, we have highlighted that sexual crimes against the elderly are more violent and occur more often in the victim's residence. This study suggests that offenders targeting the elderly use specific crime characteristics, and this allows to highlight practical implications in terms of investigation and offender management.

Sexual Homicide: a Criminological Perspective.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review presents recent findings of research focusing on sexual homicide. Firstly, we examine international comparative studies of victim, offender, and crime characteristics. Secondly, we review an important body of literature that compares developmental and psychological as well as the decision-making process of sexual murderers with other violent offenders. Thirdly, recent and major findings on links between sexual homicide and psychopathy as well as sadism are presented. Fourthly, findings on spatial behavior and factors that can explain it are discussed. Finally, the last section reviews characteristics of sexual homicide involving children and elderly victims. RECENT FINDINGS: International comparisons suggest that sexual homicide presents more similarities than differences across countries implying that most of knowledge can be generalized and applied to other countries. Comparisons with other types of violent offenders highlight that sexual murderers are a specific type of offenders with particular characteristics (criminal careers, developmental factors, personality disorders, lifestyle characteristics) and crime commission process (modus operandi, spatial behavior). As to the etiological factors of sexual homicide, psychopathy and sadism are important characteristics of sexual murderers leading their criminal life as well as their everyday life. Finally, studies focusing on specific types of vulnerable victims showed a high level of heterogeneity within the population of sexual murderers. Sexual murderers are specific offenders with peculiar characteristics and further research should develop proper knowledge on it. Creation of new international databases allows research to confirm and increase knowledge by considering sexual homicides as a complex heterogenous crime.

Lethal combinations: A conjunctive analysis of crime scene behavior associated with sexual homicide.

This research investigates violent stranger rapes and the factors leading these cases to sexual homicides. Variables relating to modus operandi characteristics on one part and offender behavior on the other part are examined using conjunctive analysis of cases configuration to identify the different combinations leading to a lethal outcome. Using a French sample of 1263 cases of violent rapes and 303 cases of sexual homicides involving female adult victims, we find that blows given by offenders and information about physical resistance of victims are strongly associated intentional and non-intentional sexual homicides. Psychoactive substance consumption by offenders as well associal isolation are in a lesser extend also associated with the lethal outcome.

The Mobility Crime Triangle for Sexual Offenders and the Role of Individual and Environmental Factors.

This study-based on a national data set (N = 1,447)-focuses on extrafamilial sexual assaults and their mobility. Spatial information about the offender's house, the victim's house, and the crime scene was combined in mobility crime triangles. The findings reveal that most of the assaults fall in the categories of total mobility (42.78%) and offender mobility (33.10%). Our results also show the validity of the distance decay function with over 50% of aggressions occurring within 3 km of the offender's house. The analysis did not reveal the existence of buffer zones, probably due to the acquaintance between some of the offenders and their victims. The evidence suggests that environmental risk factors are more significant than individual ones when it comes to explaining the variation among mobility patterns in sexual assaults. Offenders appear to adapt their mobility patterns and modus operandi according to the environmental constraints. Often, offenders choose their own or their victim's house as a safe environment for performed sexual assault.

Depinning Dynamics of Crack Fronts.

We investigate experimentally and theoretically the dynamics of a crack front during the microinstabilities taking place in heterogeneous materials between two successive equilibrium positions. We focus specifically on the spatiotemporal evolution of the front, as it relaxes to a straight configuration, after depinning from a single obstacle of controlled strength and size. We show that this depinning dynamics is not controlled by inertia, but instead by the rate dependency of the dissipative mechanisms taking place within the fracture process zone. This implies that the crack speed fluctuations around its average value v_{m} can be predicted from an overdamped equation of motion (v-v_{m})/v_{0}=[G-G_{c}(v_{m})]/G_{c}(v_{m}) involving the characteristic material speed v_{0}=G_{c}(v_{m})/G_{c}^{'}(v_{m}) that emerges from the variation of fracture energy with crack speed. Our findings pave the way to a quantitative description of the critical depinning dynamics of cracks in disordered solids and open up new perspectives for the prediction of the effective failure properties of heterogeneous materials.

Dynamic Wrinkling and Strengthening of an Elastic Filament in a Viscous Fluid.

We investigate the wrinkling dynamics of an elastic filament immersed in a viscous fluid submitted to compression at a finite rate with experiments and by combining geometric nonlinearities, elasticity, and slender body theory. The drag induces a dynamic lateral reinforcement of the filament leading to growth of wrinkles that coarsen over time. We discover a new dynamical regime characterized by a time scale with a nontrivial dependence on the loading rate, where the growth of the instability is superexponential and the wave number is an increasing function of the loading rate. We find that this time scale can be interpreted as the characteristic time over which the filament transitions from the extensible to the inextensible regime. In contrast with our analysis with moving boundary conditions, Biot's analysis in the limit of infinitely fast loading leads to rate independent exponential growth and wavelength.