Verbal behaviours of victims in stranger sexual assault.

1
Verbal behaviours of victims in stranger sexual
assault.

• Jessica Woodhams
• Lecturer in Forensic Psychology
• jaw38_at_le.ac.uk

2
Past Psychological Research

• Burgess and Holmstrom (1976)
• Majority of coping strategies verbal.
• Approach Phase
• Talking themselves out of the situation
• Stalling for time
• Reasoning with assailant
• Tried to change suspects mind
• Trying to gain sympathy
• Flattery
• Feigning illness
• Threatening the assailant
• Verbal aggression
• Joking and sarcasm

3
Past Psychological Research

• Maintenance Phase
• Screaming and yelling
• Reassuring the suspect
• Sarcasm
• Calming the suspect
• Threatening the suspect
• Closure Phase
• Bargaining for freedom
• Fossi, Clarke Lawrence (2005)
• Verbal behaviours were most common
• 87 of victim speech was preceded by offender
  speech
• Witnesses arriving
• Screaming
• Asking questions of suspect
• Giving requested information
• Seeking information about suspect and situation

4
Method

• 78 cases of stranger sexual assault (rape,
  attempted rape and indecent assault) by 52 male
  offenders (13 serial offenders).
• 92 lone offenders
• Mean age 16.26 years (11-26 years)
• Female victims, mean age 26.39 years (10-81
  years)
• Victim accounts made to the police collated by
  Serious Crime Analysis Section of the National
  Crime and Operations Faculty.
• Constant Comparison Framework Analysis

5
Speech Acts

• Woodhams Grant (2006) rapists utterances
  could reliably be classified into 5 speech acts
  (directives, assertives, commissives, expressives
  and interrogatives).
• 98 of victim behaviours could also be classified
  in this way (25 constatives, 35 directives, 13
  commissives, 19 expressives, 7 interrogatives).
• 551 speech acts by the victim within the 78
  accounts
• Degrees of force
• utterances where the victim does not intend what
  she is saying e.g. scripting but is telling the
  suspect what he wants to hear.
• utterances where the victim keeps her true
  intentions hidden and the utterance does not
  reflect her true intention.

6
Speech Acts and Offence Stages(Approach,
Maintenance, Closure)

• Overall 26 Approach, 65 Maintenance, 9 Closure
• Assertives occurred most in the Approach (39)
  and Maintenance (49) stages.
• Directives occurred most in the Maintenance stage
  (78).
• Commissives were most utilised in the approach
  (32) and maintenance (56) stages.
• Expressives were most common in the maintenance
  stage (76).
• Interrogatives were concentrated in the approach
  (50) and maintenance (47) stages.

7
Indirectness and Face-Saving

• Competing Goals The victims communicated
  indirectly with the expectation that the offender
  would interpret the true meaning of their
  utterance and recognise the conflicts of their
  goals (Thomas, 1995).
• Victim Oh, whats the time? and proceeds to
  tell suspect that she is due to meet a friend.
• Offender Attempts to convince victim to stay
  with him and telephone her friend instead.
• Victim Explains friend is very upset and must go
  quickly.
• Offender Continues conversation with victim.
• Victim becomes more direct in her communications
  of her intention to leave.

8
Indirectness and Face-Saving

• Indirectness can serve to save the offenders
  face (self-image) when the victim is
  communicating something that is potentially
  face-threatening.
• Other face-saving strategies include giving
  hints, vagueness and ambiguity. These strategies
  were used when the offender asked a personal
  question.
• Offender asked the victim where she worked
• Victim told the offender the name of the company
  for which she worked but not where her workplace
  was located.

9
Directness and Threatening Face

• Directives such as Get off me, Piss off.
• Name calling
• Expressing disgust
• Confronting suspect about his behaviour
• Refusing to speak

10
Implications Future Developments

• Victim-offender interactions pairings of speech
  acts
• Escalation of physical violence and its
  relationship with victim behaviour
• Part of a wider study of juvenile stranger sexual
  offending investigating the behavioural linking
  of crimes and investigative risk assessment.

11
References

• Burgess, A. W., Holmstrom, L. L. (1976). Coping
  behaviour of the rape victim. American Journal of
  Psychiatry, 133, 413-417.
• Fossi, J. J., Clarke, D. D., Lawrence, C.
  (2005). Bedroom Rape Sequences of Sexual
  Behavior in Stranger Assaults. Journal of
  Interpersonal Violence, 20, 1444-1466.
• Thomas, J. (1995). Meaning in interaction An
  introduction to pragmatics. Harlow, England.
  Pearson Education
• Woodhams, J., Grant, T. (2006). Developing a
  categorisation system for rapists' speech.
  Psychology, Crime and Law, 12, 245-260.