From: Francesca S. Alcorn (unicorn@greenepa.net)
Date: Fri 12 Mar 2004 - 20:14:50 GMT
I worked with boys who were either removed from their homes or
at-risk of being removed. Every family I worked with had some sexual
dysfunction - although I don't know of any rapes - there was a lot of
sexual abuse. I've done some trainings, a bit of reading and a lot
of agonizing about this issue. The kids are young, likeable and
sympathetic and at the same time they are at risk for becoming really
scary adults. What goes wrong? Here are a few pieces that I am
trying to fit together:
Children who are molested *before* the age of 12 often become
withdrawn and avoid sex through their teenage years. If they are
molested *after* the age of 12 they act out and are likely to abuse
other children. In terms of interventions, if you find kids doing
"inappropriate" sexual stuff before 10 - 12, you just tell them to
knock it off and they usually will. After the age of 10 - 12 you
need more aggressive interventions, and the older they get, the less
chance of success you have. Even hardcore programs (I went to a
training run by a residential treatment facility for offenders) have
a very high (95%+) recidivism rate after 18. Unless there is some
magic therapy out there that no one has discovered, then it looks
like it becomes hardwired. To me this suggests that there is a sort
of "sexual imprinting" window that opens at around the age of 12 and
closes by 18. It gives us some plasticity in sexual bonding but it
can also go horribly wrong. Teenagers who have difficulty forming
relationships with appropriate peer sexual partners, usually boys
with poor self-image/poor social skills, seek out younger
girls/siblings who are less intimidating. There is a good bit of
research that substantiates this as a significant risk factor for
later incest. Maybe they get "imprinted" on young children.
Jeffrey Dahmer played with animal corpses during this window and it
may have been just bad timing which "made" him what he was.
But I think that there is more than that. Not everyone with strange
childhood sexual experiences ends up a sexual predator. They may
develop some strange fantasies or fetishes, but they don't hurt
people. I don't think it is only a matter of "what makes a sexual
predator"? I think another question is "what do most people have
that *stops* them from hurting others? There are situational factors
which loosen these controls (like drugs/alcohol and stress (esp. loss
of significant relationships)).
1) There is also an element of social status in rape since success
with girls confers status (if what I hear about locker-room
conversations is true). The only instance I read of "rape" amongst
primates was in Robert Sapolsky's book. A newly-deposed (ex)alpha
male pursued and "forcibly copulated" with a female who screamed and
protested throughout the whole process. So the old adage that "rape
is about power, not about sex" may be true. And it may be more about
status with other *men* than it is about women. It may be about
exerting dominance - frustrated power. I wonder whether some of the
"misogyny" which underlies rape is just years of frustration because
they haven't been successful with women - which leads us back to
social skills etc. Maybe their sexuality becomes
imprinted/associated with confusion, fear and rage. I wonder if a
really good prevention program might be targeted toward teaching
social skills and facilitating *appropriate* interactions between
teenage boys and girls. All those high school proms and after school
activities may be really important after all.
2) Poor impulse control/high aggression level. I just read a book
which linked some of these traits to unusually high testosterone
levels - with the caveat that proper socialization can channel these
impulses productively: the firefighter who rushes into the building
because of the adrenaline rush, altruism and impulsiveness. Heroism
as a cocktail of high-testosterone and good socialization. If good
socialization can ameliorate risk factors, then conversely, "bad"
socialization exacerbates them - the spur posse. There have been
times - like feudal lords who had a go at young brides before their
husbands did - when rape was enshrined within the social order
(another alpha male thing). And certain environments (like prisons)
where it continues to be a fact of life. Status and dominance again.
And I agree Thornhill and his ilk are dangerous because they threaten
to undermine social norms against rape.
3) Sociopathic tendencies. There is not a lot of hard research out
there on empathy, but IIRC it is supposed to develop around the age
of seven. The one kid I worked with who had no empathy floored me
until I realized that he *was* *really confused* about why people
wouldn't just let him do whatever he wanted to. People were
instruments of fulfillment or frustration and nothing else. The
definition of sociopath in the DSM-IV is not without it's critics.
The search for a neurological underpinning is difficult because at
this point it looks like it may actually be two different things
lumped together. Sociopaths who don't have violent impulses often
manage to avoid imprisonment/diagnosis (often synonymous) their whole
lives. So the diagnostic criteria which include violence may be
misleading. I think there's a genetic component - no known effective
therapy - the only thing that these kids seem to learn is to keep
their behavior "below the radar". Don't know what advantage it might
confer in the population unless it is like sickle-cell anemia - a
recessive trait that confers some advantage when paired with a
dominant gene, but which can be dangerous when it is paired with
another recessive.
Or maybe this represents the same dilemma which we faced with the kid
I worked with: we knew he was bad news, but you can't lock someone
up until he's done something bad enough to warrant it (and done it to
someone willing to press charges). Our own social prohibitions
against being "unfair" create the niche which sociopaths exploit. So
the $64,000 question is: will he be able to find some young thing he
can bully or manipulate into having sex with him before he ends up in
prison? Maybe sociopaths continue to exist because we haven't
figured out a good way to deal with them. They represent a threat to
the social fabric of a community because they create great stress and
destroy trust/group cohesiveness. But they continue to exist so long
as their number is small enough that they don't destroy the group.
Social parasites who continue to exist as long as they don't kill
their host. Maybe this is something which makes more sense at a
group level than it does at any other level. Maybe *socio*path is a
good name.
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