Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement: Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics

Author(s):  
2020 ◽  
pp. 107780122095426
Author(s):  
Ijeoma Nwabuzor Ogbonnaya ◽  
Olufunmilayo Ibitola Fawole ◽  
Cynthia Fraga Rizo

We investigated 13 domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault agency directors’ perspectives regarding Nigerian immigrants’ experiences of violence, DV-related service needs, and best strategies for providing those needs. Directors across five U.S. states were surveyed. Descriptive analyses showed the most common DV types were controlling behavior and cultural/traditional. The most important DV support needs were informational, informal, and legal. Formal support from DV agencies, support groups, and law enforcement was rated the most helpful strategies. Participants wanted to learn more about Nigerian immigrants’ DV experiences. Findings highlight implications for the development of Nigerian-specific DV services.


Author(s):  
Patricia A. Melton

Sexual assault is a violent crime that traumatizes individual victims and endangers entire communities. Every victim of sexual assault deserves an opportunity for justice and access to the resources they need to recover from this trauma. In addition, many perpetrators of sexual assaults are serial offenders who also commit other violent crimes, including armed robberies, aggravated assaults, burglary, domestic violence, and homicides, against strangers and acquaintances. Criminal justice agencies have the power to create a strategic, sustainable plan for an improved response to sexual assault that aligns with current best practices and national recommendations. In this document, we define an “improved response” as an approach that supports effective investigation and prosecution of sexual assault cases, holds perpetrators accountable, and promotes healing and recovery for victims of sexual assault. This guide will help prosecutor and law enforcement agencies create a process with milestones, goals, and suggested actions, all designed to support a successful and sustainable approach for addressing sexual assault cases. Improving the criminal justice system’s response to sexual assault ultimately improves public safety and promotes trust between criminal justice agencies and the communities they serve.


Author(s):  
Hai Thanh Luong

Since officially joining the globally connected computer network in 1997, Vietnam has made impressive progress with 64 million internet users as of June 2017, accounting for 67% of the population and is also among the countries with the highest number of internet users in Asia. Social media is widely available with a large focus on young groups. This chapter provides the overall situation on online sex assaults and exploitations child in Vietnam with its detailed characteristics and figures as well as shares the specific efforts of government and law enforcement authorities to prevent and combat this crime from 2010 to 2018 after the professional task force of Vietnamese police established in 2010 till now. The chapter also analyzes the difficulties, challenges, and barrier to fight it before introducing the proposals, strategies, and focuses on anticipate, prevent, and combat this crime of Vietnam's authorities.


Author(s):  
Corinne May-Chahal ◽  
Emma Kelly

This chapter reviews what is known about child sexual abuse media, with a particular focus on the abuse of young children (those under the age of 10). Young children are seldom the subject of research on sexual violence, yet the online-facilitated sexual abuse of these children is known to exist. In the past, child sexual abuse has been described as a hidden phenomenon that is made visible through a child's disclosure or evidence in and on their bodies. Online child sexual victimisation (OCSV) experienced by young children is still hidden in this traditional sense but at the same time highly visible through images that are both detached from the child yet traumatically attached through their creation and continued circulation throughout childhood. Indeed, most of what can be known about OCSV and younger children is through analyses of images harvested online and analyses of law enforcement and non-governmental organisation (NGO) image databases. These sources suggest that OCSV involving young children is different from that experienced by those who are older. It more often involves parents, carers, and family members; it is legally and developmentally impossible for children to consent to it; and images and videos of the abuse are more likely to be trafficked.


1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
NANCY L. ASDIGIAN ◽  
DAVID FINKELHOR ◽  
GERALD HOTALING

A sample of 396 cases of nonfamily abduction was extracted from police records in a national survey of law enforcement agencies. Incidents that fit the public stereotype of a kidnapping (children who were taken by strangers and kept for an extended period of time or moved a long distance) were much less prevalent than incidents that simply met legal definitions for abduction. The former—stereotypical abductions—also tended to involve more Caucasian preteen victims who were taken but not sexually assaulted. The majority of legal-definition abductions, in contrast, was characterized by the forcible sexual assault of teenage girls. Legal-definition abductions that did not involve sexual assault occurred in the context of a diverse range of other crimes, including robbery attempts, hijackings, acts of revenge, intimidation and terrorizing, and dating violence. The findings support the idea of distinguishing between stereotypical and legal-definition abducations and highlight the need to orient efforts aimed at the prevention of nonfamily abduction toward those at risk for sexual assault.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (17) ◽  
pp. 3547-3573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie L. Valentine ◽  
L. Kathleen Sekula ◽  
Lawrence J. Cook ◽  
Rebecca Campbell ◽  
Alison Colbert ◽  
...  

Following sexual assaults, victims are advised to seek health care services with forensic evidence collected and packaged in sexual assault kits (SAKs). This large ( N = 1,874), retrospective study examined rates of SAK submissions by law enforcement to the state crime laboratory for analysis from 2010 to 2013 at four sites in a Western state in the United States with established sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) programs. Variables of legal and extralegal characteristics in sexual assault cases were explored through generalized estimating equations (GEE) modeling to determine what factors statistically predicted SAK submissions. For submitted SAKs, the length of time between the dates of assault and dates of submission was categorized, and bivariate and multivariate analyses were calculated to discover legal and extralegal characteristics affecting time of submission. The study sites represented 40% of the state’s law enforcement agencies and 65% of the state’s population. Out of the 1,874 SAKs in the study, only 38.2% were submitted by law enforcement to the state crime laboratory for analysis. When SAK submissions were examined based on time between assaults and submission dates, 22.8% were submitted within a year of the assault and 15.4% were submitted more than a year after the assault following media and community pressure for law enforcement agencies to submit SAKs in storage. Significant variability of SAK submission rates and the time submitted from the assault dates were found between the sites. Site location was found to be the main determinant of whether or not SAKs were submitted. The lack of SAK submissions for analysis results in justice denied for victims and raises public safety concerns. The finding that the location in which the sexual assault occurred was the primary factor on SAK submissions represents an inequity of justice.


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