Attitudes and characteristics of military serial rapists: A comparison with their civilian counterparts.

摘要

The current geopolitical environment surrounding sexual assault in the military has received increasing attention over the last decade. Whereas sexual assault is not a new phenomenon within the military or the civilian populations, the research involving military perpetrators of adult sexual assault/rape is scarce. Compared to their civilian counterparts on whom a great deal of perpetrator research has been conducted, information from military perpetrators themselves regarding their attitudes, characteristics, and the tactics they used to perpetrate rape is significantly absent. This study sought to evaluate how military and civilian men's endorsement of hostility towards women, casual attitudes towards sex, hypermasculinity, and perceptions of their peers' views on rape myths affected their rate of rape perpetration. A national population of military men (n = 105 ) and civilian men (n = 140) completed a survey assessing their previous perpetration of rape since age 14. The survey was completed in an online format under anonymous conditions. Participants were categorized as non-perpetrators or serial rapists dependent upon their endorsement of behaviorally specific questions that met the legal criteria for rape. Two-way ANOVAs demonstrated that amongst both military members and civilians, there were significant differences in their levels of hostility towards women and their perceptions of their peers' views of rape myths between non perpetrators and serial rapists. In addition, for both military and civilian men there were significant differences in their levels of hypermasculinity between non perpetrators and serial rapists.;Furthermore, results indicated that military participants endorsed significantly higher levels of hypermasculinity than civilian participants. The study also assessed whether these four constructs had predictive capability towards rape perpetration. Overall, the results from logistic regression analyses indicated the constructs in the model successfully predicted serial rapists into the serial rape perpetration group with 72% accuracy for the military population and 39% accuracy for the civilian population. Hypermasculinity and their perception of their peers' views of rape myths were the most significant contributors in the military model, whereas hypermasculinity was the only significant contributor in the civilian model.;Key Words: military; offender; perpetrator; sexual assau rape; serial; characteristics; attitudes.