This paper describes the healthcare needs of victims of multiple perpetrator sexual assault (MPSA) and single perpetrator sexual assault (SPSA) presenting to the Haven sexual assault referral centre ...in south-east London, and aims to identify any characteristics that might be related to attendance at follow-up appointments. We reviewed standardised casenotes of 136 MPSA victims and 139 SPSA victims attending for forensic medical examination (FME) between 1 July 2005 and 31 July 2009. MPSA victims reported a higher rate of stranger assaults, higher rates of vaginal, anal and oral rapes, more rapes at multiple anatomical sites or multiple rapes and were more likely to sustain injuries, all of which put MPSA victims at higher risk of subsequent health problems. Rates of attendance at follow-up appointments were low for all (53.5%) as were rates of completion of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) for HIV (33.3%). Attendance at follow-up was associated with presence of anogenital injury at the time of FME. Those over the age of 30 years were less likely to attend.
Committing violent acts can be appealing, fascinating, exciting, and addictive (i.e., appetitive). Cultural settings that accept violence as a means to power and success promote this appetitive form ...of aggression. Former child soldiers of Uganda with military rank reported committing a greater variety of violent acts compared to those without rank. They experienced aggressive behavior as more positive than both those without rank and controls who had never been involved in armed groups. The relation between the number of individually committed offense types and appetitive aggression is weaker in former child soldiers without rank compared to those with rank. This indicates that the potential for rapid development of appetitive aggression is rewarded with higher social status in war-afflicted communities.
Some Nigerian women entrepreneurs of the Italian sex market were trafficked women in the past who made a career in the trafficking hierarchy and its organized crime groups. The female mobility ...towards the organizational side of the trafficking offense represents the most striking characteristic of the Nigerian trade industry: in fact, the trafficking victims are driven by their persecutors to take an active part in the trafficking offenses over time. This criminal modus operandi explains why several difficulties arise in defining sharp dividing lines between trafficking victims and trafficking perpetrators. Facing such a distinctive issue, this paper wants to highlight the multiple roles that women hold in the trafficking industry by focusing on: a) the gray areas in the Nigerian trade industry; b) the intermediate roles that individuals hold within the victim/offender model; c) the female vertical mobility in the trafficking hierarchy. Thanks to such an analysis, the author wants to overcome dominant binary approaches (mostly based on the victim/perpetrator dichotomy) in the analysis of Nigerian trade industry.
This paper focuses on some problematic victim-perpetrator dynamics in psychotherapy with patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder where there has been longstanding multi-perpetrator organized ...abuse described, which also involves family members. Additionally, in this specific sample, there have been reported experiences of serious assaults from attachment figures in which the patient felt close to death. The clinical concern is expressed that only in the nearness of death is a connection felt to the attachment figure and this leads to extra suicidality in the patient and extra vulnerability to secondary traumatization for the therapist. This group faces not only relational betrayal dynamics with their reported external abusers, who provide toxic "love", but with internal perpetrators, victim-perpetrators, and victims too. The impact of an incestuous and rivalrous civil war in the body and mind that replicates the external system and is projected into the therapeutic encounter poses particular problems for therapists and patients. There are different problems for the treatment according to how the perpetrator-identified dissociative system is in need of a near-death connection.
Sexuality is considered as a great human value related to happiness and satisfaction, but unfortunately, when affecting mental disorders, they tend to be associated with second level human functions. ...Nevertheless, sexual dysfunction often accompanies psychiatric disorder, intensely influencing compliance, quality of life and human relationships. Sexuality could be influenced either by a mental disorder itself, difficulties to get and maintain couple relationships or by the use of psychotropic treatments. Treatment-related adverse events are unfortunately under-recognized by clinicians, scarcely spontaneously communicated by patients, and rarely investigated in clinical trials. The most frequent psychotropic compounds that could deteriorate sexuality and quality of life include antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood regulators. There are important differences between them related to some variations in mechanisms of action including serotonin, dopamine and prolactin levels. Little is known about the relevance of sexuality and its dysfunctions in chronic and frequent mental and neurological disorders, such as psychosis, mood disorders, anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, alcohol or drug dependencies, epilepsy and childhood pathology. Poor sexual life, low satisfaction and more frequent risky sex behavior than in the general population are associated with severe mental diseases. There is a need for increasing research in this field, including epidemiological, psychological, neurophysiological, neuroanatomical and genetic variables related to sexual life to get a better understanding of the implicated mechanisms. To increase the sensibility of clinicians, the identification and management of sexual disturbances after the onset of any mental disorder should be highlighted. This would avoid unnecessary suffering and deterioration of quality of life.
Perpetrator and incident characteristics were studied in regard to incidents of emotional, physical, and sexual mistreatment of older adults (age 60+) in a national sample of older men and women. ...Random digit dialing across geographic strata was used to compile a nationally representative sample; computer assisted telephone interviewing was used to standardize collection of demographic, mistreatment, and perpetrator and incident characteristics data. The final sample size consisted of 5,777 older adults. Approximately one in ten adults reported at least one form of mistreatment, and the majority of incidents were not reported to authorities. Perpetrators of physical mistreatment against men had more "pathological" characteristics compared to perpetrators of physical mistreatment against women. Perpetrators of physical mistreatment (compared to emotional and sexual mistreatment) also evidenced increased likelihood of legal problems, psychological treatment, substance use during incident, living with the victim, and being related to the victim. Implications for future research and social policy are discussed.
The perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide were the most efficient killers of the twentieth century, with 8000 victims per day at a modest count. Tribal tensions, Belgian Colonization, and the Church ...are frequently highlighted as foundational to the slaughter in 1994, but this paper suggests an additional, overlooked propellant behind the actions of Hutu perpetrators - the machete. Via an investigation of primary perpetrator (Hatzfeld 2003) and victim accounts (Gourevitch 1998), this paper presents a new spiritual, psychological, and social paradigm around the fetishization (Ellen 1988) of the machete in the Rwandan Genocide - ‘The Fetishization Effect.' This paradigm occurs in three stages - unification, operation and fetishization - for the machete comes to unify community, create a new ‘imagining' of reality (Anderson 1991, 7) and is thus unconsciously enchanted with a divine essence. When fully fetishized, the inspirited machete was able manipulate perpetrator psyche, propel violent actions, justify final blows, and absolve the perpetrator of consequence. This weapon was no inanimate object, but rather a manipulative ‘machine of power' (Ellen 1988, 228) complicit in the murder of the Tutsi population. As such, this paper will delineate this paradigm, explicating the machete's role in the creation of the ‘true Rwandan' community and their new reality, displaying the subsequent inspiriting of the machete by this group, through which it came to influence, control, and substantiate their actions.
In May 2011, IMF chief and French presidential contender Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested on sexual assault charges and forced to do the ‘perp walk’ in New York. The French press vividly ...criticized this shaming ritual, thus triggering reactions of defense, but also of self-questioning, in the American press. This study evaluates the extent to which the French criticism led the American press to show distance from the norms of its own national community. It contends that, in our age of globalized information, shaming rituals, which served to legitimate the dominant order, can now generate what Shani Orgad called ‘estrangement’.
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