Sex Crimes: Transnational Problems and Global Perspectives

PART |

Foundational Chapters

Introduction

    ALISSA R. ACKERMAN AND RICH FURMAN

SEXUAL VIOLENCE, PERHAPS MORE THAN any other type of crime, elicits visceral responses from the public. Armed almost exclusively with media accounts of specific sexually violent acts or vague narratives about highly charged topics (e.g., sex trafficking), the public and politicians respond in ways that are somewhat limited or bounded by a lack of understanding about the contexts and experiences of sex crimes that occur every day around the world. While goodwill exists toward finding solutions to combat the various forms of sexual violence, the fact remains that harsh and often ineffective policies are designed and implemented because of a limited understanding about the real nature of sex crimes. This book seeks to fill this gap in knowledge by providing a global and transnational lens through which to view the subject.

Sexual violence is endemic to all parts of the world and frequently transcends national borders. The policies that are enacted to combat crimes of this nature often do not or cannot transcend these same borders. Even within a country’s borders, formal criminal justice policies may not be effective at preventing or decreasing sexual crimes. For example, within national borders, as in the case of poor and developing countries such as Cambodia, criminal justice systems are ill-equipped to handle sex crimes, and outsiders see as illegal the informal tools that are often used. Sexual crimes are significant social problems in all countries, and we can learn a great deal from understanding sex crimes and sex crimes policies across the world.

A recent report found that globally one in fourteen girls and women over the age of 15, or 7.2 percent, will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime (Abrahams et al. 2014). Such statistics quantify what can only be viewed as serious human rights violations; prevention of sexual violence is an essential human rights issue. In addition to these most intense and severe sexual crimes, various types of sexual violence represent a diverse group of sexual offenses.

Sadly, it is the few, most extreme and sensational cases that make the headlines. Far too often victims of every variety—children, adults, minorities, even animals—are ignored or forgotten while the focus remains on examples picked up, and usually distorted, by the media. Such media representations globally not only lead to erroneous conceptions of the nature of sexual crimes but also prevent a focus on the real lived experiences of many victims. This focus devalues the impacts on and experiences of countless individuals. To truly understand the depth and breadth of sexual violence worldwide and to create lasting and effective prevention measures, we must adopt a global and transnational view of the subject. We must appreciate and understand differences in approaches to combating sexual violence. When programs are effective at inducing positive change, we must learn from them. When programs fail to help survivors achieve justice and balance in their lives, we must know how to make adjustments to those programs. This book seeks to fundamentally expand the way we view sexual violence and the policies and practices aimed at reducing it.

Readers might ask, what is the importance of understanding sex crimes from a transnational and global perspective? Is it not enough to understand the nature of sexual crimes in one’s own cultural context? Are the policies and practices of other countries not so different that they are irrelevant to, for example, the context of the United States? The answers to these questions help frame the rationale for this book and will help the reader place the diversity of perspectives and vantage points in context. In the following paragraphs, we explore how and why sexual crimes must be understood from a global and transnational perspective.

First, in the new millennium, no social problem exists outside of the context of globalization. Sex crimes, in spite of stereotypes about the nature of defective, sociopathic perpetrators, are not merely crimes committed by the sick and deranged; they occur within the context of social and economic upheavals that affect whole communities. Poverty, alienation, and lack of community integration and support services, for example, all influence rates of recidivism for sexual crimes. As the forces of globalization affect the economic viability of communities and have a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities in the United States and throughout the world, various social stressors serve as a context within which sexual offenses occur. Sex offender policies, as with other social policies, are bound to fail if they do not account for the full scope of social forces that contribute to the creation of the problem. Ameliorating the conditions that exacerbate sexual crimes in communities demands that policy practitioners of the future view the interconnectedness of social problems on macro, even global scales. In this sense, globalization represents an important conceptual lens for those interested in sex crime amelioration and policy.

Second, globalization has increasingly led to an acceleration of transnational migration. Transmigration, or the movement of people back and forth across nation-state boundaries, presents challenges to those concerned with a myriad of social problems in terms of creating policies that are similarly able to contend with the transitional movement of people. As several chapters explore, the movement of victims and perpetrators across nation-state boundaries is relatively easy and fluid; the movement of social institutions and organizations across the same spaces, however, is not. What we now face, then, is a world in which individuals and groups of people exist within transnational spaces, yet the organizations and institutions designed to manage and resolve their problems do not.

Third, human creativity toward solving problems is bounded by our frameworks and assumptions. When discussions and debates occur regarding thinking outside the box, what we are really referring to is the need to find ways of challenging our assumptions and perceptions and seeing problems from different vantage points so we can find new solutions. This is a difficult challenge, as our thinking is so bound by what we know that it is often nearly impossible to break free of our context-bound possibilities. One way of pushing ourselves to think and consider problems and solutions in novel ways is to adopt new theoretical and empirical lenses that help us view our world with new eyes. We believe that a transnational and global perspective is just such a lens. By observing the ways in which scholars and practitioners from other countries and cultural contexts view various sexual crimes and their management and treatment, readers will be forced to examine their own assumptions and explore their own limitations. By comparing and contrasting both their knowledge and biases with new data, readers will be helped to think creatively, reflectively, and, we hope, progressively.

In this book we have assembled chapters by some of the most innovative and influential scholars and practitioners from around the world. We hope that their ideas and experiences will be challenging, evocative, and educational. We know we have learned a great deal from working with these authors; we trust that readers will as well.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The first section consists of chapters foundational to an understanding of sexual crimes from a transnational/global perspective. They help provide context about the nature of globalization and transnationalism, the relationships between sexual crimes and gender, and the most common forms of sexual violence.

In chapter 1 Jay Albanese discusses the dynamics that catapulted many local sex crimes and sexual content from the local to the transnational. With the increased technology available to so many, the stigma associated with walking into an adult store or movie house no longer exists. People interested in various forms of sexually explicit materials, from sexual acts involving children and violent depictions of sexual encounters with women to sexual acts involving animals, can simply use a computer to find what they are looking for. Demand for this type of content is no longer local—it has expanded exponentially over the past twenty-five years and defines the dark side of what technology is capable of. That said, most studies on exposure to pornographic and/or obscene content indicate that it is actually quite high. Demand for pornography fuels this newfound and easily accessible supply. The nature of technology now allows a small group of individuals to quickly become a large global distribution network. We are still learning about what fuels these networks and best practices to stop them. Similarly, the introduction of Internet technology has brought into question other forms of exploitation, including the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. Questions remain as to what it means to be trafficked or even sexually exploited. Albanese points out that while laws in some countries are certainly changing with the times, a great deal about these specific types of crimes remains unknown.

Lisa Sample and Rita Augustyn show in chapter 2 that the definition of sex crimes and more specifically rape varies across national boundaries. The authors warn that we must be cautious when we attempt to extrapolate data on the nature and extent of sex crimes globally because the definition of what such a crime entails varies over time. For example, sexual acts that were legal in the United States only a hundred years ago are now seen as criminal. We have very little knowledge of what constitutes sex crimes worldwide, and as such, actual data on the extent of rape around the world are lacking. Sample and Augustyn analyzed the criminal codes of ninety-three countries to determine whether the countries had statutes regarding criminal sexual behavior and how each country defined sex crimes. The authors stress that the lack of uniformity and consensus about what a sex crime is makes the global policing of sex crimes impractical.

Gender is one of the essential organizing principles of human behavior. When gender is explored vis-à-vis sexual crimes, it is typically related to how power and patriarchy are implicated in the subordination of women and male entitlement to sexual gratification. This is lamentable, as gender plays a far more complex role in sexual crimes. In chapter 3 Alissa R. Ackerman, Rich Furman, Jeffrey W. Cohen, Eric Madfis, and Michelle Sanchez explore the full implications of considering masculinities and sexual offending. They guide the reader through a discussion of the nature of masculine scripts and roles and demonstrate the risks that various forms of masculinities entail in the perpetuation of sexual crimes. Additionally, the authors explore the potential prosocial and positive aspects of masculinities, which can be used in service of preventing and treating sexual crimes. The chapter will help readers begin to see the importance of adopting a gendered lens to understanding sexual crimes across cultures and national boundaries.

In chapter 4 Elicka Peterson-Sparks discusses intimate partner violence in its many forms and adopts a transnational lens through which to understand risk factors of this type of violence. Intimate partner violence takes on many forms and can be physical, psychological, and sexual in nature. Very little research has been conducted through a transnational lens, but the work that has been done sheds light on important risk factors that are found in most, if not all, regions of the world. While historically most governments have been reluctant to tackle intimate partner violence as a social issue, more recently this has begun to change. Sexual violence is now seen as an international human rights issue, and there is a greater demand for accountability from nations to protect women. Peterson-Sparks notes that best efforts to prevent intimate partner violence include men and make them more central to the process.

Sex trafficking is perhaps the sexual crime that is the most naturally transnational and global of the topics in this book. It is also perhaps the most controversial, emotional, and contested. Sex trafficking has been frequently reported in the media, with powerful claims made by those who view it is a form of modern-day slavery, yet the debates about sex trafficking are contested. It most certainly is one of the most egregious of sexual crimes, and separating the various levels of fact from fiction is essential if effective social policy and treatments are to be found, promulgated, funded, and institutionalized. As such, the three chapters in part 2 present somewhat different perspectives on this complex transnational problem.

In chapter 5 Mary Hiquan Zhou provides a history of sex trafficking as a social problem, including the background of the current sex trafficking debate and facts about sex trafficking to date. In doing so, Zhou dispels many of the myths surrounding the topic. She argues that given the facts, sex trafficking today almost mimics the century-old moral panic about White Slavery. She notes that sex trafficking is an important social problem in need of remedy but cautions that it is not the pandemic problem that some promulgate as true. Research shows that many individuals are aware of and often consent to entering into sex work, while some may be unsure of the conditions of the work. Although some people believe the exaggerated claim that sex trafficking rings are operated by organized crime groups, research actually shows that traffickers are more likely to be loosely connected individuals or small groups.

Myth is often promulgated over fact because it serves the interests of those individuals and organizations who are working to end sex trafficking and protect victims. Charles Anthony Smith and Cynthia Florentino conducted an analysis of international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and the United Nations Trafficking Protocol. The latter was entered into in December 2003 and signed by 117 countries. INGOs played a prominent role in creating and negotiating the tenets of the protocol. Most notably the very definition of trafficking in persons was hotly debated and ultimately driven by differing ideologies of INGOs. Two main INGO coalitions led the debate. The Human Rights Caucus, a group of INGOs involved in antitrafficking and sex workers’ rights, took a regulationist approach, arguing for a broad definition of trafficking that includes forced labor and coercion but excludes voluntary sex work. In contrast, the International Human Rights Network adopted an abolitionist approach, defining trafficking through a victim’s perspective and even arguing that prostitution is a violation of human rights. This group went as far as to say that nobody can give genuine consent to engage in prostitution. Smith and Florentino were interested in what this international UN effort amounted to at the local level. Their findings, presented in chapter 6, show that INGO engagement ultimately leads to local action, and the broad definition of trafficking finally adopted by the United Nations allows for flexibility at the local level in terms of how to deal with trafficking.

Chapter 7 takes a progressive stance on definitions of sex trafficking and sex work in general. Cathy Nguyen, Rich Furman, and Alissa R. Ackerman argue the importance of ensuring that sex trafficking and sex work are not conflated. They note that sex trafficking is an egregious wrong committed against women, girls, and boys but that prostitution and sex work are fundamentally different from sex trafficking. There must be a separation of sex work from human trafficking for a variety of reasons. For one, women should be able to control their bodies, and conflating the two robs consenting sex workers of agency and autonomy. Additionally, it draws consensual sex work into the darkness and away from well-regulated places of business. Sex workers come from a variety of backgrounds and enter into sex work for various reasons. Decriminalizing prostitution and consensual sex work values women’s agency, decreases some of the stigma associated with the profession, provides economic stability, and offers the ability to creating a lasting and successful public health approach to regulate prostitution and decrease sex trafficking. The authors note that confusing sex work with trafficking draws valuable resources away from where they should actually be focused.

Part 3 explores various other sexual crimes that increasingly occur within transnational and global contexts. They represent forms of sexual violence that often are less typically considered, such as that against animals and state-supported sexual violence used for political aims. What they have in common, as with the sexual crimes explored in preceding chapters, is that each must increasingly be understood through the global, transnational lens that we have been considering. We hope that readers will have honed their ability to situate sexual crimes in this framework and will be able to apply this new, critical skill to their own areas of interest and expertise.

In chapter 8 Michele Leiby analyzes the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war in El Salvador and Peru. Too often, she notes, scholars utilize the term weapon of war in an uncritical way. She argues that sexual violence varies across and within armed conflicts and as such requires significant research and better understanding. Indeed, sexual violence during war has several purposes and potential benefits. For example, Leiby notes that it might be used to induce fear in the public or as a form of punishment for people in the opposition. It could also be used to acquire intelligence during interrogations of political prisoners. In the first analysis of its kind, Leiby examines accounts of sexual violence in El Salvador and Peru to determine whether it was indeed a weapon of war.

A world away, on the African continent, Helen Liebling conducted interviews with survivors of conflict and postconflict sexualized violence in Liberia, Uganda, and the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In chapter 9 she relates that both men and women experienced sexual violence, but women and girls were much more likely to have survived sexual torture and sexual violence. Sexual violence perpetrated in conflict and postconflict chaos resulted in long-term and devastating effects on survivors, their children, families, and communities. Liebling argues for a holistic, gendered approach that sees women’s responses to trauma as normal and not pathological. Additionally, her research highlights a strong desire for justice.

In Cambodia another problem exists. Here, over 80 percent of people live in rural areas with little access to criminal justice. In chapter 10 Catherine Burns and Kathleen Daly illustrate the dysfunction within the Cambodian criminal justice system and suggest that even if formal justice were available to citizens, they could still not afford such access. Nonetheless, local and international NGOs advocate for formal criminal justice sanctions, despite the fact that most Cambodian rape survivors, many of whom were raped by someone they know, prefer the informal and local justice practice of somroh somruel. In this practice, discussed at length in chapter 10, guilt and blame are less important than restoration. To this end, victim and offender often agree to some form of monetary payment. NGOs and others argue that somroh somruel is inequitable and substandard. These entities continue to push for formal justice mechanisms. In addition, NGOs are facing increased difficulties accruing a donor base because everyday rape is not seen as exciting in the way that commercial sex trafficking might be seen. In a transnational and ever-increasing global world, Burns and Daly ask us to think about some important questions: What if responses framed by universal human rights are not the best way to address rape at the local level? What if victims, families, and local communities prefer informal justice? What are the negative consequences of encouraging something that is against the will of the victim?

In chapter 11 Anne-Marie McAlinden discusses the global phenomenon of institutional child sexual abuse. Though a few high-profile institutions have been highlighted in the media in the past two decades, including the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, institutional child sexual abuse occurs in both religious and secular institutions. Various countries and their respective institutions have dealt with institutional child sexual abuse in a variety of ways. Importantly, one common way to address such abuse is through public accountability and blame for specific acts. This tactic, as McAlinden points out, makes examinations of broader, systemic institutional problems almost impossible. These problems stem not only from individual offenders but from institutions themselves. McAlinden argues that institutional environments facilitate institutional child sexual abuse and make it extremely difficult to discover abuse when it occurs. She offers that most institutional policies designed to combat child sexual abuse are reactive in nature and can only address the known cases of abuse. Her chapter poses a similar question to what Burns and Daly offer: What if responses to institutional child sexual abuse are not necessarily in the best interest of victims or potential victims? How can we create policy approaches that actually prevent abuse from occurring? McAlinden concludes with suggested approaches that may be effective in decreasing and preventing institutional child sexual abuse in global and transnational contexts.

In chapter 12 Karen J. Terry provides a case example concerning child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. In 2004 John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York was commissioned to study the nature and scope of child sexual abuse within the Church. After completion of the first study, a second study on the causes and contexts of the abuse was commissioned. Terry was the principal investigator of these studies. She highlights several important findings that echo many of the points made in chapter 11, namely, that while sex offenders are a heterogeneous group, several key similarities can be found among institutional child sexual abusers. For example, most abuse in the Church was committed by diocesan priests who had high levels of discretion, limited supervision of their daily activities, and high levels of trust. These factors support offending behavior across institutions, but Terry highlights their existence within the Catholic Church specifically as well as the importance of understanding the sexual abuse of children in the Church through a global lens.

In chapter 13 Phoenix J. Freeman articulates the importance of understanding sexual violence perpetrated against and by trans individuals in the Western world. He cautions about the limitations of available data concerning this important but often overlooked segment of the population. Data about trans populations have various shortcomings despite the fact that trans people are at increased risk of sexual violence. After a discussion of these limitations, Freeman turns to an analysis of risk factors associated with the sexual victimization of trans people. Trans people face a host of risk factors stemming from stigmatization, marginalization, and poverty, but Freeman cautions that despite risk factors for being victimized, they can and do commit sexualized violence, too. Freeman concludes by arguing that governments, NGOs, and other crisis centers can provide valuable data regarding the trans population in the absence of better research. He notes that some governments, including the United States, now document and address some forms of sexual violence against trans people, but changes are still necessary. To fully understand sexual violence by and against trans people, better-informed research is necessary.

Finally, in chapter 14 Jenny Maher adopts a comparative look at sexual assault against animals, a subject that receives little attention in the academic literature. Rarely are animals seen as victims. In fact, in many instances animal sexual assault is seen as a victimless crime. Though not viewed as common practice, animal sexual assault is probably underestimated because the victims in such cases cannot report the violence against them. Nations have taken varied stances on how to deal with animal sexual assault, with some not even viewing sexual experiences with animals as crimes. However, like intimate partner violence, there seems to be a shift in how some countries are tackling the issue. Maher points out that while many governments have previously considered animal sexual assault in anthropocentric ways, there seems to be a move toward more animal-centered legislation. The chapter asks readers to think critically about what defines animal sexual assault and what legislation should resemble.

National and international legislation are certainly factors that can help decrease sexually based offenses. However, one theme that remains central to this book is that legislation alone is not the panacea that many believe it to be. Indeed, several chapters call for multifaceted public health approaches to combat sexualized violence. Others argue that a legislative or criminal justice response stands in contrast to the desires of individuals who have been sexually victimized.

The chapters in this book represent a new way of exploring sexual violence and sexual crimes. The authors adopted complex, globally situated ways to explore different sexual crimes. We hope that they will lead readers to a new way of understanding sexual crimes and will enable students, scholars, and practitioners alike to utilize what they have learned to create new policies and practices for the management, treatment, and prevention of sexual crimes.

REFERENCES

Abrahams, N., K. Devries, C. Watts, C. Pallitto, M. Petzold, S. Shamu, and C. García-Moreno. 2014. Worldwide prevalence of non-partner sexual violence: