Sex Crimes

Transnational Problems and Global Perspectives

Alissa Ackerman, Rich Furman

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231539487
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Sex crimes, such as rape, child sexual abuse, and intimate partner violence, are increasingly transnational in nature, introducing unique cross-border and cross-cultural challenges for police, the courts, and the law. Policy makers and practitioners are in need of a resource that explores the incidence, prosecution, and treatment of sexual crimes across different countries and cultures.

This book is the first to investigate all aspects of sexual crimes and the policy and management initiatives developed to address them from a transnational, global perspective. Introducing an array of tools for reducing the prevalence and consequences of sex crimes, this volume brings together leading scholars in criminology, criminal justice, social work, and law to discuss topics ranging from sex trafficking and sex tourism to pornography, cyberstalking, and sexual abuse in the military and the Catholic church. Case studies track the reporting of these crimes, the methods used to interview victims and perpetrators, and the policies enacted to punish those involved.

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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Part 1: Foundational Chapters
• Part 2: Sex Trafficking in a Transnational World
• Part 3: Examples and Contexts of Transnational Sex Crimes
• List of Contributors
• Index