Vicious circles: accounts of stranger sexual assault reflect abusive variants of conventional interactions

Abstract

This study investigates whether accounts of sexual assault, as reported to police officers by individuals who have been raped, reflect abusive variants of conventional interpersonal scripts. Previous studies on conventional interactions suggest that a circular ordering of interpersonal descriptors located around two principal axes, dominance-submission and co-operation-hostility, may represent such events. Using multivariate statistical analyses that geometrically represent the co-occurrence of the various actions described by the victims, 251 victim statements were examined. Study One ('series offences') examined serial stranger assault cases committed by 42 different offenders resulting in a total of 112 victim statements. Study Two ('single offences') examined victim statements involving 139 different offenders committing 1 offence each; all of these were also stranger attacks. Both studies employed statements taken in the UK. In both studies the resulting configuration of actions described evidenced an approximation to a circular order. The replication of this structure in this domain suggests that such accounts reflect a manipulative and abusive variant of more conventional interactional processes. Such a finding generates a number of hypotheses about potentially different responses that are contingent upon the type of interaction described. The implications of this are discussed.