Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

posted by admin on Mar 27

The homosexual offenders vs. adults had the smallest percentage of men with records of juvenile convictions: 7.5 per cent. However, nearly all who were convicted were given sentences of six months or longer, indicating that their juvenile offenses, while few, were serious. A comparatively small number (2 per cent) had juvenile sex-offense convictions.

Their convictions as adults mounted at a moderate rate: one third had been convicted by age twenty, one half by twenty-three, three quarters by thirty, and nine out of ten by age forty-nine. In accumulative incidence of convictions that led to imprisonment for six months or more, the percentage also rises moderately until about age thirty, after which the rate drops until ultimately the homosexual offenders vs. adults are the only group of whom less than three fifths had served a six months’ sentence or more.

Their average age when first convicted was about twenty-four, and when first convicted for a homosexual offense the average age was 26.7, somewhat younger than was true of the other homosexual groups.

There is nothing remarkable about the percentage of convictions that stemmed from sex offenses (55 per cent), but the proportion of “pure” sex offenders—men with no offenses other than sex offenses—is the largest recorded: 65 per cent. One may recall that in this particular the homosexual offenders vs. minors ranked second with 62 per cent. A significant proportion of this “purity” is the result of our sampling of homosexual offenders, a large number of whom were interviewed outside prison. This very fact militates against their being frequently involved in criminal activity.

The per capita total convictions and sex-offense convictions are not unusual, being respectively 3.21 and 1.76.

Their nonsex offenses are chiefly ones of vagrancy-disorderly conduct (40 per cent) and crimes against property (35 per cent). The latter figure is moderate compared to many other groups, but the vagrancy-disorderly conduct figure is the third largest recorded, being surpassed only by the other homosexual offenders. The “cruising” and loitering that is so common in male homosexual life predisposes them to such charges.

The homosexual offenders vs. adults are the most specialized of all sex offenders; fully 96 per cent of their offenses are homosexual offenses. Fifty-three per cent of all their offenses other than those with adult males involved boys from twelve to fifteen, 22 per cent involved boys under age twelve, 10 per cent were exhibition (to females), and about 13 per cent involved physical contact with females, including a few daughters.

Recidivism among these offenders was definitely low: 42 per cent had but one conviction. Only the incest offenders vs. adults had a better record. However, a promiscuous hard core of homosexuals accounts for nearly 9 per cent who had seven or more convictions, and 9 per cent in this particular category is a moderate rather than a low figure.

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posted by admin on Mar 27

There is a tendency for the single males to display high age-specific incidences of nocturnal emissions; beginning in fourth rank at age puberty-15, the unmarried homosexual offenders vs. children rise to second rank in age-period 21-25 and ultimately, from thirty-six to forty, to first rank. This rise in rank-order with age is completely unlike the other homosexual offenders who fall in rank in the older age-periods, occupying the lowest two positions in age-period 36-40. This would lead one to speculate, as we did in discussing masturbation, that in a group whose homosexual outlet is inhibited by society there might be a compensatory increase in dreams. However, such speculation is groundless, for such a compensation does not obtain among the homosexual offenders vs. minors, and, moreover, the majority of homosexual offenders vs. children were not so exclusively homosexual in their interests that social taboo caused them appreciable deprivation. The married reveal a somewhat low age-specific incidence of nocturnal emissions when compared to other sex offenders, and much lower than the control and prison groups. Among all homosexual offenders there is a sharp contrast between the married and unmarried in terms of nocturnal emissions: for instance, between ages twenty-one and twenty-five some 67 per cent of the unmarried homosexual offenders vs. children experienced orgasm during sleep as opposed to only 30 per cent of the married. Equivalent figures for the control group are 80 per cent versus 61 per cent. Furthermore, the frequency of nocturnal emissions is always low to moderate in comparison with other sex offenders and much less than the control group’s. For example, the average unmarried homosexual offender vs. children who had such emissions had 4 a year from puberty to age thirty while the control group man had 10 to 12.

The proportion of total outlet provided by nocturnal emissions is always moderate for the single individuals (2-7 per cent), but very small, both relatively and absolutely (always 1 per cent), for the married.

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posted by admin on Mar 27

The incest offenders vs. children had the largest proportion (84 per cent) of members who, while married, had coitus with females other than their wives. This large figure is not the result of their incestuous behavior, which seldom involved actual coitus (only five of the 54 individuals admit to this), nor is it a matter of the years eligible for extramarital coitus, since the incest offenders vs. children are not an unusually aged group and they tended to marry somewhat later than other individuals. It is worth mention that the group with the second largest number of individuals with extramarital coitus are the incest offenders vs. minors, but in this case the incest plays a more important role in increasing the percentage.

From ages twenty-one to forty some 42 to 56 per cent of the incest offenders vs. children had extramarital coitus with companions, earning them second place in the rank-orders up to age thirty-five and first place in age-period 36-40. All but a small percentage shunned prostitutes. The frequency of extramarital coitus was always low after age twenty and similar to that of the control group. The average offender with extramarital coitus had it with four females—a low number and one exceeded by both the control group (whose average was five partners) and prison group (ten). The proportion of total outlet provided by extramarital coitus is always moderate, that with companions constituting from 2-to 5 per cent and that with prostitutes never quite reaching 1 per cent. There were too few separated, divorced, and widowed individuals to permit calculation of postmarital statistics.

No preference for extreme youth is to be seen in the age of the first coital partners of the incest offenders vs. children. None had their initial experiences with girls under twelve; very few had a partner aged twelve to thirteen; and for about one fifth to one quarter the first coital partners were fourteen to fifteen, sixteen to seventeen, eighteen to twenty, and twenty-one-plus—an unusually uniform distribution, but otherwise not distinctive.

Neither did their explicitly stated age preferences show any leaning toward extreme youth. Only 4 per cent mentioned ages as low as twelve to fifteen. In this matter the incest offenders are unlike the offenders vs. children and aggressors vs. children, considerably more of whom admitted a sexual desire for young girls.

Aside from the matter of incest with a daughter or stepdaughter, in which by definition incest offenders rank highest, the only other incest phenomenon worth noting is that three of our sample of 56 incest offenders vs. children (i.e., 5 per cent) had coitus with sisters-in-law; this is the second largest percentage.

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posted by admin on Mar 27

The aggressors vs. children do not lend themselves to subdivision as readily as the offenders vs. children, and some of the varieties recognized among the offenders seem absent or rare among the aggressors. No clear-cut cases of underdeveloped sociosexuality or of senile deterioration were found, which is not surprising since such persons are apt to be timorous or ineffectual rather than aggressive. Similarly one can scarcely find a situational case in which a concatenation of events caused the individual to yield to impulse before he could mobilize his psychological defenses against his behavior.

By and large, the picture of the aggressors vs. children is one of alcoholism or heavy sporadic drinking, mental pathology or defect, and very low socioeconomic status. These items usually are combined. The typical aggressor is an unskilled or semiskilled worker who did not graduate from grammar school, and whose employment and marital record is irregular. He is not very bright and his mental condition is worsened by heavy drinking; yet he cannot be dismissed as a simple-minded drunk, for even beyond the psychoneurotic element involved in the use of force on an extremely inappropriately young object, still other psychotic (or at least highly neurotic) responses not infrequently appear. This heavy overlay of deleterious factors obscures other items and makes classification into varieties of offenders extremely difficult. About all that one can do is differentiate three varieties :

1. Persons with mental defects and/or pathology (but rarely with psychoses) who are also alcoholics or at least sporadic heavy drinkers. The majority of aggressors vs. children fall into this category.

Pedophiles, such as discussed under offenders vs. children, except that the latter did not use force. There are few of these, but probably more could be recognized were it not for the fact that they are obscured by alcoholic and psychotic features.

A residual category chiefly of unclassified cases plus a few individuals who might be termed offenders vs. children who got a bit too rough.

Examples of each of these varieties follow.

An instance of a case where psychoneurosis and alcohol contributed to the offense is that of a male aged about twenty at the time of offense. His history was replete with indications of disorganization and emotional trouble: although a semiskilled worker, he had never held a job for an entire year; he had a bad-conduct discharge from the military after less than two years of service; at seventeen he had married a woman five years his senior, and the marriage broke up after a month; he had a number of arrests, but his only convictions were for disorderly conduct and drunkenness; he had once attempted suicide when rejected by a girl; lastly, he had, prior to marriage, almost as much coitus with animals as with humans, and his human coitus was largely with prostitutes. Immediately after discharge from jail for a drunkenness sentence he purchased a bottle of whiskey and became intoxicated. After approaching a strange woman in a bus station with no success, he picked up a five-year-old girl and took her into a swamp where he beat her about the head and raped her, with resultant serious injuries to the girl’s vagina. He then fled but was caught some days later. He could give no explanation for the offense and the whole affair seemed very hazy and unreal to him in retrospect. Aside from the unusual amount of physical damage to the girl, this example could be essentially duplicated many times by our case histories of aggressors vs. children: the disorganized, psychoneurotic background combined with alcohol culminating in the unforeseen and at first glance inexplicable offense.

The pedophiles who resorted to force are dramatically exemplified by the case of a man who had forced sexual activity on over a score of girls, the majority aged seven to fifteen, when he himself was between eighteen and twenty-one years old. He was interested in young girls for two reasons: (1) they were easily frightened and consequently offered little or no resistance, and (2) the realization that his acts were strongly tabooed by society and that he was in danger of apprehension made the behavior particularly exciting. This man never employed much physical force, and whenever a victim resisted strongly or began loud and lengthy protests he fled. A childhood marred by the absence of a father, poverty, a sexually promiscuous mother, and several years in an orphans’ home resulted in petty theft and emotional disturbance. The pedophilia began at age eighteen; soon he was arrested, and from that point on most of his life had been one of imprisonment with brief interludes in which his pedophilic impulses compulsively recurred.

An example of a man who could not have been differentiated from offenders vs. children had he not used a trifle too much physical force is seen in the case of a rather poorly educated, semiskilled laborer of average intelligence. His sexual history prior to the offense was not unusual. He had had one marriage which broke up after four years. In fact, the only unusual thing about him was his long-standing alcoholism which, however, was not so severe as to have prevented his being adequately self-supporting. Unfortunately, he obtained a job as a bartender and this, naturally, resulted in a four-day drunken period during which he induced a little girl whom he met in a movie theater to come to his room in a lodging house. There he had interfemoral coitus with her. While he reported that she did not cry or resist, she did seem frightened, did not cooperate, and the sexual activity was against her desire. The case seems almost purely an alcoholic affair—the man had an adequate sexual adjustment with adult females and had no prior sex offenses or indications of pedophilia or aggression. If the girl had been less frightened, or if she had been persuaded to cooperate, this man would have been classed as a typical offender vs. children of the drunk variety.

Because of the mental status and alcoholic predilection of the aggressors vs. children, coupled with the vulnerability of their objects, they impress us as being one of the most unpredictable and dangerous of the sex-offender groups.

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posted by admin on Mar 27

The stereotype of the child molester is that of a senile old man whose second childhood includes a second round of sex play with children. Actually, such men are quite uncommon in the present sample—perhaps no more than one in 20 in a group of offenders vs. children. Among these men deprivation is a dominant feature, with impotence as a fairly common complication. Many of them are not old—some are in their forties—and many are not overly bright to begin with, so that moderate mental impairment resulting from age, disease, and often alcohol, has a more pronounced effect on them than it would on a more intelligent man. Judgment is weakened and taboos become blurred, so that these men yield readily in situations where easy sexual gratification is possible. They might with some validity be termed as situational offenders because of intellectual deterioration. Like the mental defectives, many of the senile deteriorates are lonely, and appreciate affection and attention from children. They differ from the defectives in that the deteriorates represent the ruins of a former adequate being, while the defectives never were adequate. Generally the offense behavior is brief or a one-time thing, but individual cases may endure for some years.

A typical case is that of a barber in his sixties. He had had a very restrained premarital life, his fianc?e and subsequent wife being his only nonprostitute sexual partner, and prior to marriage he did no more than hug and kiss her. This restraint presumably prevented extramarital coitus with other women in his old age when marital coitus declined and ended. Impotence began to trouble him in his fifties, and in the three years prior to his offense he had had no coitus. He began playing with little girls who came to his shop, giving them candy, twirling them in his barber’s chair, and inducing them to masturbate him. As the prison psychologist stated, “This man is entering a period of laxity of judgment precipitated by senile breakdown.” Like most elderly first offenders, he could not admit to himself or to others what had happened, and felt his life was ruined—a feeling not without justification.

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