First Advisor

Hugo Maynard

Date of Publication

1993

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Urban Studies

Department

Urban Studies and Planning

Language

English

Subjects

Rapists -- Family relationships, Parent and child

DOI

10.15760/etd.1241

Physical Description

3, vii, 233 leaves: ill. 28 cm.

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to find out what associations exist between dysfunctional parental relationships in the childhood of rapists and the rapists' violent acts. It also briefly examines the sociocultural effects which nurture such relationships.

Rape, a crime very prevalent in our society today, is now perceived as an acute expression of men's contempt for and anger against women. The former interpretation of rape as primarily a sexually motivated crime is no longer popular. This dissertation attempts to trace the origin of the rapist's psyche from his dysfunctional parental relationships.

Rare data on rapist's family relations from a recent FBI survey on 41 serial rapists provided the empirical base for this dissertation. In order to enlarge the sample size for this dissertation, relevant information was extracted from an additional 31 rapists' case histories through content analysis and added to the FBI study. These 31 case histories were drawn from three different sources.

Information about the rapists' dominant parental figures and the rapists' positive and negative parental relationships were extracted and tabulated in three separate tables. Relevant information drawn from one additional source was also incorporated into the tables. These three tables were used to clarify the nature of the rapists' parental relationships.

In addition, 18 case histories selected from the 31 case histories mentioned above were analyzed in order to show, in more detail, the nature of the rapist's negative parental relationship and its role in the creation of the rapist psyche.

The combined result of the FBI study and the 31 case histories, the analysis of the 18 case histories, and information from other sources suggest a strong correlation between the rapists' negative parental relationships and their crime of rape. The data on the rapists were compared to survey responses by 41 imprisoned felons, not convicted of a sexual offense, and by 150 male university students. The comparison revealed important differences in the family relations of the rapists and the other two groups.

Our society's self-abusive, aspiritual cultural tendency was briefly examined as the basic influential force in creating negative parental relationships.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to pdxscholar@pdx.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/4544

Download

Share

COinS