Acquaintance Rape on Campus: Responsibility and Attributions of Crime (From Violence in Dating Relationships, P 257-271, 1989, Maureen A Pirog-Good and Jan E Stets, eds. -- See 118347)

• NCJ Number: 118361
• Author(s): S Fenstermaker
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 15 pages
• Sale Source: Praeger Publishers
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study explores the relationship between women's experiences with sexual coercion, their perceptions of responsibility in coercive situations, and their attributions of sexually coercive acts as crimes.

Abstract

Data were drawn from a survey of 481 female students at a medium-sized public university in the West. Respondents were asked about their most recent sexually coercive experiences and their reaction to a series of vignettes in which the circumstances of a sexually coercive situation were systematically varied. The vast majority of the participants had not experienced any sexual coercion in their dating relationships. The largest single group (15.4 percent) of those who reported a sexually coercive experience said they were kissed without their consent, and a smaller percentage (11.6) said that the incident ended with their breasts being touched. The female respondents assigned progressively more responsibility to the female as the vignettes depicted greater implied female complicity or greater ambiguity surrounding consent, unless explicit violence was depicted. When respondents concluded that a situation involved the commission of a crime, they were not thinking of "law breaking" per se. Also involved may be some assessment of the responsibility rightly attributable to the lawbreaker, the responsibility rightly attributable to the victim, and the practicalities of legally calling someone to account for his actions. Recommendations for further research are offered, and implications for policy and practice are discussed. Appended sexual coercion vignettes, 10 notes, 21 references.