Moria Dailey
Published: November 23, 2005
Many women who have been sexually assaulted don’t know they are victims, said Dr. Teion Wells Harrison, licensed clinical psychologist, who spoke to students at the Pensacola campus Nov. 10.
Harrison, who is director of the Department of Children and Families’ Sexually Violent Predator Program, said she gave the presentation based on professional clinical experience with sexual offenders. Harrison also is the former mental health authority at the Florida State University Specialized Treatment Program, as well as currently an adjunct professor at FSU.
According to the 2003 FBI report of offenses known to law enforcement, Pensacola’s number of forcible rapes per year is 2.01 times the national average, nearly four times that of New York City. PJC, however, has not recorded any rape cases on any of its campuses, according to PJC Police Department statistics.
Harrison, who has counseled both offenders and victims, explained that because women are more commonly viewed as sexual objects in today’s society, crimes against women are paid more attention. This is the reason that there is a fair amount of information on male sexual offenders, while female offenders still remain an “unknown”.
Harrison explained that women also are more likely to be the target of a sexual crime, regardless of any factor, including martial arts training or intellect.
Sexual deviance is a complicated and multifaceted subject affected by many factors, and sexual crime is no different. Everything from historic viewpoints (women were seen as lower class citizens and objects) to political and cultural viewpoints factor in.
Harrison explained that society as a whole is moving away from many misconceptions about rape and sexual crime, such as the attitude that “boys will be boys” and that what they do is “man stuff”, as well as the stereotypical idea that a rapist is “the creepy guy that jumps out of the bushes and attacks you when you’re carrying the groceries.”
Statistics from the U.S. Justice Department state that only 26 percent of all rapes and sexual offenses are reported.
“Out of all reported crime, only [about] 25 percent of cases result in a rape conviction,” Harrison said.
Cases go unreported for a number reasons; Harrison cited specifically socioeconomic factors, explaining that poorer women have fewer resources with which to deal with their crime.
The most common reasons victims give for ot reporting crimes are the belief that it is a private or personal matter or that they fear reprisal from their attacker, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
Some women do not know they have been sexually assaulted because they don’t know the definitions of sexual offenses. Harrison explained that sexual crime is not limited to only rape; it includes any sort of vaginal or anal penetration, oral sex, frottage, (the act of rubbing against the body of another person, as in a crowd, to attain sexual gratification), fondling and exposure.
Sexual offenders are rarely caught after their first offense.
“I’ve never worked with anyone who was caught after the first time,” Harrison said.
Sexual offenders have various motivations behind their crimes; the victim could just be someone they found attractive, or the victim could have reminded them of someone from their past. For instance, Harrison noted that many rapists say that their victim reminds them of someone they were rejected by in the past.
The level of planning ranges from a prolonged period of stalking in which the offender learns his or her future victim’s entire routine and plans out the entire offense to an offender who sees a stranger walking down the street and acts without any sort of premeditation.
To avoid allowing someone to learn one’s entire routine, Harrison encourages women to change their routines.
“Leave your house a different way, park in a different spot every day, things like that,” she said.
Harrison explained that the traits one must have to be a target for a crime vary greatly; some offenders look for people with a very specific set features: length of hair, hair color, style of shoe, etc, while others merely look for someone “with an orifice.”
“It [traits of victims] varies; I’ve seen victims of different ages, not just women anymore, but men as well, children, different body types, hair colors. On TV they [sexual offenders] go for blondes, or someone with a certain type of job, that isn’t the case,” Norma Laprise, one of the victim’s advocates at the Santa Rosa Sherriff’s Office said.
