Sexual abuse can take different forms that range from voyeurism, fondling, and exhibition to sexual intercourse, involvement in prostitution and pornography (Postmus, 2012). The behavior is abusive if it entails lack of consent of both the participants. In colleges, the issue of sexual assault has become a crisis that has to be handled with utmost collaboration, honesty, and courage. This essay focuses on quantitative and qualitative research on the sexual predators in campuses.
Qualitative research
A sex predator is any person who has been found guilty of committing any sexually related offense (Salter, 2004). These offenses are any acts that could in one way or another effect an individual’s dignity and these actions in any college violate the standards of the college laws and the criminal laws, which have been established under the state and federal laws.
In colleges, drug and substance abuse play a contributing factor to sexual assault. This is based on the inability of a victim not to recall anything that happened to them while they were in that state. Alcohol is mostly used in these cases, and some tasteless, colorless, and odorless substances accompany it or in some cases, rape drugs (Postmus, 2012).
Most of the sexual predators, do not assault their victims sexually to get pleasure from sex. Most of them do this to enjoy exerting power over others and feel like they have control over people since they have abused themselves emotionally and they feel inferior. However, this is never enough reason to make someone else go through all that pain and therefore sexual assault is a serious crime.
Quantitative Research
Under quantitative analysis, the paper will focus on two theories of based sexual crimes, which are the social psychological theories and the criminological theories.
Social Psychological Theory
Under the social psychological approaches, several theories explain the causes of deviant behaviors one of them being the strain theory (Burke, 2006). The strain theory tries to establish the source of such practices being the cultural strain. Under cultural pressure, men see themselves as superiors over the women, and they can do whatever they please with no one questioning them. Women on the other hand, with the culture dictating that women are supposed to be caregivers for the youths and children, the cultural strain gives a possibility for them abusing people younger than them sexually. Individuals react to strain by use of conformity, ritualism innovation, and retreatism. In colleges, most of the assault victims are familiar with their attackers. The attacker could be a professor who demands sex from the student to avoid failing them in their course, a boyfriend, or a girlfriend.
Criminological Theories
Under these theories, the social learning theory will be discussed. The theory contains the aspects of imitation, differential association, and differential reinforcement. Reinforcement in this context is whereby a sex offender is not punished because of his ability to cover up his behaviors. Several associations have come forward to emphasize that all sexual assault perpetrators have to be exposed, explains that the source of such deviant behaviors can be traced back to the offender’s family and they could have imitated merely the abnormal behavior (Piquero, 2015).
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear that in colleges, there are several cases of assault and many victims suffer under the hands of people they have known for a long time. These predators engage themselves in such activities due to various reasons that range from personal to social factors.
References
Burke, P. J. (2006). Contemporary Social Psychological Theories. Stanford University Press.
Piquero, A. R. (2015). The Handbook of Criminological Theory. John Wiley " Sons.
Postmus, J. L. (2012). Sexual Violence and Abuse: An Encyclopedia of Prevention, Impacts and Recovery. ABC-CLIO.
Salter, A. C. (2004). Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists and other sexual offenders: who they are, how they operate and how we can protect ourselves and our children.
Basic Books.
