At the time of their offense almost one third of the men had never married, slightly fewer were married, and the majority (39 per cent) had once been married but were no longer. To find such a high proportion of divorced or widowed males in a fairly youthful group (the average man was twenty-eight at the time of his offense) is unusual.
For nine out of ten of the men this was their first sex offense; the type of male who seeks a voluntary heterosexual relationship with an adult female is usually not given to sexual behavior that places him in jeopardy. Furthermore, his offense does not require that he be psychotic or neurotic to facilitate its commission, which is apparent in the very small percentage with a history of emotional disorder. Similarly, alcohol and drugs play a very minor role in these offenses against adult females.
To point out that 91 per cent of the offenses were premeditated is to stress the obvious. In the average male, and particularly in the unmarried male, interest, hope, and premeditation are inextricably fused when he is confronted with a socially suitable female who does not fall outside his rather wide (and also elastic) range of preferences. Only 4 per cent had the situation thrust upon them so that they acted without thinking. Another 5 per cent of the situations were a mixture of both opportunism and premeditation.
Nearly three fifths of the females involved were sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds, 10 per cent were eighteen to twenty, 15 per cent were twenty-one to twenty-five, and the remainder were distributed fairly evenly at older ages. We have here a picture of society’s age-graded concern for their protection. The younger female is nearly always viewed as a victim rather than as a consenting partner, and females below the varying ages of consent are labeled with a justifiably grim humor as “jail bait.” If a male is arrested for mutually voluntary sexual activity with a woman over twenty-one, Iris arrest almost always stems not from his sexual behavior but from some indirectly related (or even unrelated) factor. This statement will be enlarged upon later.
Some three quarters of the females were, at the time of the offense, already friends of the offenders; only 17 per cent were strangers. “Pickups” account for most of the latter. The sexual activity usually (72 per cent) occurred in a residence, and a surprisingly large number of the persons involved were living together, at least temporarily. An additional 15 per cent of the activity was in automobiles.
As one can see from the above figures, the sexual activity was primarily voluntary coitus. In a small number of cases (16 of the 183 on which official records were available) the female resisted and discouraged some of the male’s behavior, but her resistance and his persistence did not exceed the bounds of the customary male vs. female contest. There was no threat and no violence. Included are a few cases where female consent was completely absent, but force or duress were absent also. These cases represent the blurred border between heterosexual offenders and heterosexual aggressors. These are the men who obtain sexual contact not through persuasion or force, but through surprise or stealth. For example, one man, while drunk, surprised a girl by hugging her (“grabbing” from her point of view) and asking for a kiss. Another male could not resist touching females’ legs even in inappropriate situations. Both of these men were arrested and convicted for this behavior, which could easily be duplicated at many a party. In brief, there was nothing especially antisocial in the behavior per se, but the circumstances of the situation (particularly the fact that the men were not known to the females) constituted grounds for punitive action.
In addition to the cases of consent and those described above where consent was not sought, there are some instances wherein the female at first consented but later changed her mind and resisted. One example concerned a male of twenty and his girl friend aged, seventeen. They had had coitus on previous occasions, but one night he was drunk and she found his advances offensive. She refused him, he slapped her, she complained, and he was arrested and convicted for rape. However, the court obviously recognized some of the essentials of the situation, for he was sentenced for only 90 days and court costs. Some other cases of resistance occurred where more than one male had, or attempted, sexual activity with one female: in one tenth of the cases there was this situation. Only two other sex-offender groups exceed this figure. Usually there was only one other male (5 per cent), less often two (4 per cent), and rarely more. Generally speaking these polyandrous situations arise either when a lone female is picked up or an evenly matched dating arrangement is subsequently unbalanced by the departure of one or more females. It is not uncommon for two couples to double-date, for the consequent petting to reach a rather ardent level, and then for one girl to become upset and depart, leaving her sexually aroused girl friend with two sexually aroused males—one of whom is now also disgruntled. This not unusual situation contains great potentialities for trouble: the remaining girl may be coerced into activity she does not desire, the males may fight over her, and the girl who departed may spread a lurid tale of how she escaped rape but left her friend in the clutches of the sex-mad males. Concerning the “pickup” situation, many males firmly (and wishfully) believe that a girl who allows herself to be “picked up” by strangers has thereby entered into a contractual agreement to have coitus with them, regardless of their numbers. Such males often express righteous indignation at what they construe as breach of promise when the female attempts to evade coitus.
In a consensual situation such as typifies the offenders vs. adults, one wonders how the matter came to the attention of the law enforcement officers. By far the commonest (47 per cent) was the reporting to the authorities by disturbed relatives and friends of the girl. The complaint usually arose from the failure of the girl to come home or come home early enough. The motive for the parents’ complaint is often obscure in our records, but in many cases it seemed to be a desire to break up an alliance between their daughter and a particular male. In other instances it may have been a form of projection—it is easier to blame someone else’s son than one’s own daughter. This attitude makes for ready acceptance of the girl’s excuses such as, “He made me do it.” Complaints filed by relatives of women of legal age are, naturally, not so frequent, but they still occur. One example was a situation in which an unmarried man of twenty-nine began living with a married woman of twenty-three whose husband was away in military service. The woman’s brother was shocked by her behavior, and when she ignored his protests he reported the matter to the police. The twenty-nine-year-old was convicted of adultery, sentenced to 60 days, and fined $15 and court costs.
Eighteen per cent of the cases were what may be termed the byproduct of police investigation. For instance, the police may be investigating a man for failure to pay alimony, or they may be hunting for a runaway girl and stumble upon the illicit sexual relationship. If the girl is still in her teens or if the police have reason to dislike the male, arrest on a sex charge is very likely to follow. A fairly typical case is one of a man of thirty-three living with a woman thirty-six; neither was married to anyone. The man had caused the police some trouble previously and the woman was suspected of being a prostitute. The matter was temporarily cleared up by convicting them both of adultery (sic); the man got 60 days, a $50 fine, and court costs.
Third commonest source of complaint (16 per cent) was the female herself. An example of this is the case in which a cab driver received the impression that his female passenger, a stranger, would welcome his attentions. This sort of thing, while uncommon, is not rare in the experience of taxicab drivers. However, in this instance, when he stopped the cab and entered the back seat section, the woman indignantly stormed from the cab and hailed a passing squad car, with the result that the cab driver got a 180-day sentence on an assault and battery charge.
Fourth were the cases in which there was an accidental witness who was disturbed enough to report the matter (11 per cent). Fifth was the outraged and jealous wife of the offender (7 per cent) who usually wanted only to “give him a scare” or “teach him a lesson” and who was subsequently distraught to find her breadwinner jailed.
Among the offenders vs. adults more than in any other sex-offender category the element of chance plays an important role. Because the behavior involved is on the borderline of social and legal acceptability, many minor and often fortuituous factors determine whether an arrest is made. A number of examples can illustrate this clearly. In 99 cases out of 100 a policeman who discovers an adult couple in coitus will either ignore them or simply tell them to “break it up” and admonish them to be more discreet. However, in the hundredth case the policeman may be extremely moral, or he may be under pressure because the city is in the throes of a cleanup, or he may get a vicarious thrill from making “sex arrests”—and consequently another man is added to the list of sex offenders. In other cases the difference between humble contrition and argumentativeness is the difference between going home or going to court on a sex charge.
Since they were involved in behavior which, while legally taboo, is socially acceptable or at least tolerable, the offenders vs. adults admitted their behavior freely, ranking near the top in this respect. In talking to us, only 10 per cent denied the acts for which they were sentenced.
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