Many minor and some major sex offenses are never reported to the police because of constraint on the part of the persons involved. There is a basic distaste for discussing such matters with outsiders, as well as a fear of unavoidable unpleasant publicity if the case comes before the court. With these factors in mind it is pertinent to analyze the present cases on the basis of the source of the complaint. The large number of incomplete records on this point (almost half in the peeping offenses) makes the results less satisfactory than one would wish, although there is no indication of bias in the unknowns.
The salient fact in Table 152, which shows the source of report or discovery of the offender, is that offenses against children and against minors were reported to the police largely by members of the child’s or minor’s family or by friends. This is most clearly evident in the offenses involving children, occurring in about two thirds to five sixths of the cases. Among the offenses vs. minors, the four groups break into two pairs. In incest and aggression over 70 per cent of the offenses were reported by relatives or friends, while in the remaining two—heterosexual and homosexual offenses vs. minors—the percentage drops to a level in the 40s. In the case of incest vs. minors, the high figure is due to the fact that mothers constitute a large proportion of those who reported the offense. The aggression offenses vs. minors have no comparable explanation, but it is true that when force is involved friends and relatives are less hesitant about getting in touch with the authorities. Apprehension indirectly through the results of police investigation largely take up the slack in the two sets of offenses vs. minors which are low in report by relatives and friends.
It is clear that in general the three incest groups show the highest incidence of offenses reported by friends or relatives. From almost half to five sixths of the offenses in each of the three groups were brought to the attention of the police by a relative or friend, as one would expect. The majority of the complaints in the incest offenses are lodged originally by the wife of the offender, who is, of course, also the mother of the object of the offense.
There is a curious relationship in the degree to which the reporting of incest by wives lessens as the age of the daughter increases. It starts at 63 per cent for the incest vs. children, drops about ten points in the offenses vs. minors, and ends up at only 37 per cent for the offenses vs. adult daughters. It would be tempting here to theorize that the wife’s reporting decreases in the latter case because she is a willing observer of her sexual displacement, and in fact that she tends to cover up the offense since she is satisfied to see her mature daughter take over her sexual role in the dynamics of the family. As pointed out before, there was no doubt in the record of the extent to which the sexual relationship was complete. This tentative hypothesis is also supported by the fact that these mothers of adult daughters are older women who may have less interest in marital coitus than their husbands wish. On the other hand, the sample is small, a quarter of the cases are unknown, and in addition the supposition is weakened somewhat by the fact that the daughter herself made the complaint in an additional 21 per cent of the offenses.
In the next category—that of the reporting of offenses by onlookers —the peeping offenses rank highest, with over 40 per cent of them so classed. However, this figure may possibly be distorted, since almost half of the peeping cases had no data on this point. Since the person who is being watched by a peeper is usually unaware of what is occurring, it is not surprising that onlookers or passers-by would be the persons to lodge a complaint. In these cases there is little personal commitment or embarrassment involved in making such a report. Ranking second in report by onlooker are the aggression offenses vs. children, with 32 per cent of them so categorized. At first thought it would appear unlikely that such conspicuous offenses would be attempted in the presence of witnesses, but actually in many of the cases what was observed was the preliminary behavior, which aroused suspicion of the aggressor’s ultimate intentions. It is easily understandable why anyone might readily take it upon himself to notify the authorities in such circumstances. The remaining offense types range from none of the cases reported by onlookers, to 24 per cent (exhibition offenses). Typically the range is from about 5 to 10 per cent.
Turning now to offenses reported by the person who is the object or victim of the offense, one finds not unexpectedly that adults are in general more likely to report directly to the police than are minors, and minors report the offense directly more often than do children. This progression is consistent except in the case of the adult homosexual partners, where there is little change. A second point to notice is that in the heterosexual offenses the adult is clearly most willing to report the offense herself either when force has been used against her or when the offense does not specifically involve her person. Thus in aggression vs. adults over three fourths of the offenses were reported directly by the female, and in exhibition about half of the cases were turned in to the police by the offended female. The reason for the high figure here is that when there is little or no sexual involvement on the part of the female she is less embarrassed to report the offense.
Next to consider is the discovery of the sex offense by the police in the course of their routine duties as law-enforcement officers. In the present sample the homosexual offenses were clearly the most vulnerable to this type of detection. A total of almost three fourths of the homosexual offenses vs. adults were so classified, over a quarter of the homosexual offenses vs. minors, and more than a sixth of the homosexual offenses vs. children. The more specific question of police entrapment in these homosexual cases has been discussed previously, but it can be summarized here by the observation that while it was true of only one case among the offenses vs. minors, it did account for the origin and of course detection of the offense in a sizable proportion (20 per cent) of the homosexual charges involving an adult. In many of these instances the original homosexual approach was actually made by a plainclothes police officer. Other types of offenses which showed high levels of police work as the basis for apprehension were peeping (30 per cent), and the heterosexual offenses vs. minors (27 per cent) and vs. adults (22 per cent). The arrests for peeping were the result of routine patrolling and direct observation by the police. On the other hand, a large proportion of the heterosexual offenses vs. minors and adults came to light indirectly as a result of police investigation of family situations or reported general delinquency of some sort other than sexual behavior. In the remaining eight types of offenses, police work was not one of the major factors in the pinpointing of the offense, although it was not negligible in the incest offenses and aggressions vs. minors.
In short, police do not frequently just happen upon sex offenses in general, and must count heavily on information from other sources to make their arrests in this area of crime. These complaints come primarily from friends and relatives of the prison against whom the offense is committed, and secondarily from witnesses or from the person concerned.
The final category of “other” includes a wide variety of sources. Typical of them would be welfare reports, health officer or other medical investigations, teachers, and ministers.
The evidence from the present analysis is that channels of report are extremely varied in sex offenses. This is a result of both the wide range in age of the objects involved and the hesitation that many have about presenting the facts to the authorities.
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