Sexually coercive men don't stop abusing. Here's why...

A new study of single young men has revealed that 43 percent report pressuring or forcing a woman to do something sexual against her will at least once But according to the results there may be differences between those men who are sexually coercive only as teens and those who continue into adulthood ldquoWe were trying to understand who are the most extreme members of the group and who might have done this a few times but felt regret or learned not to behave this wayrdquo said study researcher Antonia Abbey a psychologist at Wayne State University in Detroit The results should help researchers understand how to target the different groups of men with specific antisexual assault education Abbey and her colleagues conducted phone interviews in the Detroit area to gather single men between the ages of 18 and 35 who had dated women in the past two years They chose this group because they wanted to find men on the dating scene who were in the ldquotransitioning to adulthoodrdquo phase of life The men were offered 50 dollars to complete two guided computer surveys one year apart They were told the study was on dating and sexual experiences Four hundred and seventy men signed on and 90 percent completed the followup a year later for a final sample of 425 The surveys covered everything from personality profiles to a manrsquos sexual history to his attitudes toward women and his beliefs about alcohol Men were also asked if they had ever been abuse victims The results echoed those in college students Levels of sexual aggression were high Fortythree percent of the men who participated had perpetrated some sort of sexually aggressive act since age 14 A quarter of participants reported engaging in sexual coercion in the year between the first survey and the second In the year between surveys 8 percent had forced sexual contact upon someone 10 percent had verbally coerced a woman into sex when they knew she wasnrsquot interested 14 percent had attempted rape and 54 percent had actually raped someone usually an impaired or unconscious victim they reported Abbey and her colleagues were interested in more than raw numbers They compared the men who had started sexual aggression before the first survey and continued throughout 18 percent of all men in the study with those who had done something aggressive before the survey but had not done anything in the year between surveys 25 percent and with those who started acting sexually aggressive between the first and second surveys 75 percent Unsurprisingly the persistent sexual offenders were the worst on every risk factor for sexual aggression and mental health variable measured ldquoThey had more experience of being a victim of some kind of abuse as a child they tended to have personality traits like being low in empathy toward other people more risktaking more delinquent more sexual partnersrdquo Abbey said The men also reported more often that they misconstrued womenrsquos signals believing they wanted sex when they didnrsquot They also believed more strongly in stereotypes about women ldquoOn a host of different type of factors that you would think could contribute to someone3939s willingness to use another person for their purposes this group scored highrdquo Abbey said ldquoSo it fit a profile that you often seerdquo The ldquodesistorsrdquo or men who had been sexually aggressive in the past but had since stopped showed a shift over the yearlong study period At the second survey they reported a drop in sexual partners and said they had fewer misunderstandings about women3939s sexual intentions For lack of a better term Abbey said they seemed to be ldquogrowing uprdquo ldquoSome adolescents and adults act out in various waysrdquo she said ldquoBut you can kind of grow out of it you mature So this is clearly part of you these people did these things but on the other hand it seems to be something where when circumstances change they changerdquo The third group those who started acting sexually aggressive during the study period seemed to be late bloomers Over the yearlong study they began drinking more and more often said that they believed alcohol makes people want sex They also began to misunderstand womenrsquos sexual motives more the opposite of the ldquodesistorrdquo group These men may be falling into crowds and situations where alcohol and sex mix Abbey insisted ldquoWith that seems to be this pressure internal or not to push sexrdquo she said ldquoAnd certainly therersquos lots of reasons to think that alcohol can allow people to cross a linerdquo she added The study has been recently published in the journal Psychology of Violence