Obsession (16 page)

Fairstein agrees that the first line of defense is to understand the enemy.

“People have very mythical stereotypes about these crimes and who the offenders are, and who the victims are,” she states. “And that’s true both in the acquaintance category and in the stranger category. People tend not to be interested in understanding this better until it happens to someone near and dear to them, or to themselves. And then they get a very quick education.”

She recently spoke at a public forum about a serial rapist still at large who’d committed more than thirteen rapes on the Upper East Side, one of the safest neighborhoods in Manhattan. The most recent crime took place in a building in which his picture was posted in the lobby. The victim went right through the door without noticing or bothering to lock it behind her or wait for it to close. And he just followed her in.

Was this victim “asking for it”? Definitely not. Could more awareness regarding potential predators and greater prudence on her part have cut down the odds of her becoming a victim? Definitely so. Sometimes,
even the rapists themselves warn us to be more careful.

It really shouldn’t surprise us that there are so many different types of rapists. Think of all the different reasons why people become doctors or lawyers or policemen, or burglars, for that matter. At the Investigative Support Unit, one of our guiding principles is that behavior reflects personality. And this is true whether we’re talking about the behavior of children in a pre-school setting, trying to imagine from watching them who and what they will grow to be, or analyzing the behavior of an UNSUB while investigating a sexual assault. Teachers and other people who spend a lot of time around children become good at assessing their strengths, weaknesses, interests, and trouble areas. My colleagues and I make much the same assessments; our area of focus just happens to be adults with much darker drives.

And we are not the only ones who differentiate between the rapist typologies. Sexual predators themselves make distinctions. Men who prey on children have traditionally occupied the lowest rung in the criminal pecking order. A sadistic monster who beats a woman to death, mutilates and sexually violates her corpse, may view the behavior of a child molester as “sick” even as he justifies his own actions in his mind.

We had a case one time of a man who came to the aid of a woman he observed being beaten by another man trying to subdue and rape her. When the rescuer was later arrested for a series of sexual assaults of his own, the police who interrogated him expressed confusion over why he would rape women himself but save one victim from another attacker. This offended the man, who couldn’t believe they would compare his assaults to the attempted rape he thwarted. In his mind, since he controlled his victims by threatening
and intimidating them, he had nothing in common with a man who would physically hurt a woman by beating her. The fact that he traumatized, terrorized, and sexually violated a series of victims seemed apparently lost on him.

Serial rapist Ronnie Shelton was often abusive in relationships with the various women in his life. At his trial, one former girlfriend testified both to his violent side and to an incident when he raped her. Still, Shelton expressed pride in his perception that he treated women well, whether it was reminding his sister or a girlfriend to lock her doors and windows, defending a woman from a drunk or brutal boyfriend in one of the nightclubs he frequented, or pulling over to help a damsel in distress stranded on the side of the road. According to James Neff, Shelton treasured a note sent to him that read, in part, “I just wanted to thank you for helping me the other day. If you hadn’t stopped, I don’t know what I’d have done. If more men were like you, we’d all be a lot safer.”

Shelton often acted in ways that seem on the surface to be entirely contradictory to his rapist behavior, except that the underlying motivation is consistent. Whether raping or protecting a woman, he was in control of the situation—asserting his masculinity, beefing up his strong side to suppress his feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. His “good behavior” probably helped him self-justify those times when he was abusive; the women or some other outside force must have caused the situation. His girlfriend must have done something to provoke him or a rape victim’s husband should not have left her home alone and defenseless.

Just as there are differences in rapists, there are similarities, too, and that is what allows us to type them. Once we have an idea of the type we’re dealing with, we can provide a description of his postoffense behavior and the other profile elements we hope will
help investigators. I know from years of interviewing offenders and studying their work that much as they like to believe they are unique, with few exceptions they have similar general motivations that are expressed in similar fashions. So I know, for example, that regardless of where in the country a rape takes place, similar crimes, committed for similar reasons, indicate similar types of criminals at work.

In investigating rapes, the biggest clue to what type of rapist we’re dealing with is his behavior.
Behavior reflects personality
. In addition to the crime-scene indicators, physical evidence, and victimology, with sexual assaults we often have a vital source of information that we don’t get with other types of crime, such as murder or some robberies. And that is a live victim who experienced the crime firsthand and can tell us what was done and said. I’m not only talking about the information people normally think of, such as physical characteristics, a description of the vehicle the suspect drove, and the like, but the even more important behavioral clues the offender inadvertently provides during the commission of the crime. These are the pieces that will lead us to his motivation—his obsession—which in turn will point to his overall typology and the personality traits and characteristics that commonly apply.

Returning to our burglar analogy for a moment, junkies desperate for drug money break into homes differently than professional cat burglars. Although on the surface the primary need served is obtaining money, the underlying motivations—as well as the skill level and the desperation level—are different, which can be seen in the way they rob. If we accept that the main motive for rape is not primarily sex, but has more to do with aggression and power, our only real clue to the sex offender’s motivation and personality is the way he conducts his crime.

With sexual assault, the key areas we need to look at are the verbal, sexual, and physical behaviors of the rapist. In analyzing the verbal cues, obvious clues to the UNSUB’s identity would be any accent he might have or unique colloquialisms he may use. But we can often get information that’s just as telling from a less obvious source: the things he says or forces his victim to say. A rapist who makes his victim tell him she wants him and loves him is looking to get something different out of the encounter than one who uses a high degree of profanity, calling his victim a slut, bitch, or whore. And both differ from one who forces his victim to beg for her life. The first offender has emotional needs centered around his inadequacy, more of a power-reassurance type, whereas the second is much more concerned with making sure he humiliates his victim, letting her know she’s worthless to him. The last is a sadistic type, who enjoys seeing and hearing the fear and pain he’s causing. Although all have a need to control, the points of departure in their words (and the ones they script for their victims) are like signposts providing different directions for investigators to follow as they hunt for their suspect.

Similarly, the types of sexual acts and their sequencing provide insight into the rapist’s motivation. A power-reassurance rapist is more likely to kiss his victim, fondle her, shift positions during vaginal penetration or perform cunnilingus as though to please her. An anger rapist more interested in punishing his victim may incorporate anal penetration, although, depending on how and when in the assault it occurs, this could also indicate another type of rapist’s interest in experimentation. Forced oral sex after anal penetration, as mentioned earlier, usually indicates an offender who wants to degrade or humiliate his victim. Finally, anal sex may indicate that the rapist has spent
some time in jail—particularly if the victim describes him as having a muscular, well-developed upper body.

The amount of physical force used to accomplish the rape also tells us a lot about our UNSUB. Just as his word choice can provide clues to everything from his education level and background to his underlying desires from the assault, his actions betray his personality. As rapists themselves have observed, there is a difference between a guy who launches a blitz-style attack against an unsuspecting victim, beating her senseless before attempting a sexual act, someone who uses threats to get his victim to submit, and someone else who can initially charm his prey into his sphere of control. Again, these differ widely from one who inflicts pain in discrete acts of torture, looking his victim in the eyes as she realizes that there’s nothing she can do or say—no act of compliance—to get him to stop to save herself.

If an offender does grow violent in the course of a rape, it’s important to know when. Did he seem calm and in control until his victim refused to do something, at which point he grew physically abusive? And if the victim complied with the rapist’s demands, for example, why did he beat her anyway? The motives of each can range from a need to punish his victim—who may represent another person, the true focus of his anger—to the operational need to keep his victim under control throughout the assault, to the desire to dominate a victim so completely he dictates her pain and suffering, her very life and death. In each of those cases, we’re dealing with different personality types, men who would be described in completely different terms by their neighbors, coworkers, and friends.

Even acts as simple as taking something from the victim reveal aspects of the UNSUB’s nature and life-style: leaving with the victim’s cash serves completely different needs than robbing a victim of her underwear
or driver’s license. The power-reassurance type has even been known to return stolen objects.

As with other types of crime, we also analyze the rapist’s behavior to gain insight into his level of criminal sophistication. An UNSUB who instructs his victim not to look at him but doesn’t actually wear a disguise, for example, is operating on more of a novice level than one who cleans up after ejaculating in or on a victim so as not to leave evidence. One who brings his own rope to tie up his victim, delaying her discovery or escape, giving himself more time to get away safely, is more sophisticated than one who comes to the scene with nothing and simply wings it.

Roy Hazelwood has made a career-long study of sex crimes and their offenders. Getting the right behavioral information from the victim is so critical that he developed a list of questions investigating officers should ask to elicit details ranging from the way the offender approached and gained control over the victim to the level of physical force involved, whether and how she resisted, and other vital information.

Just as we can use these typologies to help us zero in on characteristics and traits of UNSUBs, we have developed useful strategies to get these guys off the streets based on type. We know, for example, that the power-reassurance rapist’s fantasies of a continued, loving relationship with his victim can lead to his un-doing. Police have had success with simply tracing calls to the victim’s home over the next few weeks—or watching her house and mailbox to see if he returns to drop off a note or some token of affection, such as flowers, stuffed animals, or other items that real lovers exchange. Other times, the victims have been able to construct a ruse to lead this type of assailant right to the authorities: making a date with him where the offender can be arrested as soon as he shows up.

There are also general investigative techniques that
are applicable regardless of which type of rapist we’re dealing with. As Ronnie Shelton’s multiple arrests for voyeurism and Joseph Thompson’s for burglary illustrate, often enough, so-called nuisance crimes and nonviolent offenses are warnings of much more serious, dangerous offenses to follow. Clearly, an adult burglar arrested coming out of a home with cash and jewelry should be recognized as having a different agenda than a teenaged one arrested with stolen panties in his pocket. While the first might seem a more dangerous intruder and the second merely a Peeping Tom with a common fetish, all things being equal, I’m going to be more concerned about that teenager, in terms of potential for violence and trauma. Certainly there are a lot more Peeping Toms out there than serial rapists, so a simple fetish does not always lead to violent crime, but a man arrested for voyeurism today may well evolve into a rapist in the future, when merely watching women through a window and masturbating as he fantasizes about them no longer satisfies him.

In case after case we’ve been able to chart the progression: a person with fantasies of dominating women may start out by collecting pornography depicting bondage or even draw restraints on models in lingerie ads. As his need to express his desires grows, he may purchase rope—a completely nonsexual item to most people—and masturbate as he holds it and imagines what he could do with it. (These are the types of items I’d include in a search warrant once a suspect’s been identified in connection with a sadistic rape, for example.)

I don’t want to give the impression here that I believe pornography causes otherwise okay people to commit sexual crime—I don’t, any more than I believe that violent movies or television shows cause otherwise okay people to rob banks or blow up airplanes.
There is absolutely no evidence or data to support either assertion. But I do know from my extensive interviews with offenders of all types that for men who already have the disposition, collecting pornography, particularly bondage and sadomasochistic pornography, is an indication, a symptom, if you will, of their particular dangerous obsession. And while I’m on the subject, I certainly do not blame violence in the media for violence in real life, but I do believe that the constant exposure of children and teens—not to mention adults—to depictions of violence has to have the cumulative effect of desensitizing all of us to the horrors we see visited around us. I would much rather have my children see a program that portrays violence as it really is—quick, senseless, revolting—than one that pretties it up and glorifies it for the sake of making some movie star look heroic.