Scott T. Ronis

Despite increasing uptake of bystander intervention programs to prevent sexual aggression, rates of sexual violence have remained persistently high. Those who witness sexual aggression among their peers can provide another vantage point regarding the strategies that perpetrators use and valuable information about ways in which perpetrators divert bystanders’ intervention—all information that can inform prevention programs. Participants ( N = 247) completed structured and open-ended items about occasions they had witnessed that involved efforts to force sex on a non-consenting individual. Reports were content coded for strategies leading to sexual aggression for 99 participants who had witnessed a recent alleged act of sexual aggression. Most (93%) reported perpetrators’ use of early physical pressure (e.g., unwanted grinding, following, isolating, violating personal space, pulling, blocking others) that typically escalated into more overt physical pressure and force. Verbal coercion (e.g., arguing, insisting, begging) was witnessed by 40% of participants, and 14% of participants reported witnessing the target being pressured to consume excessive levels of alcohol. Coded themes captured perpetrators’ defensive interactions with concerned bystanders, such as making excuses, minimizing their intentions, feigning innocence, and using humour to divert attention from sexually aggressive efforts. Results have implications for prevention efforts incorporating bystanders as well as education about the risk of assault.

Little is known about distinct factors linked with acting on paraphilic interests or refraining from engaging in paraphilic behaviors. Participants from Canada and the United States ( N = 744), aged 19–42 years ( M = 29.2; SD = 3.18), were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Participants completed questionnaires about their paraphilic interests and behaviors, as well as potential key factors linked to behavioral engagement (i.e., perceptions of consent, sexual excitation/inhibition, impulsivity, moral disengagement, empathy). Results indicated that higher moral disengagement and impulsivity, lower sexual control (i.e., high sexual excitation, low sexual inhibition), and maladaptive understandings of consent were best able to differentiate individuals who reported highly stigmatized (e.g., hebephilia, pedophilia, coprophilia) or Bondage and Dicipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism(BDSM)/Fetish paraphilic interests and engagement in the paraphilic behaviours associated with these interests relative to individuals who did not report such paraphilic interests or behaviors. Moreover, higher moral disengagement, impulsivity, and maladaptive perceptions of consent were best able to differentiate non-consensual paraphilic interests and behaviours (e.g., voyeurism, exhibitionism) compared to individuals who did not report these paraphilic interests or behaviours. These results provide future directions for the exploration of mechanisms that may contribute to engagement in paraphilic behaviors and may be targets for intervention aimed at preventing engagement in potentially harmful paraphilias.