Sex assault perpetrators — not victims — should be focus of research, prof says

A University of New Brunswick professor says it's time for sexual assault research to zero in on the perpetrator, instead of focusing on victims.

Psychology professor Lucia O'Sullivan said the vast majority of research conducted about sexual assault is about the victims' experience, and it doesn't seem to have lowered sexual crime rates.

"We need to target, go to directly to the source, you know, instead of making women feel responsible by focusing on, 'What risk factors were there? Where were you?' " O'Sullivan said on Information Morning Fredericton.

"We need to go to the men who sexually assault."

Self-reported sexual assault rates haven't changed much since the 1990s, O'Sullivan said. According to Statistics Canada, the #MeToo movement has caused a spike in people reporting sexual assaults to police. 

We want to know about motives, justifications, how they plan and act to identify a target, how they involve other people.- Lucia O'Sullivan, University of New Brunswick professor

That's why she's starting an anonymous online survey targeting men who have raped or committed sexual assault knowingly — and not only those convicted of the crime.

"We want to know about motives, justifications, how they plan and act to identify a target, how they involve other people," she said.

And when that's understood, she hopes it will help prevent further assaults.

"Right now, our best [preventive] program is actually one that involves bystanders, the witnesses to a potential or actual assault, teaching them to get involved," she said. "We had so little that really has worked."

She said researchers need to study people who "knowingly assault and do so repeatedly," not those who claim some miscommunication or misunderstanding of consent.

What's held researchers back

O'Sullivan said finding subjects willing to talk about intentions to rape is challenging.

"It's very difficult to study a topic that is so abhorrent," she said. "People know that they are very reluctant to admit it unless they can be assured that there are no consequences."

This is why, she said, in order to get a proper sample size respondents have to be promised anonymity — and the easiest way to do that is through online surveys.

"We can also build in all sorts of validity checks throughout online surveys so that we can be absolutely — well not absolutely — but much more confident that the responses we get are telling us something true or accurate or at least meaningful," she said.

Common motives?

O'Sullivan said she expects people who respond to the survey to have common reasons for raping or sexually assaulting someone.

"This doesn't come out of the blue," she said.

O'Sullivan said there's a lot of research showing adversarial attitudes toward women, such as belief in rape myths, lower sympathy for rape victims, traditional gender roles, hyper masculinity and objectifying women are all "great predictors" that someone will commit sexual assault.

She said she and two of her graduate students will be surveying a few thousand people across Canada. Participants will be rigorously screened to make sure they've actually been involved in sexual assault.

She hopes to have results within a few months.

"I have to have absolute faith and optimism that this would make a difference," she said. "At some point we've got to see a shift."