Crime Classification Manual

Rape and Sexual Assault 329
CASE STUDY: 314.02.02: ANGER RAPE, CHILD VICTIM
Background and Victimology
The victim, a nine-year-old boy, lived at a church-operated home for boys.
According to Bruce, the sixteen-year-old offender, the two met, talked a bit,
and decided to hunt for snakes and fish at a nearby reservoir. As they sat on
a dock fishing, Bruce started fondling the boy, becoming sexually aroused.
He undid the boy’s pants and performed fellatio. He then began to try to take
the boy’s pants off. The boy resisted as Bruce turned him over on his stomach,
preparing to sodomize him. They fell into the water, and a struggle ensued.
The boy slipped on a rock and hit his head, which rendered him
unconscious. Bruce tried to lift the boy but slipped, dropping the boy into the
water. “He was not dead the first time he hit his head, but I’m sure he was
dead the second time,” said Bruce.
Offender Characteristics
Bruce has a brother two years older than he is. His parents divorced when he
was a few months old. The brother, according to Bruce, beat him up daily
from the time he was three until he was ten or eleven. When he was five, the
mother and two boys moved to live with his maternal grandfather. This was
an important relationship for Bruce; however, the grandfather died four
years later. Bruce reports that soon after he turned eleven, he was fishing one
day when an eighteen-year-old youth approached him and told him about a
good fishing spot in the woods. As they proceeded into the forest, the youth
forced fellatio and sodomy on Bruce. He claimed he yelled, but that it did no
good. He felt helpless, and the act was painful.
Upon entering the seventh grade, Bruce tested in the high intelligence range
and was advanced two grades. He was socially immature and found it too
lonely to be with the older adolescents. He became rebellious and hostile and
spent most of the years between ages twelve and sixteen on his own, in youth
detention centers or psychiatric facilities. His juvenile criminal involvement
included sixteen court appearances on forty-three charges, including shoplifting,
assault and battery, use of a dangerous weapon, motor vehicle violations,
and four charges of sexual abuse of juveniles under fourteen. He maintained
that the victims were willing partners around his own age.
Bruce began homosexual activities in early adolescence and moved in
with a male partner. However, six months later, this adolescent was killed
in a car accident, and Bruce attempted suicide by consuming an overdose of
aspirin. The assault of the boy at the reservoir happened on the anniversary
of his friend’s death.