ABSTRACT
Experience has shown that those who sexually assault strangers become addicted to the feelings of power and the sexual gratification they achieve when perpetrating their assaults. Their obsession takes control of their lives, and they continue to assault unsuspecting women until they are removed from society. Men who commit these crimes are empowered not only by the successful completion of each assault but also by their ability to avoid apprehension. With each successive attack, they become progressively brazen and arrogant. They also become more and more skilled at intimidating and subduing their victims while refining their ability to elude detection. The reader should be reminded that serial sexual assaults occur in all categories of rape: domestic, acquaintance, and stranger. This chapter, however, addresses only the issue of serial cases committed by strangers. The strategies concerning domestic and acquaintance cases have been delineated at length in Chapter 6. Those strategies are excellent for dealing with suspects who are known to their victims, and should be employed even when multiple attacks occur. They are, however, significantly different from what is needed to address the issue of a serial stranger case. Therefore, for the purposes of this discussion, the term serial rape is used only in reference to stranger cases and includes all types of sexual assault (sodomy, sexual abuse, etc.) for simplicity’s sake. It will be used to address the issue of multiple sexual assaults committed by men who are not known to their victims and who appear to strike at random.
