ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, the diversity of the expression of sexually coercive and aggressive behavior has been recognized in numerous studies that have focused on many subgroups of sex offenders, including abuse reactive children,1-4 juvenile sexual offenders,5 female sexual offenders,6-9 impaired professionals,10-12 and even such specific subgroups as stalkers.13,14
The one remarkable omission has been empirical focus on the rape of the elderly. These highly vulnerable, often incapacitated individuals appear to represent yet another category of hidden victims of sexual assault. Although there are no reliable incidence data on the sexual assault of the elderly, prevailing educated opinion is that “underreporting is significantly higher in this age group compared to other groups.”15 The only identified published article that looked at offenders who sexually assaulted elderly women was a 1988 study by Pollock.16 Pollock compared five sex offenders who assaulted women age 60 or older with seven offenders who assaulted younger women. By and large, the five men who assaulted older victims were more violent, more brutal, and more sadistic. Indeed, three of the victims were murdered or thought to be dead, and in the other two cases the victims were badly mutilated. Pollock concluded that the greater evidence of psychotic features among those who assaulted the elderly suggested more severe psychopathology in that group. In a larger study that focused on the elderly victims of sexual assault, Muram, Miller, and Cutler17 compared 53 victims, age 55 or older, with 53 victims, age 18 to 45. The older victims were far more likely to sustain genital injuries than the younger victims (51% vs. 13%, respectively).
