Structure and Offender Behavior in Swedish Rape Cases: A Multidimensional Scaling Approach

Sammanfattning: A sample of Swedish rape cases (n = 28) that occurred during the years of 1998 and 2002 were selected with the primary objective of discovering differences in the behavioral structure of the offender depending on the nature of any prior relationship with the victim. Three offender categories were established: Intimate, Familiar and Friend. These were then used as boundaries for behavior elicited by the offenders and focal points of Modus Operandi (MO). The cases were coded by using binary variables designed during the present study based on variables discovered in previous studies on offender behavior in sexual crimes. Furthermore the variables' inter-correlation was analyzed with the use of Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). The authors found that the MDS divided the variables into four different categories instead of the original three that was expected, possibly indicating the existence of a novel MO that is not bound to any of our three categories. Research within the field of offender behavior in sexual assault crimes in Sweden is limited; hence this study aims to explore possible avenues of future scientific enquiries.