Examining Walking-Waiting Sexual Assaults from Previously Untested Sexual Assault Kits: The Intersection of Stranger and Outdoor Sexual Assaults

ABSTRACT

Within a routine activity framework, we explore walking-waiting sexual assaults – committed by strangers when victims were outdoors and did not consensually leave the scene. With data from untested sexual assault kits spanning decades in one urban jurisdiction, we found these were common (a fourth of the sample) with a distinct offending pattern. African American women were identified as the most frequent “targets” due to the use of certain public spaces that appear to lack “capable guardianship.” “Motivated offenders” were often serial sexual offenders but not exclusively tied to walking-waiting sexual assaults. Findings improve our understanding of the intersection of stranger and outdoor sexual assaults. Implications and future directions discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Walking waiting sexual assault
• rape
• sexual assault kit
• rape kit
• outdoor
• stranger
• sexual offending
• serial sex offender

Acknowledgments

We want to thank all the survivors who inadvertently shared their stories of intimate trauma with us. We have read your stories and promise to do our best to ensure they no longer remain shelved. We thank the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office and the Task Force for inviting us to sit at your table. Without your support, this project would not have happened.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This project was primarily supported in part by Grant Nos. 2015-AK-BX-K009, 2016-AK-K016, and 2018 AK-BX-0001 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Bureau of Justice Assistance is a component of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the SMART Office. A pilot research project was supported by a research grant from the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. The converting of the PDFs to text files in the qualitative analysis was supported by Award No. 2018-VA-CX-0002 by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication/program/exhibition are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.