Vocabulary used by sexual offenders: meaning and implications

This paper examines how some sexual violence offenders use culturally acquired vocabularies to describe episodes of rape. The paper is based on an analysis of 12 accounts obtained from death-row inmates in Kenya who had been convicted of violent crimes and sexual violence. The accounts were elicited while conducting a larger study to explore the individual motivations, and social and cultural factors that predispose men to acts of rape. Findings suggest that some sex offenders are immersed in normative cultural expectations about sexuality and gender and that, within this framework, they endeavour to create a picture that shifts the blame from themselves to their victims. They attempt to foster the belief that women and girls, in one way or another, provoke rape. Such vocabularies are used to trivialise and neutralise instances of rape within the wider society.