Are young women the special targets of rape‐murder?

Abstract

Abstract Working from an evolutionary psychological perspective, M. Wilson, M. Daly, and J. Scheib [1997. Feminism and Evolutionary Biology. New York: Chapman and Hull. p 431–465] hypothesized and found that reproductive‐aged females incur excess risk of rape‐murder (being raped and murdered) relative to nonreproductive‐aged females and that this excess risk cannot be attributed solely to the greater association of young women with violent, young men. The current research provides the first national‐level replication of these findings for the United States. I secured access to a national database of homicides occurring in the United States between 1976 and 1994 and selected for analysis cases in which a female was (1) raped and murdered by a male previously unknown to her or (2) murdered in the context of theft by a male previously unknown to her. Results replicate the work of Wilson et al. [1997] and document that (1) young men commit the majority of rape‐murders and theft‐murders; (2) young, reproductive‐aged women are overrepresented among the victims of rape‐murder but (3) are underrepresented among the victims of theft‐murder. Discussion acknowledges the uncertain generalizability of theoretical and empirical work on rape‐murder to rape not accompanied by murder and addresses two challenges to an evolutionary perspective on rape‐murder: (1) Why are nonreproductive‐aged females raped? and (2) Why are raped females subsequently murdered? Aggr. Behav. 28:224–232, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

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