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Abstract: 

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has argued in favor of understanding violence and sexual violence within a social-ecological perspective. There are four general components to the social-ecological model. The individual level represents biological and psychological risk factors. This level comprises factors such as history of abuse, psychological or personality disorders, and alcohol/ substance abuse. These are the factors traditionally widely studied in examinations of sexual offenders. According to the social-ecological model, however, there are three additional layers of compounding influences that also need to be considered. Relationship-level factors refer to the inner circle of the offender, specifically his family and friends; for example, poor parenting, violent family conflict, violent friends, and the influence they have in socializing the perpetrator and rendering violence acceptable in sexual contexts. Third is the perpetrator’s community and its institutions, specifically their rules and regulations but also their norms, and possibly their tolerance or complicit silence around sexual violence. Finally, the last level of analysis relates to macro level influences and includes societal level factors that contribute to sexual violence; this includes factors such as institutionalized gender inequalities, and social, cultural and religious norms relative to sexual violence. In this article, the author identifies and discusses emerging risk factors for sexual assault pertaining to the Brock Turner case; Turner exhibited few of the individual risk factors the CDC has identified as key markers, but the external risk factors—relationship and community—were pronounced. The article draws on the court documents and various statements submitted to the judge at the sentencing phase of the trial, discussing that information in the context of prior empirical studies. The specific focus is on the factors that put Turner at risk of making the decisions he made that night to harm someone sexually.

Keywords: Brock Turner; Social-Ecological Model of Rape Prevention; Society Level Risk Factors

Affiliations:  1: Washington State University.