To Resist or Not to Resist? The Effect of Context and Crime Characteristics on Sex Offenders ’ Reaction to Victim Resistance

Circumstances under which a sexual assault takes place and how these circumstances affect offenders ’ reactions to victim resistance are not well understood. Previous studies have not thoroughly examined the interactions that take place between situational factors and resistance. Using a combina-tion of logistic regression and Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) analyses, we examine victim, situational, and crime characteris-tics of 426 sexual assaults involving victim resistance to determine which of these factors increase the likelihood of offender violence. Findings sug-gest that violence is affected by both the attack strategy employed by the offender and the type of resistance by the victim, along with several other qualifying factors