Citation

Vander Ven T, Wright L, Fesmire C. Crim. Justice Rev. 2018; 43(1): 60-74.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Georgia State University Public and Urban Affairs, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0734016817744015

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A recent investigative report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution exposed what appears to be widespread sexual abuse committed by medical professionals. The report suggests that the intellectual advantages and social prominence of well-heeled medical professionals provide them with special resources to commit an undetected series of offenses and to avoid or reduce punishment when they are ultimately apprehended. Thus, the story implies that medical sexual abuse and its control is shaped by power and influence. Similarly, social constructionists argue that class and power shape debates, in part, through the manner in which the media frames social problems. The current study seeks to explore these issues by employing a qualitative approach to analyzing news reporting on medical professionals who drug and sexually violate their patients. Drawing from 22 sedation-facilitated sexual violence (SFSV) stories, we compare the media accounts of SFSV to 22 media treatments of stranger street attacks (i.e., blitz rapes). Guided by constructionist frameworks, for example, we investigated whether or not the language used to describe medical offenders suggested that they were more or less condemnation worthy than "stranger" offenders who attacked their victims in public spaces. Compared to blitz rapists, medical offenders were more likely to be referred to using admiration worthy terms (e.g., intelligent, exemplary), and their victims were more likely to be described as helpless and lacking in agency. Blitz rapists are more often described as coercive and brutal, and their victims are more likely to be framed as heroic, especially when they resist the offender.

Language: en