Victim's Perspective of Forgiveness Seeking Behaviors After Transgressions

Forgiveness seeking after a relational transgression is an important aspect of relational repair from an interpersonal perspective, although it has received much less attention than the process of granting forgiveness. This research focuses on the victim's perspective of the transgressor's behaviors and how they are related to forgiveness and offense characteristics. This paper proposes a multidimensional concept of seeking forgiveness that includes four dimensions: apologies, restorative action, relational caring behaviors, and diverting behaviors. A questionnaire for assessing these dimensions was developed and tested with a general population sample of 450 subjects. Participants recalled a specific offense and then answered a questionnaire about the perceived usefulness of different forgiveness-seeking behaviors, a forgiveness inventory, and several questions regarding the characteristics of the offense (severity, intentionality, and frequency). Our results support the four-factor structure of the questionnaire. As the perceived intentionality of the offense increases, behaviors that are directly related to the transgression, such as apologies and restorative actions, are experienced as less useful for forgiveness. The more hurtful the offense, the less useful the diverting behaviors are. Behavior such as apologies and restorative action are related to a lower (less) motivation for revenge, while all forgiveness-seeking behaviors are related to an increase in feelings of benevolence toward the offender.

Reported Sexual-offense Incidents in the United States: Arrest Disparities between Women and Men

This study examined the effect of an offender’s sex (male/female) on whether sexual-offense incidents reported to law enforcement culminated in an arrest. Two hypotheses, chivalry and evil woman, are relied upon and suggest that the probability of arrest differs for women and men, yet in differing directions. The chivalry hypothesis suggests women are treated more leniently than men and, therefore, less likely to be arrested. The evil woman hypothesis, however, suggests the opposite: Women are treated more harshly than men and, therefore, more likely to be arrested. Seven years of National Incident-based Reporting System [NIBRS] data were relied upon ( National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, 2010–2016 , National Incident-based Reporting System: Extract Files); all of the reported sexual-offense incidents committed by women were included, along with a matched sample of reported sexual-offense incidents committed by men, culminating in a sample of 22,744. Overall, women were 42% significantly less likely than men to be arrested when controlling for other known offense, offender, and victim characteristics. The odds for women to be arrested increased, however, when specific offender demographics, offense characteristics, and victim characteristics were taken into account. The implications of these findings are discussed in regard to their application of the chivalry and evil woman hypotheses.

Attempted and Completed Parricides in South Africa, 1990–2019

Previous studies of parricide have been carried out predominantly in a Western context, in North America, Australia, and Western Europe. To date, only a handful of studies in parricide have been conducted in continental Africa. Previous studies in Ghana and Zimbabwe note that there may be culture-specific ways in which parricides may be shaped by the norms and cultural beliefs systems within those respective countries. Missing from the literature is an examination of parricides in South Africa. Using newspapers and court records, this article examines the offense and offender characteristics of parricides in South Africa. Our findings suggest that residential patterns of families may shape the offense characteristics found in South African parricides.

Sources of Conflict: A Comparative Synthesis of American and Korean Parricides

Despite the nominative classification of parricides based on the victim–offender relationship, parricide bears the offense characteristics of many crimes. In prior works, the killing of parents has been framed as a violent reaction of severely abused children against their tormentors, or as the identity demarcating actions of adult sons suffering from mental illness. Aside from these two primary discourses, the reasons parents and their offspring become mired in conflicts across various life stages of both participants have been neglected from the literature. A more recent theoretical framework examines parricides and their sources of conflict across the life course of the victims and offenders. This paper synthesizes the sources of conflict in parricides in nineteen-century America and twentiethcentury South Korea by comparing the similarities and differences in offense characteristics. I argue that parricides in the two countries can be differentiated based on the differences in history and culture.