Dashiell Kwan
Mr. Ippolito
Forensics
23 September 2021
“Sexual Abuse: Investigation of Rape, Sodomy and Murder”
In today’s world, a common crime that preys on women and children is sexual abuse, tied with rape and murder. Usually, the perpetrator is a man, and there are many victims under the age of 18. There has been a drastic increase in rape cases, quite possibly due to the number of unemployment, peer pressure, or fantasies and psychological issues. According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s study in 2017, every 20 minutes a woman is raped across India. Sexual offences are a major issue in society and one that can only be treated with the help of society. In the case of murder, the reason why a rapist might kill a victim after receiving sexual gratification is beyond us and can be linked to mental illness. In this case report, a woman identified as 43-year-old Margaret, was found lying nude and dead by her son. Margaret’s daughter Angela became concerned when her mother was not picking up the phone that day, and contacted her brother Jeremy who had keys. Jeremy came home and went into his mother’s bedroom which had drawers out and the whole room was a mess. The telephone cords were ripped out, and pillowcases were missing. He then found his mother lying nude in the basement with a pillowcase around her head, and her hands and feet were tied with the telephone cords.
In this case, the police were able to identify the victim using DNA testing, developed by Sir Alec Jeffreys. The development of DNA testing has proven very useful and since I assume Margaret’s body was pretty beaten up, they could still identify her. Using an autopsy, the forensic pathologists were able to determine that Margaret had died from blood force head trauma. In this report, the article also mentions the uncertainty of why the rapist might have killed Margaret if he had raped her already. Forensic psychiatry would be the best way to receive that answer.
While the article was very interesting and informative in terms of the statistics of sexual abuse, rape, and murder, the crime report felt incomplete. It’s possible that the case is still going on, but the author does not make it clear when the exact date of the crime was. All that is said is “on Tuesday July 11.” The evidence at the scene that could be proven useful is the spray painting above the basement window, “which was recognized by investigators as some type of gang graffiti.” That evidence should be very useful in the case and if the author had included which gang or what it looked like, that would make things feel more complete. If there is a confirmed perpetrator or at least a suspect, that would be vital to include in the article. However, that was not the case. The article was still very informative and succeeded in unsettling the reader with the disturbing facts of sexual assault and how it can happen to anyone.
3 comments:
Avery Jones
Current Event #6
Kumar, Sharon D., and Vishal Saini. “Sexual Abuse: Investigation of Rape, Sodomy, and Murder.” Journal of Forensic Research, http://forensicwayout.org/index.php/IJETV/article/view/1094.
I chose to comment on Dashiell’s review of “Sexual Abuse: Investigation of Rape, Sodomy and Murder,” a short case study that was published in the Journal of Forensic Research. Dashiell did a great job of summarizing the abstract about the increasing number of sexual assaults, especially across India, some of which end in murder. Another thing Dashiell did well was to discuss the case study in the article, where a 43-year-old woman in Michigan was found dead by her son. She was completely nude and was bound at her hands and feet by her own telephone cords with a pillow case over her head. The autopsy suggested she died of blunt force trauma to her head and she had also been raped. Dashiell also did a good job of explaining that the increasing cases in sexual assaults could be due to social factors such as unemployment, peer pressure, and an increase in publicly available sexual fantasy sources like pornography.
While Dashiell did a great job of summarizing this abstract and case study, the original abstract mentions information that could be very informative to readers. Specifically, the authors mention there are four types of rapists: 1) power reassurance, 2) power assertive, 3) anger excitation, and 4) anger retaliatory. These classifications are interesting and something I’ve never seen before. Another thing that I think would be interesting to know is what kind of DNA testing was done on this crime scene. We have learned in class about Locard’s Exchange Principle, so there must have been some DNA left at the crime scene. This information may have been excluded because the article was not written as a crime scene report. Given DNA from semen is often able to link rapists to the crime scene, forensic science is critical to finding rapists and preventing them from committing future crimes against innocent victims.
The thing that blew me away about this article is the statistic from India that a woman is raped every 20 minutes. This number is astonishing, even in a country with a patriarchal society. The famous rape case from five or more years ago where a young female student was gang raped on a public bus and left to die brought a lot of international attention to crimes against women in India, especially rapes and other forms of sexual assault where offenders are not always held accountable by the courts. While incredibly sad, this case and others are empowering Indian women to protest and demand the right to be protected by law against sexual assaults.
Loufei Sung
10/28/21
Forensics
Current event comment
“Sexual Abuse: Investigation of Rape, Sodomy and Murder”
https://www.hilarispublisher.com/open-access/sexual-abuse-investigation-of-rape-sodomy-and-murder.pdf
This article review begins by discussing the concerning rapid rise of rape cases around the world. It then points out a specific case, and describes how DNA testing was integral in identifying the victim. I thought that this was a very well written review. First of all, the introduction immediately grabs your attention. The discussion of rape is a very serious subject, and peaks interest. Dash also does a great job of connecting this discussion to a specific case, in which a woman was found nued and tied up in the basement, having been raped and murdered. The whole review flows very nicely, with smooth transitions from one topic to the next. Finally, I liked his critique of the article as well. Unlike many others I have read, he points out a specific thing that he does not like. He feels as if the report was unfinished, and gives reasons to why that may be.
Although the review was very well written, there are still some minor shortcomings.I feel as if the paragraph describing the importance of DNA testing in identifying the victim lacked information. It mostly consisted of generalization and assumptions instead of actual fact, which took away from some of the credibility. In addition to this, I also think that the discussion of Forensic psychiatry being useful for determining the underlying cause of this crime could have been elaborated on more. Other than these two points however, I find it hard to come up with any other criticisms.
This review left a strong impression on me. The topic was quite unsettling, and thus made me think more about the topic of rape. I chose this article because it was the first thing on the blog, and also seemed to be an interesting topic. Coming away from reading the review I now have a better understanding of how rape crimes work.
Tyler Tanaka-Wong
Mr. Ippolito
Forensics EF Odd
October 28, 2021
“Study Highlights Need to Replace 'Ancestry' in Forensics with Something More Accurate.” ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 14 July 2021, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210714110543.htm
In her review of ScienceDaily’s “Study Highlights Need to Replace ‘Ancestry’ in Forensics with Something More Accurate”, Sofie Blazejczak talks about how ancestry is used in forensics as well as the importance of anthropology in forensic sciences. First she talks about how different racial groups may have different structures as well as the ambiguity of these terms, which can cause confusion in the field. In addition, she states that bone structures can represent many other aspects of ancestry, and can contradict one’s appearance or race. She uses the example of varying structures in South America to prove that groups that are geographically close to each other may have very different structures, which may be misleading for people who are trying to identify a structure of a certain group. Finally, Sofie uses all of this evidence to prove that this study of ancestry is very important because it helps shine a light on the growing problems regarding racism, and it would be very helpful to clear up these racial generalizations just based on bone structure.
I believe that this topic has major implications on our lives today. First, there are generalizations regarding my race, asians, about different facial structures. At the eyeglasses store, there are certain models labeled “Asian fit”, and these do not fit me so I believe that this term should definitely be reformed. In addition, with the growing awareness of racism today, I believe that scientists and researchers should do everything in their power to clear up these hasty stereotypes regarding bone structures.
Although Sofie did a very good job identifying the issues with ancestry and racism, she could have elaborated more on the solution. She did state that these issues must be fixed but I would have liked her to be more specific and provide direct solutions to clear up the misunderstandings regarding racial groups. Also, I would have liked a little more background information, such as when ancestry was first introduced in forensic anthropology.
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