Internet Rapist: The Exploratory Study of an Emerging Predator

Internet based crimes have exploded in the 21st century and violent sex crimes have become a large portion of these offenses. There is little information available regarding rapists who identify adult victims online. To date, Nicolas Groth's typologies are used as the typological classification system to classify rapists. A more comprehensive typological system has been developed by Knight and Prentky (1990). It is unclear whether rapists who identify their victims using the Internet fit with any of the typologies proposed by earlier models. In this present study a sample of accused Internet rapists who identified their adult victims through online contact were identified. These cases were reviewed in order to determine whether they represent a homogenous group of offenders and explore how they relate to earlier typologies. Results of this exploratory study suggest that rapists who identify their victims through use of the Internet are a diverse group with some offenders appearing to share similarities to the earlier proposed typologies.