This paper analyses the visualisation of rape and sexual assault in legal and scholarly language. It begins with a critique of the Court of Appeal ruling in R v. Evans (Chedwyn) and its forensic examination of the details of a female rape complainant's consensual sexual activity with other men. The case is analysed in light of a visual metaphor used by Ellison and Munro to describe the removal of popular misconceptions about rape. The paper contextualises that discussion with reference to the idea of the male gaze and its affirmation of a phallocentric cultural and social world in which the objectification of female difference is entrenched. The paper finally challenges that assessment, however, sketching an alternative approach to visual-critical scholarship that embraces interdisciplinarity and a literary sensibility to break (or at least to loosen) the association between the prurient eye of the male voyeur and the criminal justice gaze.

Sexual offending is frequently seen by the lay person as being a result of an innate abnormality that is relatively fixed and unchangeable. Accordingly, sexual offenders are seen as more likely to recidivate than other types of offenders. In fact, this is not the case, and most sexual offenders do not re-offend. Also, contemporary research has shown that treatment programs driven by cognitive behaviour therapy significantly reduce rates of sexual offender recidivism. Nevertheless, while there has been a great deal of research on the treatment of child sexual offenders, the treatment of rapists has received comparatively less attention. Thus, the main aim of this article is to summarise current knowledge of sexual offender treatment, paying specific attention to the needs of rapists. In particular, we pay attention to the content of sexual offender treatment programs, and the relevance of this content to rape. We also discuss therapeutic issues of relevance for rapist treatment that are typically ignored or underestimated in the research literature. Finally, based upon our analysis of the literature, we present a schematic overview of rape treatment and identify important areas for further research.

Characteristics of adolescents who sexually offend, their patterns of their offending behaviour and the defining features of their victims are firmly established in the overseas literature. The research literature in Australia, however, is less developed. This study describes the characteristics of a sample of clients of the Sex Offender Program of the New South Wales Department of Juvenile Justice and examines patterns of offence behaviours and related descriptions of victims. Adolescents who sexually offend in NSW have backgrounds of low educational attainment and abuse and a range of other social risk factors, and they are most likely to victimise female children. A typology of adolescent sex offenders based on their offending behaviour is offered.

As our society becomes increasingly aware of the alarmingly high rates of sexual crimes in the community, it is also “facing up to” the unpleasant truth that adolescents perpetrate a significant proportion of these crimes. During the last 20 years, there has been a trend toward the provision of early intervention programs for adolescents who have committed sexual offences.The most recent of these programs in Australia is the Griffith Adolescent Forensic Assessment and Treatment Centre. The centre is a joint initiative of Grifith University and the Queensland Department of Families. The program is a community safety initiative aimed at reducing the level of sexual assault in the community through effective intervention and supervision ofyoung people who hove committed sexual offences. This article describes the program, the treatment philosophy thot underpins it, and the potential that the program has for research into this disturbing and complex phenomenon.