Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices [Hardcover]

Anil Aggrawal (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1420043080 | ISBN-13: 978-1420043082 | Publication Date: December 22, 2008 | Edition: 1

From sexual abuse and fetishism to necrophilia and sadomasochism, this unique volume identifies fourteen classifications of unusual sexual pathologies. Emphasizing the physical and psychological aspects of sexuality itself, the book presents detailed comparisons of legal and medical definitions, historical aspects, current incidence, and geographical prevalence of these offenses. It also explores the potential causes, discussing etiological theories and reviewing psychopathology. Highlighting the cross-cultural nature of the forensic aspects of human sexuality, the book examines various case studies in the context of international legislation. It also covers minor aberrant behavior such as coprolalia and troilism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a quite remarkable book. For the first time an authoritative text for medical, psychiatric, psychological, forensic, and legal professionals has been written which addresses both the clinical and legal dimensions of the paraphilias. Dr. Aggrawal deftly brings to bear his 25 years of interest and knowledge of sexual deviancy and sex crimes in an authoritative and comprehensive textbook. The book generally follows the organization of the DSM paraphilias, and elucidates in separate chapters their respective definitions, etiology, history, epidemiology, medical characteristics, management, and legal understanding in various U.S. jurisdictions and other selective countries. One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book is Dr. Aggrawal’s grasp of ancient references concerning the paraphilias in both religious and historical texts, and his illustrations through the selective use of contemporary clinical and legal cases. The book also contains well-written chapters on rape and sexual harassment, and a comprehensive appendix of paraphilias, no less than 547 cited in the scientific and lay literature. ... this book will likely become a fixture in most forensic libraries… .
—J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D. writing in American Academy Journal of Forensic Sciences January 2010, Vol. 55, No. 1

This is a useful source book which describes a wide spectrum of sexual practices and differentiates between those which are illegal (with helpful comparisons between national jurisdictions and legal codes), those which may escalate to that category, and those that merely push the boundaries of what any particular society or time would deem "normal". … makes interesting reading, especially in its wide ranging exploration of paraphilias and may be a useful reference for those working in the field of both sexual offences and psychosexual therapy.
—Caroline M. Jones, Forensic Physician, writing in Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine September 2010

About the Author

Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India

Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: CRC Press; 1 edition (December 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1420043080
• ISBN-13: 978-1420043082
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #390,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Law > Family & Health Law > Medical Law & Legislation

More About the Author

Anil Aggrawal obtained his MD in Forensic medicine and toxicology from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and then proceeded to Edinburgh - traditionally regarded as the home of Forensic Medicine - for higher training. He was trained further in Japan and the US under the prestigious WHO fellowship.

Dr. Aggrawal currently teaches Forensic Medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi and edits a peer-reviewed internet journal on this subject. Paraphilias, sexual crimes and their medicolegal aspects has been his special area of interest for the last 25 years. He lives in New Delhi with his wife and a personal library of over 20,000 books

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid compendium but missing references., January 24, 2012

By 

Rod (World) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices (Hardcover)

Forensic and Medico-legal ... is a solid compendium of topics and not-so-updated research about sexual crimes and practices. It has enough information as an introduction to this complex topics but, at times, it just go very superficially in the explanation. Never the less, the book has interesting references (when they are accurate) for such a broad scope.

My main concern is about some misleading references. I usually rely extensively in them to corroborate the information and for further research, so, I believe, this could be a serious issue if you want to expand your knowledge in the area. In particular (and in a first lecture) I found:

I) In Chapter 5, about fetishism, in the "Leather and Latex" sub-section there is a reference to number 41 -page 125-, but when searching the references it jumps from 40 to 42, the 41 reference is not listed!

II) In Chapter 5 -Fetishism-, there are 62 references listed in the reference part -page 124-125-, but in the text itself, there are 47! Even more, the references in the text do not match with the references in the reference section. For example: reference 31, in the text, refers to "Scorolli and associates" -page 118-, but in the reference section, 31 is "Beach FA". The reference with Scorolli is listed with number 26. Also note that reference 46 is exactly the same as reference 26!!! No different page. Maybe is duplicated?

I think that the first mismatch is in reference 10, which in the text says: "His Psychopathia sexualis [10]" -page 111-, but in the references number 10 is from "Da Silva", which, I think is never used. The correct reference would be, in this case, Krafft-Ebing.

After this point, the references are mismatched one position, this is: reference 11 in text, is reference 12 in the reference section, an so on. Never the less, at some point there are references that does not appear in the text.

III) In Chapter 9 -Frotteurism- there is also mismatched references. In the references section there are 35, but in the text just 28. For example, reference 9, 10 (Freund, Scher and Hucker), 11 (Simpson), 12 (Hurley) -page 186- and 13 (Chan et al.) -page 188-, are references 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 in the reference section, respectively. I think that the first mismatched reference is number 3 -page 183-, in the text, which is number 5 in the references.

Another insignificant point -which did NOT influence my rating-, the typos:
IV) In Chapter 12, Sexual Harassment, page 276, "Historical Perspectives", it says: "However, despite these early cases, the issue of sexual harassment really began occupying a general consciousness in the 1060's when ..." Maybe is the 1960's?

V) In Chapter 16, Transsexualism, page 349, Table 16.2, "Transgenders and Transsexual Vocabulary", in the "Psychosexual Inversion", the reference 32 is not superindexed, it is in plain text.

NOTICE: my edition of the book is from 2009 by Taylor & Francis Group. Maybe in fresher editions everything is OK.

NOTICE II: the editor of the book, after sending her mails, wrote to me the reference in point [I], which is: DeRiver JP. Crime and the sexual psychopath. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, IL,1958, page 41. (Thank you!).

I would recommend the book as an introductory book (hoping that for future editions fix the references!). But for a more robust work I do recommend the Eric W. Hickey's books (although the legal aspect is not so strong as in Aggrawal).

Is a solid work, the result of great effort.