Predators and Boundaries

By definition, every criminal attack is a boundary violation. For instance, sexual assault and rape are obvious boundary violations.

While not every boundary violation is a crime, criminal attacks often start with gradually increasing boundary violations. Some attacks violate physical boundaries; others, like some types of sexual harassment, breach mental and emotional comfort zones.

Predators need to cross boundaries and gain closeness to attack their victims. They generally gain proximity through two basic methods: ambush or charm. They initially either use an immediate ambush or their social skills to get close to their victims. While ambush predators often use stealth, perceived superior strength, and the victim’s surprise, charm predators generally use their social skills, manipulation, and gradually increasing boundary violations instead. For example, a high-school basketball coach who plans on raping a student may start by massaging her neck after a game. He may violate verbal boundaries by telling her inappropriate personal information, for example that he just left his girlfriend. He may eventually try to isolate her by inviting her to his house for a private post game analysis.

Many attackers rely primarily on their charm and manipulation skills rather than on stealth and ambush. Often highly skilled at reading their potential victims’ emotions, aggressors tend to test potential victims to find out whether and how they set and enforce their boundaries. They explore and assess their targets’ personality traits and vulnerabilities, such as kindness, credulity, eagerness to please, loneliness, or cravings for acceptance. Using this information, these predators influence and control their victims, and ultimately maneuver them into isolating themselves with the predator.

Like charm predators, ambush predators also often test boundaries before they commit to an attack. For instance, such a predator may stalk a targets as she is shopping at a box store. He may watch her as she arrives in the parking lot. He may notice that she is preoccupied or distracted. In the store, he may test her boundaries when he bumps into her as she walks through the aisles. He notes that she smiles, looks down, and mumbles an apology to him even though he is the one who bumped into her. He may follow her around in the store and then out into the parking lot. He may surprise her, coming up behind her as she is loading groceries into the trunk of her car.

Ultimately, charm predators also ambush their victims; the difference is that they manipulate their victims to isolate themselves voluntarily. They will eventually attack when the conditions are right for them. For example, serial killer Ted Bundy managed to lure two young women away from a crowded beach on Suquamish Lake in Washington in one afternoon. With a fake cast on his arm, he used his charm and appealed to their kindness. He asked them to walk to his car with him and to help him load a boat onto his car. When they were alone with him he beat them unconscious, kidnapped and raped them, and then killed them. Bundy used deception and charm to isolate these women so that he could attack them. But his attacks started with observing these women and assessing their boundaries.

Most victims of sexual assaults, men and women, are attacked by men they know, not by strangers. And many of these men are people in a position of actual or perceived power or control. Boundary violations, especially when they gradually increase in severity and number should raise red flags. Boundary violations should especially trigger alarm when people in authority commit them, such as teachers, professors, clergy, supervisors, and other people in similar positions of power. Pay attention to your gut feelings about such people and be sensitive to red flags.

Here is are some strategies for enforcing your boundaries:

1. Name the behaviour that constitutes a boundary violation. This can help you clarify the situation in your own mind. For example, he is a supervisor at work, and when no one else is around, he tries to put his hands on my shoulder or my back when he talks with me. Or, he is my soccer coach and he is inviting me to come to a park for some extra training. It seems that he wants to spend time alone with me in the park. This is unusual and strange behaviour for a coach.

2. Tell the person what you want him to do or not to do. Remember that you owe no excuse or explanation. E.g., with the supervisor, “Take your hand off my back. Do not touch me.” Or, with the coach, “I don’t want to go to the park for extra training. I’ll train at school on the soccer field.” Or, “Are there other student who are coming to this extra training at the park. Who are they?”

3. Repeat your boundaries, if necessary, but do not debate the issue.

4. If the person does not respect your boundaries, take an action to end the situation. Seek help if necessary. You don’t have to act alone, especially with people with some power over you. In an employment situation, consider notifying Human Resources or another supervisor at work. In a school situation, consider talking with your parents, a school counsellor, a trusted teacher, administration, another school resource, or law enforcement.

Of course, sometimes it’s hard to enforce your boundaries. You may be concerned about your job, or grades, or other situations that people in authority have power over. But there are resources, such as local or college support groups, local anti-violence or community resource organisations, HR departments at work, hotlines, and law enforcements.

See for example, http://www.rainn.org

You don’t need to tolerate boundary violations, assaults, and harassment. Let’s do what we can to hold these people accountable. But of course, the choice of whether to report or what action to take is yours and only yours to make.