Indeed, the least reliable conclusion from the events of the weekend is probably the most obvious one: the claim that the perpetrators represent the same Islamic State that has cut a swath through northern Iraq and Syria.
The perpetrator represents experiences the society has been through before, and the stereotype that people still maintain.
This harassment has significant psychosocial costs for both the victim and the perpetrator and represents an opportunity for mental health intervention.
"There was an awful lot of information that was made available by these perpetrators," James A. Cederberg, a lawyer representing one of the families, said, referring to the gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
In Perugia, a city in central Italy, the imam declared that the perpetrators "do not represent Islam nor the teachings of the Qu'ran," and that the attack damages the whole Muslim community.
Equally, each perpetrator left uninvestigated represents not a single miscarriage of justice, but a longer-lasting danger to others – a potential further sexual offence, or string of offences, that could have been prevented had the first victim been believed.
For the perpetrator, the act represents self abuse along with the destruction of significant others.
It is common for politicians to represent the perpetrators of violence as acting outside the boundaries of morality; their actions belong to an incomprehensible realm beyond our understanding of what is good and right.
When Wadewitz showed Wikipedia's main page to her class one day, she found that the women featured were largely sexualised or portrayed as victims of a crime, while people of colour were represented as perpetrators of a crime.
In all models, variables representing more extreme intervention and/or removal of the victim and/or perpetrator from the home (foster care or criminal court involvement) were negatively associated with the risk of becoming a case.
