Violent sexual predators are using dating apps as “hunting grounds” where they find it easier to target vulnerable victims, according to new research.
Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) analyzed Utah sexual assault victims’ records between 2017 and 2020. BYU nursing professor Dr Julie Valentine said their findings were “incredibly concerning”.
Research showed that 14 per cent of the 1,968 rapes committed by acquaintances occurred after a meet-up arranged through a dating app.
These attacks were also found to be more violent with a third of victims being strangled and a quarter suffering breast injuries.
Dr Valentine explained the intent of their research: “We’d started to see an increase of victims reporting being raped after meeting someone on a dating app, and we wanted to know if rapes facilitated through dating apps differed from other acquaintance rapes.
“They are indeed very different,” she concluded.
In the study, published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 47 per cent of the victims of acquaintance rape unrelated to dating apps disclosed a mental illness.
But this number rose to 60 per cent among those who were assaulted from an acquaintance met through an app.
College students were also more likely to be victims of dating app-facilitated assaults, and male victims were nearly twice as common among app-related assaults as among other acquaintance assaults.
The perpetrators in dating-app-facilitated rapes seemed to be unusually violent, with the attacks producing more victim injuries than other acquaintance rapes.
A quarter of the victims had breast injuries and about 33 per cent of the victims reported being strangled, while 22 percent of victims who were not meeting perpetrators for the first time through an app reported strangulation.
“In a dating app, people can shape themselves however they want to appeal to vulnerable victims,” Dr Valentine said, adding, “Those with mental illnesses like depression may be more susceptible to a predator who might, for example, flatter them profusely and persuade them to meet in person.”
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