Three year old Wang Xiaoyi went outside to play around 5 p.m. on May 19th, 2009 and never returned home. A thirteen year old boy (unnamed) saw her playing outside of his apartment building on his way back from school and took Xiaoyi to his apartment. There, the boy tied her to the bed, drowned her, had sex with her corpse, and threw it out of his fifth-floor apartment window.
Abnormal psychology describes necrophilia as the sexual attraction to corpses. As far as classification goes, necrophilia falls under Paraphilia NOS (not otherwise specified) according to the DSM-IV-TR. The criteria includes the presences, over a period of at least six months, of recurrent and intense urges and sexually arousing fantasies involving corpses which are either acted upon or have been markedly distressing.
There are three main types of necrophilia: necrophiliac homicide, regular necrophilia, and necrophiliac fantasy. Regular necrophilia is the use of corpses for sexual purposes after the person was already dead. Necrophiliac fantasies are envisions of such acts, but not actually acting upon them. The last type, necrophiliac homicide describes the case above. This type is characterized by murdering to obtain a corpse for sexual pleasure.
Necrophilia is not the only type of paraphilia which can lead to problems with the law. There are 8 main types of paraphilias (5-8 are especially likely to run into problems with the law):
1. Fetishisms
2. Sexual Masochism
3. Sexual Sadism
4. Transvetic fetishism
5. Exhibitionism
6. Frotteurism
7. Paedophilia
8. Voyeurism
All other paraphilias, such as necrophilia, telephone scatalogia, partialism, zoophilia, coprophilia, klismaphilia, urophilia, and emetophilia all fall under the not otherwise specified category.
We don't hear of very many cases of paraphilia as it is not frequently diagnosed in a clinical setting, but there is no doubt they exist. Accurate prevalence rates are unavailable because people with paraphilias do not typically admit it or seek treatment unless they are required by law, but most cases of paraphilias are seen in males and some (exhibitionism especially) are considered exclusively a male disorder.
For more information about the case above, visit here.
For more information about particular paraphilias, visit these sites:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-05/28/content_7950768.htm
http://web4health.info/en/answers/sex-paraphi-what.htm
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/dsm-iv/content/article/10168/55266?pageNumber=1
Abnormal psychology describes necrophilia as the sexual attraction to corpses. As far as classification goes, necrophilia falls under Paraphilia NOS (not otherwise specified) according to the DSM-IV-TR. The criteria includes the presences, over a period of at least six months, of recurrent and intense urges and sexually arousing fantasies involving corpses which are either acted upon or have been markedly distressing.
There are three main types of necrophilia: necrophiliac homicide, regular necrophilia, and necrophiliac fantasy. Regular necrophilia is the use of corpses for sexual purposes after the person was already dead. Necrophiliac fantasies are envisions of such acts, but not actually acting upon them. The last type, necrophiliac homicide describes the case above. This type is characterized by murdering to obtain a corpse for sexual pleasure.
Necrophilia is not the only type of paraphilia which can lead to problems with the law. There are 8 main types of paraphilias (5-8 are especially likely to run into problems with the law):
1. Fetishisms
2. Sexual Masochism
3. Sexual Sadism
4. Transvetic fetishism
5. Exhibitionism
6. Frotteurism
7. Paedophilia
8. Voyeurism
All other paraphilias, such as necrophilia, telephone scatalogia, partialism, zoophilia, coprophilia, klismaphilia, urophilia, and emetophilia all fall under the not otherwise specified category.
We don't hear of very many cases of paraphilia as it is not frequently diagnosed in a clinical setting, but there is no doubt they exist. Accurate prevalence rates are unavailable because people with paraphilias do not typically admit it or seek treatment unless they are required by law, but most cases of paraphilias are seen in males and some (exhibitionism especially) are considered exclusively a male disorder.
For more information about the case above, visit here.
For more information about particular paraphilias, visit these sites:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-05/28/content_7950768.htm
http://web4health.info/en/answers/sex-paraphi-what.htm
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/dsm-iv/content/article/10168/55266?pageNumber=1
Just when you think that you have hit the depths of what people can get up to you run into a story like this. Reading the article it looks like under Chinese law the boy cannot have criminal charges leveled against him because he is to young. This does make you wonder if the court can't punish the boy criminally if it could order him into treatment. Let us be honest with ourselves for a moment killing then raping a 3 year old girl is not the sort of behavior that should be let off with a pay the girl's parents some cash and don't do it again.
Wow. This is so disturbing. I found it interesting though that you wrote that there is such a thing as necrophiliac fantasy. This means that before these people become actual criminals, they deal with their thoughts/fantasies for a period of time. These paraphilias are disorders and these people have a right to be treated. Of course, most of these people would never talk about their disorder, knowing it is wrong. I hope someday that there will be clinics full of specialized psychologists preventing these tragedies from happening. However, by that time there will probably be more unspecified mental disorders...
I've heard of this 'disease(?)' before, but no matter how many times you hear something like that...once it gets brought up again it makes you shudder. There are so many messed up people in the world, but really...fantasizing about doing it with a dead body? Disturbing. It's also extremely sad that people have to deal with that disorder on a daily basis. How sick would you feel if you thought about things like that? Extremely sick. People with these types of disorders need serious help.
Something that really shocked me about this case was that the criminal was 13 years old....13! How does a 13 year old fantasize about stuff like that? They've barely hit puberty yet, yet alone to already be having vivid, disturbing fantasizes. When I heard that he was 13 I wondered how the court would deal with such a case, I mean a 13 year old...not even an adult...killing THEN raping a 3 year old. I think it would only be just to try the boy as mentally insane, because no normal 13 year old would do such a thing.
Actually, I wasn't too surprised that the perpetrator was 13 years old. Paraphilias usually begin early in childhood and adolescence and continue to develop throughout adolescence and into the beginning of adulthood.
I'll give you a citation to a great overview article of the paraphilias. The article gives a brief history of paraphila and the changes that have been made through the revisions of the DSM. It also gives more detail into the main paraphilias and touches on the paraphilias that fall under the not otherwise specified category. It ends with the proposed theories of etiology (which isn't real clear, not very much research has been done on the topic), and briefly mentions treatments.
It is a pretty short article and is an interesting read, so if you are interested in this topic, it is definitely worth the time!
Wiederman, M. W. (2003). Paraphilia and fetishism. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 11, 315-321. doi: 10.1177/106648073252663
or use this address!
http://tfj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/3/315