Aileen Wuoornos Strain Theory

Everyday a different crime is committed; however, the reason or motive behind it is not always understood. Over the years, theories were developed to explain why certain crime occurs. For example, Andrea Yates was a mother of 5 who drowned her children due to a mental illness she endured, but there are many theories that play a vital role in explaining why she committed this crime. The theories that will be discussed throughout this paper are the Biosocial Trait Theory and the General Strain Theory.

Aileen was born in 1956 to her 16 year old mother. She was not born with any physical or mental disabilities. At the time of her birth her father was incarcerated for child molestation and he was also believed to be a schizophrenic, he hung himself in jail and Aileen never met him. When Aileen was 3 years old her mother abandoned her and her 4 year old brother and left them with her own parents who legally adopted them. The family struggled economically and by age 11 Aileen would engage in sexual activities for food, drugs and alcohol. Home life was not easy for Aileen as she claims to be sexually abused by her alcoholic grandfather and beaten by her grandmother. She would also engage in

In discussion of the case of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, the attachment and life course theories can be applied. Ms. Wuornos was neglected and abused by her guardians multiple times, which led her to a life of criminal activity. She began with small-scale crimes at an early age and eventually escalated to murder. This paper explores how the attachment theory played a major part in the life (and death) of a serial killer and how many lives could have been saved had Aileen’s circumstances been different. This paper also explains how Aileen Wuornos was a career criminal and how that plays a role in her escalation of crimes.

She was a strong willed woman. She made a deal with herself- “she would get her education and leave the neighborhood no matter what it took” (Moore 19).Wes Moore’s mom sent him to a private school to keep him away from the hard life that he was living in streets. The inmate’s mother also went to college. The inmate, Wes Moore, went to a public school where he was participating in the outside environmental drug dealing, and where he also got arrested. While the author Wes Moore was getting educated by his grandparents and mother, the inmate was doing the opposite. Both Wes Moore’s moved to different towns. The author Wes got into trouble in school for painting graffiti on the walls. However, they differed in interest outside of being trouble makers at school. Wes, the author, liked playing basketball, and the inmate Wes enjoyed talking to the girls. Wes, the inmate, had a bad influence; his older brother. The inmate was following his older half-brother steps by becoming a drug dealer. Meanwhile, the author Wes only had a diversity of influential people surrounding him that he could admire. He grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar and business leader. However, the inmate, Wes Moore, is serving a life sentence in prison.

To say that Aileen’s start in life was a poor one, is a great understatement. It was a horrible life right from the start. One of the only good things about her life was that she never got to know her father, a psychopathic child molester, serving a life sentence in a Kansas prison for raping a 7 year old girl, who hanged himself in prison in 1969. (Arrigo & Griffin (2004).

Multiple criminological theories could be applied to this movie and deconstructed, however this essay will focus on two theories; Sutherland’s differential association theory and Agnew’s general strain theory. Both theories will be contrasted to explain how events and actions in an individual’s life can lead to delinquency. This essay will discuss the film Animal Kingdom and focus on main character Josh Cody, (J). In the beginning of the movie, J’s mother overdoses on heroin and he moves in with his grandmother and uncles (Michôd, 2010). The family is one of Melbourne’s most lucrative crime families and shortly after his arrival, J is quickly forced into participating in criminal activities. J’s behaviour throughout the film can both be explained through Agnew and Sutherland’s theories, however, in the end it is Agnew’s general strain theory that is more prominent and is what best explains J’s deviant behaviour.

The novel translates our problems into real life by showing us how people can, without knowing it, emotionally abuse others because of their lack of knowledge or decisions they have made. The main character Kate, in her adulthood, sees Matt (her older brother) as an unhappy man - because he was unable to follow through with his university dreams. Kate, later attends university expanding her knowledge past that of her brother Matt’s making her feel as if she cannot speak to him in the same way that she used to. At one point in her adulthood Kate said “He was waiting for me to go on, to describe my work to him, but I could not bring myself to do that” (Lawson 275). This connects with the subject matter of emotional abuse because Kate is hurting her older brother Matt. She does not realize that he wants to speak with her and have a relationship with her - she feels that because of her university education she cannot interact with him any more. In the real world many people face emotional abuse. People are ostracized for many reasons including level of intellect or the decisions they have made. Family members and close friends have changed their loved one’s lives because of their opinions on them. In the article Nature vs. Nurture: Mental Illness Triggered By Life Events And Not Through Genetics it is stated that “despite the fact that genetics can potentially influence the individual's mental health, traumatic events are still considered as the most influential factor”. The traumatic event of their parent’s dying resulted in Matt making bad decisions and then later not going university as a result. This caused the greatest tragedy in the novel; the loss of the relationship between Kate and Matt. Kate began to speak less with Matt and when she came to visit him he suffered from anxiety, lack of sleep, etc.. Kate stopped talking to Matt even though

In 1976, Wuornos hitchhiked to Florida, where she met 69-year-old yacht club president Lewis Gratz Fell. They married that same year, and the announcement of their nuptials was printed in the local newspaper's society pages. However, Wuornos continually involved herself in confrontations at their local bar and eventually went to jail for assault. She also hit Fell with his own cane, leading him to get a restraining order against her. She returned to Michigan[9][10] where, on July 14, 1976, she was arrested in Antrim County, Michigan, and charged with assault and disturbing the peace for throwing a cue ball at a bartender's head.[11] On July 17, her brother Keith died of esophageal cancer and Wuornos received $10,000 from his life insurance. Wuornos and Fell annulled their marriage on July 21 after only nine weeks.[12] In August 1976, Wuornos was given a $105 fine for drunk driving. She used her inheritance money that she had received from her late brother Keith the previous month to pay the fine and spent the rest of her inheritance money within two months by using it to buy luxuries including a new car, which she wrecked shortly afterwards.[13]

Aileen blamed herself for his death which took even more of a toll on her emotions. Shortly after her brother’s death at twenty years old Aileen met Lewis Fell. Lewis was a sixty nine year old man that Aileen married. The marriage only lasted a short time due to the fact he had to file for a divorce and restraining order against Aileen for beating him with his own cane on multiple occasions (Russell, 1992). She continued prostituting at this time but also began committing a number of other crimes including assault, battery and DUI. She was also would stay out all night drinking and spending money on gambling. Aileen never had a real job at any time in her life. She stuck to what she knew which was being a prostitute, stealing and coning people into giving her money, food, drugs or a place to stay. In 1981 Aileen robbed a Florida convenient store with a weapon for only $35 and two cartons of cigarettes (Arrigo and Griffin, 2004, p. 385). She was given two years in a Florida prison for this crime. Once released from prison Aileen developed a relationship with a female by the name of Tyria (Ty) Moore. Tyria was one of the only people in Aileen’s life that she ever truly loved beside her brother. Aileen and Ty were together for about four years the longest relationship Aileen was ever in. Although well dating Ty, Aileen spoke to her about how she would prostitute some thirty times a day to make money for the couple. The pair also committed various crimes together. At this point Aileen is about in her thirties and was not attracting the same type of men as she did when she was younger, this made her extremely angry because she was not getting as many dates. In 1989, Aileen began a killing spree which lasted a year and left seven men dead. Richard Mallory was Aileen’s first victim and also believed to be a psychological breaking point for Aileen. Aileen would pick up men on the highway or at truck

Louise Erdrich was born the first of seven children on June 7, 1954. Her mother was a Chippewa Native American and her father was German American (Fields). Erdrich was raised in Wahpeton, North Dakota where she was raised to value and preserve the Chippewa culture. Her family was considered eccentric by the community, and both of her parents taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school. Her grandfather Patrice Gourneau, Who was tribal Chair of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, taught her about the Chippewa culture and religion (ic.galegroup.com). After attending high school, Erdrich enrolled in Dartmouth College where she met fellow writer, Micheal Dorris, and in 1981, they married (school.ed.com). Dorris and Erdrich went on to write

Aileen Wuornos was one of the most dangerous serial killers in the United States, her victim count was 7 people that were murdered by being assaulted in a bloody state and left in a junkyard in Florida where police eventually found one of the bodies that she left after killing them and when months had pass more bodies were found in that area so tracing back to her because she didn’t cover the body properly and leaving fingerprints in the crime scene. In her life she didn’t have a normal or easy one like other people had because her life was based on violence and sexual confrontation, leading her into a dangerous state of mind. Let see where it all began for her, before the murders and before her imprisonment.

People are capable of doing crazy things! Nora, in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, loved her husband so much that she committed forgery just for the sake of his wellbeing. Susan Glaspell’s character in Trifles, Mrs. Wright, murders her husband after she discovers that he killed the one most precious thing to her, her pet bird. It was out of love that these women committed illegal crimes. Nora wanted her husband to be healthy because she loved him and knew that without his salary coming in, their home would fall apart. In contrast, Mrs. Wright wanted her husband dead. He was responsible for taking the life of the only company she had for many years. Mrs. Wright loved her pet bird more than she

mental state. These evidential factors all lead to emotional abuse, using the two women's illnesses as

While not a somatic assault, emotional abuse can cause lasting effects on a woman’s health, so much so that researcher, B. Van Houdenhove and others working on the project have found “that emotional abuse and neglect may be contributing factors to the development and/or severity of illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia” (Karakurt and Silver). Finally, emotional abuse is a rampant issue, Karakurt and Silver report that “Psychological aggression by an intimate partner was reported by 48.4% of women,” which was found in the National Intimate Partner & Sexual Violence Survey (“Emotional Abuse in Intimate Relationships: The Role of Gender and Age”). Nearly half of the population of women report being victims to psychological abuse, making it a widespread epidemic faced by not only women in dystopian novels but also real life. Psychological abuse can take many verbal and non-verbal forms, which can put great strain on a woman’s health, and affects nearly half the population of the United States.

This example reminded me of Cyntoia case of how bad she got treated by people, and how she was always getting into bad situations like her mother. Georgina is Cyntoias mother who was raped as well and was hurt by other men. Cyntoias biological side of her family was loaded with lots of psychiatric problems and with that it was passed onto her. This shows how she ended up the way her moms gene made her to be. Cyntoia and her mother had a lot of things in common and with that it showed how delinquency can be inherited. If a child has a bad family and lives in a horrible environment, then that child will likely end up like her mother. Cyntoias case showed me how genetics really do show us what we are gonna be or end up