Beyond Postmortem Interval Estimation: The Use of Insects for the Investigation of Fatal Sexual Assaults

ABSTRACT Sexual assaults including unwanted sexual touching and rape are continuously occurring within England and Wales, despite police intervention. Furthermore, as seen within recent media reports, these types of offenses can occur immediately prior to homicide. National statistics report that sexual offenses are most commonly committed by biological males, and therefore it is possible that semen, a biological fluid ejaculated from male genitalia upon sexual arousal, will be present on the victim's body or clothing. As well‐researched throughout forensic entomology literature, it is known that forensically relevant insects are attracted to the early products of decomposition and the larvae they produce develop by feeding from those decaying remains, specifically the soft tissues. This allows them to develop through the predictable developmental stages of their lifecycle and makes them a useful tool to estimate the PMI min in death investigations. However, more recently the feeding habits of blowfly larvae have led to research being conducted surrounding the ability to obtain a victim's DNA profile from the content of the larvae's crop which stores all their recently consumed food. The positive findings of this for victim identification have led to current research being conducted surrounding the identification of offenders, specifically in cases of fatal sexual offenses where semen is present. Further research into the effects of the environment and semen persistence is required but the current literature demonstrates promising results for this application of entomology. This article is categorized under: Forensic Biology > Forensic Entomology