Professional intervention in sex crime : Policing and expert witnessing hetero- and homosexual sex crimes

This paper is part of a PhD project concerned with homosexuality and the occupation of the Netherlands by Germany. The project aims at determining the influence of the national-socialist regime change on the societal position of homosexuals - as Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940. The qualitative analysis of sex crime files calls for a gendered probing of the police officers' and medical expert witnesses' interpretations of sex crime. Were the different approaches towards heterosexual and homosexual suspects informed by specific notions of 'masculinity' and 'femininity'? Finally, how did these approaches affect the societal position of homosexuality?