All they need is an opportunity. In short, people who commit heinous, violent crimes always have experienced violence in their backgrounds. Only a fraction of abused children are later arrested for a violent crime. Some may repeat it, others may internalize it in the form of withdrawal or self-destruction. The countless studies of child abuse suggest that it makes a child worse off but that children differ in their reactions to it.
Men are vastly more aggressive and violently criminal than are women.
Part of this difference may be that boys are more likely to be abused than girls, but it is not likely that this difference can explain why men are at least 10 times as likely as females to be arrested for a violent crime. There is no evidence that they are 10 times as likely to be brutalized. Indeed, in state prisons, women report having been abused more often than do men. In his splendid presentation of Athens's work, Rhodes tries to apply it to several violent offenders, such as Mike Tyson, Perry Smith and Lee Harvey Oswald. But since he knows too little about these people, his accounts are ultimately unconvincing.