RAPE CRISIS SEMINAR:

RAPE: VICTIM AND OFFENDER

The following article describes a specific, highly psychological perspective which was presented at a rape workshop held February 1, 1978 and spon sored by the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, the CSU Division of Continuing Education, and Cleveland Area Citizens League for Nursing. The speakers were Ann Burgess, D.N.S.C., Professor of Nursing at Boston College School of Nursing and Chairperson of the National Rape AdulsoryBoard; and Nicholas Groth, Ph.D., Director of Forensic Mental Health Center, Harrington Memorial Hospital, Southbridge, Massachusetts.

Traditional mythology of the rapist uses the stereotypes of the all-American boy next door, victimized by a seductive woman; and the oversexed demented creature slinking in dark alleyways. Both ideas are based on the assumption that the rapist is responding to sexual desires and needs. Whether he is said to be motivated by either normal or perverted sexual drives, both the rapist's violence as well as his humanity are obscured when his actions are viewed in this way. Either deliberately or uninten. tionally, this misconception shifts the responsibility for rape onto the victim.

Current research on the perceptions, background and situations of both victim and rapist reveals that rape in fact expresses feelings about non-sexual issues, such as power and anger. We are learning that the rapist acts out defective human relation. ships through sexual channels.

Rape usually occurs as a "blitz attack" or through the "confidence game". In a blitz attack the rapist singles out his "mark" (target victim) based on two factors: her vulnerability and her accessibility. The rapist attacks suddenly and dramatically, taking his victim from behind in the outdoors or approaching her asleep in bed. In the confidence game, the rapist utilizes more verbal exchange as if to provide aid, or to gain her attention by catching her off guard. In the confidence game, the rapist also trades on estab. lished relationships, using trust as a way to secure the victim's accessibility.

Types of Rape

Two major categories of rape reflect the themes of eroticized power and anger. Although these categories do not mutually exclude one another, one usu-, ally predominates.

The "anger rape" utilizes the blitz style of attack. The rapist may recall feeling upset and uses deliberate violence and abusive language to retaliate or humiliate. The victim's moderate to severe physical injury (bruises, etc.) increases the likelihood of a sympathetic response from policepersons and emer. gency room personnel. This type of rape is commonly of short duration, and the victim is often elderly. At some level the rapist believes that sex is dirty and -attempts to prove himself by degrading his victim. The offense occurs spontaneously and impulsively, pointing out the "Jekyll-Hyde" nature of the anger rapist's personality.

The anger rapist hardly remembers his victim, who often symbolizes actual conflictual relationships (including male as well as female) in his life. He usually has cardboard perceptions of people, in which females are either virgins or "whores", and males are either "studs" or "queers". He usually has a history of reckless driving, theft, or wife battering with no charges pressed. The precipitating factor before the anger rape occurs includes some form of frustration, such as an argument or loss of employment.

The victim's psychological response to the assault involves shock and fear: "Why did this happen?" In the anger rape, the victim aims for sheer physical survival.

With careful interviewing, the anger rapist will page 6/What She Wants/February, 1978

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express a lifelong need to be tough, "to be a man", without ever feeling he received recognition for his actual accomplishments. In gang rapes this emo. tional, internal pressure to present a tough front is reinforced by external group pressure to comply by one-upping each other in the type of assault carried out.

The "sadistic rape", a subtype of the anger rape, receives much public attention (e.g., the Boston Strangler), but occurs rarely. The sadistic rape targets any age. The assault of extended duration and involves a high degree of intentional violence. Specific sexual injury as well as the risk of a lust

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murder is common. The rapist prepares himself with weapons used to torture and intended for murder if time permits. This eroticized form of anger escalates into brutal forms, i.e., the more violence, the more exciting the experience, and so on. The sadistic rapist retells his crime with a great sense of pleasure. He has lived out his premeditated rape in fantasy many times before the fact. His organized, usually bright mind plans his crime in ritual fashion. He uses abusive language to ter. rorize his victim, whose psychological response includes panic and horror, The rapist uses methods

of entrapment, such as kidnapping. The rape occurs either in blitz or confidence style.

If the assault becomes psychologically or physically overwhelming, the victim may wish she were dead or wonder if she will become insane. One rapist who suddenly decided not to murder his victim later explained that throughout the rape she appeared in complete control of herself. That he could not gain psychological control over her seemed to disenchant him. Prostitutes, who often symbolize for the sadistic rapist a feeling of rage and a fantasy of bondage, become frequent victims of this kind of assault. If the victim survives, she will require long-term, supportive counselling.

The "power rape" is the most common type, with target victims selected in peer age or younger than that of the rapist. He does not intend to injure. He repeatedly lives out his premeditated experience in fantasy. Throughout this compulsive thinking, the rape becomes a positive image of conquest, for which he will be rewarded with admiration by his victim for his sexual prowess. The power rapist believes that once his victim realizes how he excels sexually, she will submit to his desires. He thinks that the victim would never acknowledge her appreclation publicly because of damage to her reputation. The power rapist would never go to a prostitute because "a real man doesn't need to pay for sex". He feels a great sense of vulnerability and helplessness. He feels that women control him. He has frightening homosexual fantasies.

The power rapist uses a weapon to intimidate his victim and the confidence style of attack to overcome her. After the rape, he will often carry out a ritual known as "cooling out the mark," such as driving her around town for several hours, asking for a good. night kiss, and asking for another date under threat of a knife.

The victim generally escapes from the assailant

after the rape. She feels helpless, bewildered and often guilty, i.e.. "I should have done this instead." Since her physical injury ranges from minimal to absent altogether, the institutional response is often accusatory. Sometimes the victim will not identify the verbal exchange between the rapist and herself because institutional representatives, respond in ways which indicate they do not understand the rationale for her actions, i.e., How could you say that to him? Why did you go with him? Why didn't you scream? The victim finds herself in a psychological and legal bind, because her so-called compliant behavior with the rapist is used as evidence in court against her. The rape crisis or long-term counsellor needs to help the victim by using positive reinforcement, emphasizing that she did what she could at the time.

Even when prosecuted rapists undergo "rehabili tation in prison, they do not easily emphathize with their victims' plight. The prison structure generally isolates the rapist from women, children, alcohol and drugs; thus the rehabilitative process does not test out the rapist in his problematic environment. Those who are responsible for rehabilitation have little access to rape research since graduate programs in criminology pay little attention to the subject as a unique, complex and pathological condition In their interview, consellors often give minimal atten tion to the area of human sexuality while taking a history, particularly adolescent sexuality

Impact of Rape on the Victim

The impact of rape on the crisis victim disrupts several areas of her life: (1) rape-trauma physical symptoms; (2) psychological symptoms which are non-specific to rape but appear as crisis-oriented. similar to the bereavement reaction, i.e.. difficulty with appetite, sleep, concentration, mood swings. crying, restlessness, development of fears; (3) social impact on farmily and employers, both of whom are often uncomfortable and thus unsympathetic (this factor varies contextually, with a low-high value at tached to the event by different cultural groups or with compound psychological problems, in which rape is just one more crisis); and (4) sexual behavi oral change. The sexual response varies with the type of sexual activity practiced prior to the rape. About 50% of monogamous relationships are disrupted, at least temporarily. Acute rape-trauma symptoms include sexual aversion, flashbacks to rape or violent, non-rape situations, fears of death. physical pain, and orgasmic reactions.

Assaults Against Youth

The sexual assault of children and adolescents commonly reflects the offender's non-sexual issues of intimacy, adequacy, and confidence. The majority of these offenses occur between an offender and a victim who know one another, with about 14% hap-

pening among family members. The offender's age ranges from 14-73 years. Drug use is virtually nonexistent. One-half the population is married. Few of these offenders are psychotic. Since the sexual orientation of them is overwhelmingly heterosexual, the Anita Bryant myth should receive its final death blow. The offender usually "works" alone, remaining consistent in age range, sex type, and sexual activity. About one-third have a history of personal sexual trauma. While the rapist may have been