Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists (Perspectives on Gender) by Diana Scully

Author:Diana Scully
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781135220341
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-10-17T22:00:00+00:00

Denying Rape

Research discussed in Chapter 3 described a “popular,” noncontroversial rape as one in which the assailant is a stranger and possesses a weapon, and, especially if the victim is injured, most people are willing to call it rape. On the other hand, when the victim violates traditional standards of gender role behavior by, for example, drinking, hitchhiking, or accepting a ride from someone met in a bar, some people, particularly men, are less likely to call subsequent sexual violence rape. Clearly, the key to justifying sexual violence to others is through accounts that make rape appear “controversial.” We also saw that admitters and deniers were strong believers in rape stereotypes and that force and violence were integral to the definitions of rape given by deniers. The manner in which deniers define and judge responsibility for rape, in general, should have an effect on the way they interpret their own crime.

It is also possible that the rapes committed by deniers actually did contain more socially defined controversial elements than the rapes committed by admitters.1 To explore this possibility, prison record presentence report descriptions of the two groups of crimes were compared.2 In contrast to 72 percent of admitters, 66 percent of deniers were strangers to their victims. A weapon and/or injury was present in 74 percent of admitters’ crimes, compared to 69 percent of deniers’ crimes, and 11 percent of admitters, in contrast to 6 percent of deniers, murdered their victims. When the victim voluntarily accepted a ride while hitchhiking or in a bar, the rape was coded as controversial. This situation described 6 percent of admitters’ crimes, compared to 22 percent of deniers’ crimes.

Other differences that might affect men’s willingness to define their behavior as rape were also examined. For instance, 43 percent of admitters, in contrast to 34 percent of deniers, were convicted of or admitted to more than one rape. Multiple convictions for a crime make justifying the behavior more difficult. Additionally, 23 percent of admitters, compared to 13 percent of deniers, had been convicted of a group rape, a situation relatively difficult to argue is normal and relatively easier to argue was someone else’s fault.

Systematic discrepancies also appeared when admitters’ and deniers’ personal accounts of their crimes were compared to the official versions.3 In general, admitters did not alter the facts of their cases, but they did understate the amount of physical force and violence they used to commit their crimes. Some deniers, however, did reconstruct events and change aspects of their crimes to make their guilt appear, at least, questionable. Of the 32 deniers’ rapes, according to the records, 11 were between acquaintances, but 15 men claimed during the interviews to be acquainted with their victims. The official accounts described 7 rapes in which the victim had engaged in “controversial” behavior, but, according to deniers’ accounts, this was true of 20 victims. Officially, weapons were present in 21 of the 32 rapes, but only 9 men acknowledged the presence of a weapon and only 2 of the 9 admitted it had been used to threaten the victim and gain compliance.

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