RAPE

A criminal offense defined in most states as forcible sexual relations with a person against that person's will.

Rape is the commission of unlawful sexual intercourse or unlawful sexual intrusion. Rape laws in the United States have been revised over the years, and they vary from state to state.

Historically, rape was defined as unlawful sexual intercourse with a woman against her will. The essential elements of the crime were sexual penetration, force, and lack of consent. Women who were raped were expected to have physically resisted to the utmost of their powers or their assailant would not be convicted of rape. Additionally, a husband could have sex with his wife against her will without being charged with rape. Beginning in the 1970s, state legislatures and courts expanded and redefined the crime of rape to reflect modern notions of equality and legal propriety.

As of the early 2000s, all states define rape without reference to the sex of the victim and the perpetrator. Though the overwhelming majority of rape victims are women, a woman may be convicted of raping a man, a man may be convicted of raping a man, and a woman may be convicted of raping another woman. Furthermore, a spouse may be convicted of rape if the perpetrator forces the other spouse to have nonconsensual sex. Many states do not punish the rape of a spouse as severely as the rape of a non-spouse.

Many states also have redefined lack of consent. Before the 1970s, many courts viewed the element of force from the standpoint of the victim. A man would not be convicted of rape of a competent woman unless she had demonstrated some physical resistance. In the absence of physical resistance, courts usually held that the sexual act was consensual. In the early 2000s in many states, the prosecution can prove lack of consent by presenting evidence that the victim objected verbally to the sexual penetration or sexual intrusion.

Lack of consent is a necessary element in every rape. But this qualifier does not mean that a person may make sexual contact with a minor or incapacitated person who actually consented. Lack of consent may result from either forcible compulsion by the perpetrator or an incapacity to consent on the part of the victim. Persons who are physically or mentally helpless or who are under a certain age in relation to the perpetrator are deemed legally incapable of consenting to sex.

Most states choose to label the crime of rape as sexual assault. Sexual assault is divided into degrees: first-, second-, third-, and fourth-degree sexual assault. West Virginia provides an illustration of how rape laws are typically written. In West Virginia, a person is guilty of sexual assault in the first degree when that person engages in sexual intercourse or sexual intrusion with another person and either inflicts serious bodily injury upon anyone or employs a deadly weapon in the commission of the act (W. Va. Code § 61-8B-3 [1996]). Additionally, a person age 14 years or older who engages in sexual intercourse or sexual intrusion with another person who is 11 years old or less is guilty of first-degree sexual assault. A person convicted of the crime of first-degree sexual assault in West Virginia faces imprisonment for at least 15 years and not more than 35 years and may be fined from $1,000 to $10,000.

In West Virginia, a person commits sexual assault in the second degree by engaging in sexual intercourse or sexual intrusion with another person without that person's consent, and the lack of consent results from forcible compulsion. Forcible compulsion is (1) physical force that overcomes such earnest resistance as might reasonably be expected under the circumstances; (2) threat or intimidation, either express or implied, placing the victim or another person in fear of death, bodily injury, or kidnapping; or (3) fear by a person under 16 years of age caused by intimidation by another person who is at least four years older than the victim.

Another way to commit second-degree sexual assault in West Virginia is to engage in sexual intercourse or sexual intrusion with someone who is physically helpless. The punishment for second-degree sexual assault is imprisonment for at least ten years but not more than 25 years and may include a fine of from $1,000 to $10,000.

New Approach to Treating Rape Victims

A woman who has been raped often encounters painful and humiliating procedures when she reports her sexual assault. She is sent to a hospital emergency room where she may wait a long time for a medical examination and the collection of evidence that is needed to convict a suspect. She often has little privacy while she waits. In addition, she is asked to tell her story of sexual assault several times.

The National Victim Center estimates that only 16 percent of rapes in the United States are reported each year. This low reporting rate can be attributed in part to the cold, impersonal reporting process and the rape victim's fear of appearing at the trial of the suspect.

A program called SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners), established in Tulsa, Oklahoma and several other U.S. cities, seeks to treat the emotional, physical, and legal needs of rape victims with greater consideration and sensitivity. In the SANE program, female nurses are trained to handle the physical examination of the victim and to obtain physical evidence using a sexual offense collection kit. In addition, the nurses are taught to interview the victim about the assault and to keep good records, which are critical to a successful criminal prosecution of the suspect.

Victims are seen in private rooms that are decorated to avoid the look of a sterile, hospital waiting room. The nurse examiner allows the victim to complete the examination at her own pace, in from one to five hours. A police officer is available to transport the evidence to headquarters, but is not allowed in the examining room.

Prosecutors have lauded the SANE program because its nurse examiners are better than emergency-room staff at confirming sexual contact and collecting evidence that shows the encounter was forcible rather than consensual.

SANE also gets credit for encouraging rape victims to agree to testify at the criminal trial of the suspect. It is believed that women who receive insensitive treatment during the initial stages of reporting a sexual assault do not want to proceed with prosecution. Because the SANE program treats victims with sympathy, care, and respect, women who have been examined through the program are more likely to agree to cooperate.

After the success of SANE in several cities and communities, other programs have also evolved. Several communities have developed a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART), which consists of community professionals who work jointly to minimize the trauma to victims of sexual assault when they seek medical or legal assistance. SART response teams coordinate their efforts to reduce the number of questions a victim must answer when law enforcement personnel and prosecutors collect evidence.

Members of a SART unit often consist of personnel from emergency departments and law enforcement offices. The effort is generally on a wider scale than SANE programs, and SANE and SART programs often work in conjunction with one another. Some communities have also developed programs involving Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners (SAFE), which essentially serve the same function as SANE programs.

In 2003, President george w. bush announced an initiative that would enhance the use of dna evidence to solve crimes. As part of this proposal, several million dollars would be appropriated to support training and educational materials for doctors and nurses involved in treating sexual assault victims. Included in this initiative is funding for SANE, SAFE, and SART programs.

further readings

SANE-SART Website. Available online at <www.sane-sart.com> (accessed January 30, 2004).

cross-references

Assault; Crimes; Sex Offenses; Women's Rights.

Third-degree sexual assault is committed when a person engages in sexual intercourse or sexual intrusion with another person who is mentally defective or mentally incapacitated, or when a person age 16 years or older has sex with a person who is less than 16 years old and is at least four years younger than the defendant. Third-degree sexual assault is punishable in West Virginia by at least one, but no more than five, years in prison and may include a fine of not more than $10,000.

The provisions that refer to the age of the victim and the perpetrator are called statutory rape provisions. Statutory rape sections punish the perpetrator without regard to the consent of the victim. Such laws are in place in all states to enforce the generally accepted notions that children are incapable of consenting to sex because of their youth and innocence and that sexual intercourse or intrusion of a child by an older person is socially unacceptable and harmful to the child. The term statutory rape also refers to the sections that punish sex with physically and mentally incapacitated persons, who are similarly unable to consent to sex.

Rape Shield Laws: Can They Be Fair?

Introduced in the 1970s, shield laws sought to revolutionize rape trials. By prohibiting the introduction of a rape victim's reputation or sexual history at trial, lawmakers removed one of the age-old stigmas that had prevented the successful prosecution of rapists and had kept women from bringing cases to court. Originally, the laws met with widespread acceptance. Two decades after their adoption by most states and the federal government, however, they have given rise to a debate in which neither side is satisfied with them. Advocates say they have not worked as well as desired. Opponents argue that their effect has been to deny defendants a fair trial. The legal future of these revolutionary laws hinges on a difficult question: how can courts protect victims without curtailing the rights of defendants?

The origin of shield laws is a response to the historical prosecution of rape. Most accusations of rape assert that the victim did not give sexual consent. At common law and in the present, the vast majority of rape cases have been tried in state courts before a jury. Traditionally, convictions have been notoriously hard to win. There is usually no evidence on the consent question other than the claims of the parties, making it difficult to prove lack of consent "beyond a reasonable doubt" as required in a criminal case. Hence, at trial, credibility is everything: if the accuser is not believable, the defendant is likely to be acquitted.

Defense attorneys typically challenge the accuser's credibility. For centuries, there was one effective path to such an end: to present evidence of the victim's past sexual behavior to undermine the present allegation. At common law, the victim's past sexual behavior was always considered relevant and admissible at trial. In this way, the law embodied social and moral values that put a high premium on a woman's sexuality. Conventional views of chastity regarded the sexually active woman as being promiscuous, and, in turn, promiscuity was thought to connote dishonesty. To cast doubt on the accuser's word and to show the likelihood of her having consented to sex with the defendant, defense attorneys commonly pursued evidence about her sexual life. If she had sex with men, or so the underlying belief went, how could she have been raped?

To combat these antiquated notions, rape shield laws arose through two significant developments. The sexual revolution of the 1960s dramatically changed social values regarding premarital sexual activity, and feminist legal theory became highly influential a decade later. Feminist critics attacked the premises on which the common-law origins of rape defenses were based. Their argument posed a question that only a generation earlier would have been widely dismissed: why should a woman's sexual history matter at all in relation to her claim of rape? Not only was such evidence irrelevant, they asserted, but harmful. Its use in court discouraged a woman from bringing a charge of rape because, in effect, she would be put on trial. Fearing a public assault on her reputation, a victim had a strong incentive not to report a rape. And when women were willing to undergo a barrage of intrusive questions, they often saw their claims mocked and their violators allowed to go free.

But for political success, passage of the laws required political support. Proponents won this support from conservative lawmakers. Although not generally known for embracing either the sexual revolution or feminist legal theory, these lawmakers backed the laws in state legislatures because they represented a solid law-and-order position. The idea that criminals sometimes improperly escape prosecution through the legal maneuvering of defense attorneys, and that the law should close such loopholes, had become a centerpiece of the conservative legal reform agenda by the 1970s. With this backing, rape shield laws were easily adopted. By the 1990s, all but two states had them.

By the late 1980s, however, some proponents were troubled. Shield laws had not lived up to expectations. Merely providing protections to victims had not been enough to change longstanding social and legal habits. In 1987 the national organization for women and twenty-five other groups reported that gender bias against women litigants was still pervasive in courtrooms. As a result, women's testimony was accorded less credibility by judges and attorneys. Also, defense attorneys continued to introduce evidence that the shield laws were designed to bar. They could succeed if the evidence was introduced creatively, chiefly because state laws left judges wide discretion and unclear direction on what to admit as evidence. While seeking to tighten the admission of evidence in general, some shield law proponents wanted the laws strengthened to exclude even more kinds of evidence, such as the type of clothing a victim was wearing at the time of an assault.

In addition to such obstacles, various exceptions weakened rape shield laws. In particular, they provided little or no protection if the victim knew her assailant. Most state statutes allowed the admission of evidence about a past sexual relationship between the accuser and the defendant, and therefore defense attorneys often attempted to persuade juries that there had been such a relationship. Behavior by a woman that was even slightly indicative of a past sexual relationship with her assailant would work against her at trial.

By the 1990s a backlash against the laws developed. Defense attorneys, law professors, and civil liberties activists maintained that the laws were unfair to criminal defendants. They had two main arguments: restrictions on the admission of evidence undermined the defense attorney's goal of providing the best defense, and more significantly, such restrictions deprived the defendant of his sixth amendment right to a full defense, including confronting his accuser and presenting witnesses in his favor. Many opponents of shield laws acknowledged that women face traditional obstacles in rape prosecutions but saw the laws as a poor remedy if they denied defendants due process and sent the innocent to jail.

Among leading opponents of shield laws was alan m. dershowitz, the celebrated Harvard law professor and criminal appellate lawyer. Dershowitz unsuccessfully appealed the 1991 rape conviction of former boxing champion Mike Tyson to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. Dershowitz argued that the trial court had unconstitutionally barred admission of evidence that would have acquitted Tyson: allegations that his accuser, a nineteen-year-old woman, had previously falsely accused another man of rape to avoid angering her father about her sexual activity. Because such evidence related to the victim's past sexual history, it was ruled inadmissible. In the view of Dershowitz and other opponents, such evidence should be allowed because it can reveal an accuser's motive to lie about consensual sex with a defendant. Frustrating these critics is the fact that appellate courts have consistently upheld shield laws, despite finding that some trial courts have applied the laws unconstitutionally.

From early enthusiasm to increasing skepticism, rape shield laws have endured a difficult quarter century since their passage. Their intention was to remove barriers that prevented women from reporting rape and winning convictions. Both proponents and opponents believe reform is needed, yet they disagree on what form it should take. Proponents want to strengthen shield laws to increase protections for women. But opponents counter that the laws are already strongly biased against defendants, depriving them of fundamental liberties.

cross-references

Dershowitz, Alan Morton; Due Process of Law; Sixth Amendment.

Rape or sexual assault statutes carefully define the type of contact that constitutes rape. In Hawaii, for example, the term sexual penetration is defined as "vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, fellatio, cunnilingus, analingus, deviate sexual intercourse, or any intrusion of any part of a person's body or of any object into the genital or anal opening of another person's body … however slight." Sexual contact is "any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person … or of the sexual or other intimate parts of the actor by the person, whether directly or through the clothing or other material intended to cover the sexual or other intimate parts" (Haw. Rev. Stat. § 707-700 [1996]).

Most states punish lesser sexual intrusions with statutes on sexual abuse. Like sexual assault statutes, sexual abuse statutes are divided into degrees based on the nature of the contact. Sexual abuse consists of nonconsensual sexual contact with another person. Lack of consent is present if the victim is a minor or physically helpless or if the victim was forcibly compelled to consent to the contact. A person convicted of sexual abuse may be fined and sentenced to a term in jail or prison. Because the crime does not involve penetration, the punishment for sexual abuse is less than that authorized for persons convicted of sexual assault.

A few states have eliminated the requirement that a competent adult rape victim physically resist the attacker. Physical resistance in some rape situations presents a greater danger to the victim. The states that have eliminated the physical requirement have found it to be unfair to

require physical resistance on the part of the victim if such resistance risks greater injury. In Michigan, for example, force or coercion "includes but is not limited to" several situations, including where the actor coerces the victim through threats of force or violence and the victim believes that the actor can carry out the threats and where the actor physically overcomes the victim through the actual application of physical force (Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 750.520a [West 1996]). Nowhere in Michigan's rape statutes is consent based on an analysis of the victim's physical resistance.

The states that have not eliminated physical resistance as a test for lack of consent have declined to do so for fear of convicting an adult who has sex with another adult without the knowledge that he or she is not consenting. Nevertheless, even in a state that has not eliminated the physical resistance requirement for competent adults, if the victim says "No" or otherwise verbally indicates lack of consent, the perpetrator still may be convicted of rape. This point reflects the fact that prosecutors have argued, and appeals courts have agreed, that some amount of force, no matter how slight, should be sufficient to fulfill the forcible compulsion element. The sexual penetration of a competent adult, for example, may be enough force to meet a forcible compulsion requirement, if the victim indicated a lack of consent.

Most states have so-called rape shield laws. These laws restrict or prohibit the use of evidence respecting the sexual history of rape victims and the victims of other sexual offenses. Before the enactment of rape shield laws in the 1970s and 1980s, rape trials often focused on the chastity of the victim to determine whether the victim was actually raped. Rape shield laws keep the focus of a rape prosecution on the actions of the defendant rather than the prior actions of the alleged victim.

further readings

Bachman, Ronet, and Raymond Paternoster. 1993. "A Contemporary Look at the Effects of Rape Law Reform: How Far Have We Really Come?" Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 84 (fall).

Bopst, Christopher. 1998. "Rape Shield Laws and Prior False Accusations of Rape: The Need for Meaningful Legislative Reform." Journal of Legislation 24 (winter).

Brownmiller, Susan. 1975. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Morgan, Jack M. 1993. "Rape Shields, Criminal Discovery Rules, and the Price We Pay in Pursuit of the Truth." Utah Law Review (spring).

Reddington, Frances P., and Betsy Wright Kreisel, eds. 2003. Sexual Assault: The Victims, the Perpetrators, and the Criminal Justice System. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press.

Scalo, Rosemary J. 1995. "What Does 'No' Mean in Pennsylvania?—The Pennsylvania Supreme Court's Interpretation of Rape and the Effectiveness of the Legislature's Response." Villanova Law Review 40 (January).

Taslitz, Andrew E. 1999. Rape and the Culture of the Courtroom. New York: New York Univ. Press.

Thornhill, Randy, and Craig T. Palmer. 2000. A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Boston: MIT.

Tilley, Cristina Carmody. 2002. "A Feminist Repudiation of the Rape Shield Laws." Drake Law Review 51 (October).

Wallach, Shawn J. 1997. "Rape Shield Laws: Protecting the Victim at the Expense of the Defendant's Constitutional Rights." New York Law School Journal of Human Rights 97 (winter).

cross-references

Assault; Child Abuse; Coercion; Domestic Violence; Feminist Jurisprudence; Husband and Wife; Statutory Rape.

Rape and Sexual Assault

Definition

The various definitions of rape range from the broad (coercing a person to engage in any sexual act) to the specific (forcing a woman to submit to sexual intercourse). The United States Code includes the crime of rape under the more comprehensive term "sexual abuse." Two types of sexual assault are defined in the code: sexual abuse and aggravated sexual abuse. Sexual abuse includes acts in which an individual is forced to engage in sexual activity by use of threats or other fear tactics, or instances in which an individual is physically unable to decline. Aggravated sexual abuse occurs when an individual is forced to submit to sexual acts by use of physical force; threats of death, injury, or kidnapping; or substances that render that individual unconscious or impaired.

Description

Many misconceptions exist about rape and sexual assault. It is often assumed that rape victims are all women who have been attacked by a total stranger and forced into having sexual intercourse. In reality, sexual assault can take many forms—it may be violent or nonviolent; the victim may be male or female, child or adult; the offender may be a stranger, relative, friend, authority figure, or spouse.

The number of sexual assaults reported depends on how those abuses are defined. The United States Code uses two terms to distinguish between different sexual activities:

• Sexual act: contact between penis and vagina or penis and anus that involves penetration; contact between the mouth and genitals or anus; penetration of the vagina or anus with an object; or direct touching (not through clothing) of the genitals of an individual under the age of 16.
• Sexual contact: intentional touching of the genitals, breasts, buttocks, anus, inner thigh, or groin with no sexual penetration.

National statistics

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports, there were 95,136 forcible rapes reported to United States law enforcement agencies in 2002. Sixty-five out of every 100,000 women were reported to be victims of rape that year, up 4.7% from 2001 but down 3.9% from 1998. The actual number of rapes and sexual assaults, however, is in reality much larger; estimates of unreported rape range between 2 and 10 times the number reported to law enforcement. The National Violence Against Women Survey, jointly sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and conducted in the mid-1900s, found that one in six women (18%) and one in 33 men (3%) has experienced an attempted or completed rape. The survey estimated that approximately 17,722,672 women and 2,782,440 men in the United States have been raped or have had rape attempted as a child or adult, and that 302,091 women and 92,748 men were raped in the 12 months prior to the study.

There are numerous reasons why the majority of sexual assaults are never reported. Often the victim fears retaliation from the offender. He or she may be afraid of family, friends, the community, or the media learning about the offense. There may be a concern about being judged or blamed by others. The victim may think that no one will believe the assault occurred.

What To Do If You Are Raped

Don't bathe

Don't blame yourself

Retain all evidence

Get examined

Consider the "morning-after" pill

THE VICTIMS. The 2000 "Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics," published by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ), analyzed sexual assault data collected by law enforcement agencies over a five-year span. The following characteristics were found to be significant among victims of sexual assault:

• Age: Over two-thirds of reported victims of sexual assault were juveniles under the age of 18. Twelve to 18 year olds represented the largest group of victims at 33%; 20% were between the ages of six and 11; children less than five years old and adults between 18 and 24 years of age each constituted 14% of victims; 12% were between the ages of 25 and 34; and 7% were over the age of 34. Persons over the age of 54 represented 1% of all victims. One out of every seven victims surveyed in the study were under the age of six.
• Gender: Females were more than six times more likely to be a victim of sexual assault then males; more than 86% of victims were females. The great majority (99%) of the victims of forcible rapes were women, while men constituted the majority (54%) of the victims of forcible sodomy (oral or anal intercourse). Females are most likely to be the victim of sexual assault at age 14, while males are at most risk at age four.
• Location: The residence of the victim was the most commonly noted location of sexual assault (70%). Other common locations included schools, hotels/motels, fields, woods, parking lots, roadways, and commercial/office buildings.
• Weapons: A personal weapon (hands, feet, or fists) was used in 77% of cases. No weapon was noted in 14% of assaults; other weapons (knifes, clubs, etc.) were used in 6% of cases. Firearms were involved in only 2% of assaults.

THE OFFENDERS. Similar statistics were gathered by the NCJJ regarding the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault. These characteristics included:

• Age: Over 23% of offenders were under the age of 18; juveniles were more likely to be perpetrators of forcible sodomy and fondling. The remaining 77% of offenders were adults and were responsible for 67% of juvenile victims. For younger juvenile victims (under the age of 12), juvenile offenders were responsible for approximately 40% of assaults.
• Gender: The great majority of all reported offenders were male (96%). The number of female offenders rose for victims under the age of six (12%), in contrast to 6% for victims aged six through 12, 3% for victims aged 12 through 17, and 1% for adult victims.
• Relationship with offender: Approximately 59% of offenders were acquaintances of their victims, compared to family members (27%) or strangers (14%). Family members were more likely to be perpetrators against juveniles (34%) than against adults (12%). In contrast, strangers accounted for 27% of adult victims and 7% of juveniles.
• Past offenses: In 19% of juvenile cases, the victim was not the only individual to be assaulted by the offender, compared to only 4% of adult cases.

Consequences

Victims of sexual assault may sustain a range of injuries; male victims are more likely than females to suffer severe physical trauma. The National Women's Study, funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, found that more than 70% of rape victims report no physical injuries as a result of their assault; only 4% sustain serious injuries that require hospitalization. At least 49% of victims, however, state that they feared severe injuries or death during their assault. Fatalities occur in approximately 0.1% of rape cases.

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are a source of concern for many victims of sexual assault. The most commonly transmitted diseases are gonorrhea (caused by Neisseria gonorrhoeae ), chlamydia (caused by Chlamydia trachomatis ), trichomoniasis ) (caused by Trichomonas vaginalis ), and genital warts (caused by human papillomavirus). Syphilis (caused by Treponema pallidum ) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are also noted among some sexual assault victims. The transmission rate of STDs is estimated to be between 3.6% and 30% of rapes.

According to the National Women's Study, approximately 5% of adult female rape victims become pregnant as a result of their assault, leading to 32,100 pregnancies a year among women 18 years of age or older. Approximately 50% of pregnant rape victims had an abortion, 6% put the child up for adoption, and 33% kept the child (the remaining pregnancies resulted in miscarriage ).

MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS. Also known as rape trauma syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health disorder that describes a range of symptoms often experienced by someone who has undergone a severely traumatic event. Approximately 31% of rape victims develop PTSD as a result of their assault; victims are more than six times more likely to develop PTSD than women who have not been victimized.

The symptoms of PTSD include:

• recurrent memories or flashbacks of the incident
• nightmares
• insomnia
• mood swings
• difficulty concentrating
• panic attacks
• emotional numbness
• depression
• anxiety

Common Misconceptions Of Males Perpetrating Date Rape

Since I took her out and paid for the date, she should have sex with me.

When she says no, she really means yes.

If she's aroused, she wants to have sex.

She wouldn't go parking with me if she didn't want to have sex.

If she didn't wan to have sex, why did she let me go as far as she did?

If she gets me erect, then it's her responsibility to do something about it.

She's slept with other people, so she should sleep with me.

We've had sex before, and she didn't say no then.

Persons who have been sexually assaulted have also been noted to have increased risk for developing other mental health problems. Over those who have not been victimized, rape victims are:

• three times more likely to have a major depressive episode
• four times more likely to have contemplated suicide
• thirteen times more likely to develop alcohol dependency problems
• twenty-six times more likely to develop drug abuse problems

Treatment

Once a victim of sexual assault reports the crime to local authorities, calls a rape crisis hotline, or arrives at the emergency room to be treated for injuries, a multidisciplinary team is often formed to address his or her physical, psychological, and judicial needs. This team usually includes law enforcement officers, physicians, nurses, mental health professionals, victim advocates, and/or prosecutors.

The victim of sexual assault may continue to feel fear and anxiety for some time after the incident, and in some instances this may significantly impact his or her personal or professional life. Follow-up counseling should therefore be provided for the victim, particularly if symptoms of PTSD become evident.

Forensic medical examination

Because rape is a crime, there are certain requirements for medical evaluation of the patient and for record keeping. The forensic medical examination is an invaluable tool for collecting evidence against a perpetrator that may be admissible in court. Since the great majority of victims know their assailant, the purpose of the medical examination is often not to establish identity but to establish nonconsensual sexual contact. The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program is an effective model that is used in many United States hospitals and clinics to collect and document evidence, evaluate and treat for STDs and pregnancy, and refer victims to follow-up medical care and counseling. The "Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Development and Operation Guide," prepared by the Sexual Assault Resource Service, describes the ideal protocol for collecting evidence from a sexual assault victim. This includes:

• performing the medical examination within 72 hours of the assault
• taking a history of the assault
• documenting the general health of the victim, including menstrual cycle, potential allergies, and pregnancy status
• assessment for trauma and taking photographic evidence of injuries
• taking fingernail clippings or scrapings
• taking samples for sperm or seminal fluid
• combing head/pubic hair for foreign hairs, fibers, and other substances
• collection of bloody, torn, or stained clothing
• taking samples for blood typing and DNA screening

Prevention

STD Prevention

While the concern of sexual assault victims of contracting an STD is often high, the actual risk of transmission is relatively low; the CDC estimates that the risk of contracting gonorrhea from an offender is between 6% and 12%, chlamydia between 4% and 17%, syphilis between 0.5% and 3%, and HIV less than 1%. Nonetheless, post-exposure prophylaxis (preventative treatment) against certain STDs is often provided for the victim. Treatment with zidovudine, for example, is recommended for individuals who are at a high risk of exposure to HIV. The CDC recommends the following prophylactic regimen be provided for victims of sexual assaults in which vaginal, oral, or anal penetration took place:

• a single dose of ceftriaxone, an antibiotic effective against Neisseria gonorrhoeae
• a single dose of metronidazole, an antibiotic effective against Trichomonas vaginalis
• a single dose of azithromycin or doxycycline, antibiotics effective against Chlamydia trachomatis
• inoculation with the post-exposure hepatitis B vaccine

In some instances, cultures may be taken during the medical examination and at time points afterward to test for gonorrhea or chlamydia. It is important that the victim receive information regarding the symptoms of STDs and be counseled to return for further examination if any of these symptoms occur.

Pregnancy prevention

Female victims at risk for becoming pregnant after an assault should be counseled on the availability of emergency contraception. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), emergency contraception is not effective if there is no pregnancy but works to prevent pregnancy from occurring by delaying or preventing ovulation, by affecting the transport of sperm, and/or by thinning the inner layer of the uterus (endometrium) so that implantation is prevented. It is therefore not a form of abortion.

A number of options are available for women if they choose to use emergency contraceptives to prevent pregnancy following a sexual assault. The Yupze regimen uses two oral contraceptive pills that contain both of the hormones estrogen and progestin. The risk of pregnancy is reduced by 75% after use of the Yupze regimen, reducing the average number of pregnancies after unprotected sex from eight in 100 to two in 100. Progestin-only oral contraceptives are also available and reduce the risk of pregnancy by 89% to 95%.

KEY TERMS

Aggravated sexual abuse— When an individual is forced to submit to sexual acts by use of physical force; threats of death, injury, or kidnapping; or substances that render that individual unconscious or impaired.

Forcible sodomy— Forced oral or anal intercourse.

Forensic— Pertaining to or used during legal proceedings.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)— Also known as rape trauma syndrome; a mental health disorder that describes a range of symptoms often experienced by someone who has undergone a severely traumatic event.

Sexual abuse— When an individual is forced to engage in sexual activity by use of threats or other fear tactics, or instances in which an individual is physically unable to refuse.

Sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE)— A registered nurse who is trained to collect and document evidence from a sexual assault victim, evaluate and treat for STDs and pregnancy, and refer victims to follow-up medical care and counseling.

Yupze regimen— A form of emergency contraception in which two oral contraceptive pills that contain both of the hormones estrogen and progestin are taken to prevent pregnancy.

Resources

BOOKS

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed., revised. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

Beers, Mark H., MD, and Robert Berkow, MD., editors. "Medical Examination of the Rape Victim." Section 18, Chapter 244 In The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. Whitehouse Station, NJ: Merck Research Laboratories, 2004.

Beers, Mark H., MD, and Robert Berkow, MD., editors. "Psychosexual Disorders." Section 15, Chapter 192 In The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. Whitehouse Station, NJ: Merck Research Laboratories, 2004.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States—2002. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2003.

PERIODICALS

Brewin, C. R., and E. A. Holmes. "Psychological Theories of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder." Clinical Psychology Review 23 (May 2003): 339-376.

Bushman, B. J., A. M. Bonacci, M. van Dijk, and R. F. Baumeister. "Narcissism, Sexual Refusal, and Aggression: Testing a Narcissistic Reactance Model of Sexual Coercion." Journal of Personal and Social Psychology 84 (May 2003): 1027-1040.

Frazier, P. A. "Perceived Control and Distress Following Sexual Assault: A Longitudinal Test of a New Model." Journal of Personal and Social Psychology 84 (June 2003): 1257-1269.

Koss, M. P., K. J. Bachar, and C. Q. Hopkins. "Restorative Justice for Sexual Violence: Repairing Victims, Building Community, and Holding Offenders Accountable." Annals of the New York Academy of Science 989 (June 2003): 384-396.

Reynolds, Matthew W., Jeffery Peipert, and Beverly Collins. "Epidemiologic Issues of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Sexual Assault Victims." Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey 55 (January 2000): 51-57.

ORGANIZATIONS

American Psychiatric Association (APA). 1400 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005. (888) 357-7924. 〈http://www.psych.org〉.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. J. Edgar Hoover Building, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20535-0001. (202) 324-3000. 〈http://www.fbi.gov〉.

Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network. 635-B Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20003. (800) 656-HOPE.

United States Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime. 810 7th Street NW, Washington, DC 20531.

OTHER

Kilpatrick, Dean G., Anna Whalley, and Christine Edmunds. "Sexual Assault." In 2000 National Victim Assistance Academy Textbook, edited by Anne Seymour, Morna Murray, Jane Sigmon, Christine Edmunds, Mario Gaboury, and Grace Coleman. October 2000.

Ledray, Linda E. "Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Development and Operation Guide." Sexual Assault Resource Service. August 1999.

"National Crime Victim's Rights Week: Resource Guide." U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime. April 2001.

"Rape Fact Sheet: Prevalence and Incidence." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. February 10, 2000.

Snyder, Howard N. "Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement: Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics." National Center for Juvenile Justice. July 2000.

Rape and sexual assault

Definition

Rape and sexual assault are crimes that involve the use of threats, fear tactics, and/or physical violence to force a child or adolescent to submit to sexual intercourse or to engage in other sexual activity (e.g., oral sex, anal sex).

Description

Rape and sexual assault are violent crimes, and children and adolescents constitute a large number of the victims of these crimes. Rape and sexual assault are defined according to the degree of sexual interaction. Rape and sexual assault can involve contact between the penis and vagina or penis and anus that involves penetration; contact between the mouth and genitals or anus; penetration of the vagina or anus with an object; or direct touching (not through clothing). Sexual assault is defined as intentional touching of the genitals, breasts, buttocks, anus, inner thigh, or groin with no sexual penetration that is forced upon the victim. Rape and sexual assault that recurs is considered sexual abuse. When the perpetrator is a family member, these crimes are also referred to as incest.

Rape and sexual assault are especially traumatic for children and adolescents, who often do not fully understand normal sexual activity. Studies and statistics have shown that adolescence is the riskiest life stage for sexual assault, and the time when the most psychological trauma can result.

Demographics

The 2000 Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics, published by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ), analyzed sexual assault data collected by law enforcement agencies over a five-year span. The following characteristics were found to be significant among victims of sexual assault:

• Age: Over two-thirds of reported victims of sexual assault were juveniles under the age of 18. Adolescents aged 12 to 18 years represented the largest group of victims at 33 percent; 20 percent were between the ages of six and 11; children younger than five years old and adults between 18 and 24 years of age each constituted 14 percent of victims. One out of every seven victims surveyed in the study was under the age of six.
• Gender: Females were more than six times more likely to be a victim of sexual assault than males; more than 86 percent of victims were females. The great majority (99%) of the victims of forcible rapes were women, while men constituted the majority (54%) of the victims of forcible sodomy (oral or anal intercourse). Females are most likely to be the victim of sexual assault at age 14, while males are at most risk at age four.
• Location: The residence of the victim was the most commonly noted location of sexual assault (70%). Other common locations included schools, hotels/motels, fields, woods, parking lots, roadways, and commercial/office buildings.

Similar statistics were gathered by the NCJJ regarding the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault. These characteristics included the following:

• Age: Over 23 percent of offenders were under the age of 18; juveniles were more likely to be perpetrators of forcible sodomy and fondling. The remaining 77 percent of offenders were adults and were responsible for 67 percent of juvenile victims. For younger juvenile victims (under the age of 12), juvenile offenders were responsible for approximately 40 percent of assaults.
• Gender: The great majority of all reported offenders were male (96%). The number of female offenders rose for victims under the age of six (12%), in contrast to 6 percent for victims aged six through 12, 3 percent for victims aged 12 through 17, and 1 percent for adult victims.
• Relationship with offender: Approximately 59 percent of offenders were acquaintances of their victims, compared to family members (27%) or strangers (14%). Family members were more likely to be perpetrators against juveniles (34%) than against adults (12%). In contrast, strangers accounted for 27 percent of adult victims and 7 percent of juveniles.
• Past offenses: In 19 percent of juvenile cases, the victim was not the only individual to be assaulted by the offender, compared to only 4 percent of adult cases.

Of particular importance are the number of rapes and sexual assaults that go unreported, especially in adolescents. Although one in five sexual assault reports occurs for adolescents between 12 and 17 years of age, and adolescents between ages 16 and 19 years have the highest rate of reported sexual assault, anonymous school surveys have revealed that only 5 percent of sexually assaulted adolescents actually report the crime to law enforcement.

When to call the doctor

Many children and adolescents are reluctant to report rape and sexual assault for a number of reasons. Often the victim fears retaliation from the offender. He or she may be afraid that family, friends, the community, or the media may learn about the offense. There may be a concern about being judged or blamed by others. The victim may think that no one will believe the assault occurred or that they were somehow at fault. Unreported rape and sexual assault are especially common when the offender is known to the victim, such as a family member or respected member of the community (e.g., clergy, teacher).

Parents who suspect that their child or adolescent has been raped or sexually assaulted should take the child to see a doctor and psychologist or psychiatrist. Signs that a child or adolescent may have been raped or sexually assaulted include shying away from physical affection, unexplained bleeding from the rectum and/or vagina, bruising around the breasts and genitals, and hiding or throwing away undergarments. Any child or adolescent who is raped or sexually assaulted should be taken to an emergency room immediately so that evidence against the perpetrator can be gathered, and medical treatment can be given.

Diagnosis

Rape and sexual assault are diagnosed by interviewing the patient and parents, physical and gynecological examination, and laboratory tests for the presence of seminal fluid. In many cases, children or adolescents do not report the rape or sexual assault, but they do show obvious signs of physical violence. When rape is suspected, diagnosis may be made by a psychiatrist or psychologist based on sessions with the victim. In cases where obvious signs of the crime are not visible, and immediate treatment is not received, the victim may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), also known as rape trauma syndrome, which is a mental health disorder that describes a range of symptoms often experienced by someone who has undergone a severely traumatic event. In such cases, diagnosis of rape or sexual assault is revealed through therapy sessions for PTSD.

Approximately 31 percent of rape victims develop PTSD as a result of their assault. The symptoms of PTSD include:

• recurrent memories or flashbacks of the incident
• nightmares
• insomnia
• mood swings
• difficulty concentrating
• panic attacks
• emotional numbness
• depression
• anxiety

Treatment

Once a victim of rape or sexual assault reports the crime to local authorities, calls a rape crisis hotline, or arrives at the emergency room to be treated for injuries, a multidisciplinary team is often formed to address his or her physical, psychological, and judicial needs. This team usually includes law enforcement officers, physicians, nurses, mental health professionals, victim advocates, and/or prosecutors.

The victim may continue to feel fear and anxiety for some time after the incident, and in some instances this may significantly impact his or her personal and academic life. Follow-up counseling should, therefore, be provided for the victim, particularly if symptoms of PTSD become evident.

Forensic medical examination

Because rape is a crime, there are certain requirements for medical evaluation of the patient and for record keeping. The forensic medical examination is an invaluable tool for collecting evidence against a perpetrator that may be admissible in court. Since the great majority of victims know their assailant, the purpose of the medical examination is often not to establish identity but to establish nonconsensual sexual contact. The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program is an effective model that is used in many U.S. hospitals and clinics to collect and document evidence, evaluate and treat for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and pregnancy, and refer victims to follow-up medical care and counseling. Many nurse examiners are specially trained to handle cases that involve children and adolescents. The "Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Development and Operation Guide," prepared by the Sexual Assault Resource Service, describes the ideal protocol for collecting evidence from a sexual assault victim. This protocol includes the following:

• performing the medical examination within 72 hours of the assault
• taking a history of the assault
• documenting the general health of the victim, including menstrual cycle, potential allergies , and pregnancy status
• assessing for trauma and taking photographic evidence of injuries
• taking fingernail clippings or scrapings
• taking samples for sperm or seminal fluid
• combing head/pubic hair for foreign hairs, fibers, and other substances
• collecting bloody, torn, or stained clothing
• taking samples for blood typing and DNA screening

After evidence is collected, rape victims are treated with appropriate medical care for their injuries. In female children and adolescents, vaginal tears and injuries may require suturing; in male children and adolescents, anal tears and injuries are common and may require suturing and other treatment.

Prognosis

Children and adolescents who have been raped or sexually assaulted are three times more likely to experience another rape in adulthood. Victims of rape and sexual assault who report their attack greater than one month afterwards are more likely to suffer from PTSD, mood swings, and major depression than victims who report their attack immediately, most likely because victims who report their attacks immediately receive appropriate interventional care, particularly mental health support and counseling. For adolescents, untreated rape and sexual assault can result in serious long-term psychological effects. One in 10 sexually assaulted adolescents attempt suicide , and about 50 percent are diagnosed with phobias , depression, substance abuse, and other psychological disorders. Compared to those who have never been victimized, rape victims are three times more likely to have a major depressive episode, four times more likely to have contemplated suicide, 13 times more likely to develop alcohol dependency problems, and 26 times more likely to develop substance abuse problems. In addition, school performance in many sexually assaulted adolescents declines, and many eventually fail academically. Even when treated, rape and sexual assault can cause poor self-esteem , sexual dysfunction and impaired sexual and personal relations, insomnia, anxiety, eating disorders, and other psychological symptoms that last into adulthood.

Lasting psychological trauma is especially serious in male children and adolescents who are raped or sexually assaulted. Young boys may be more reluctant to discuss their attack and may harbor feelings of resentment and anxiety over potential homosexuality . Assaulted young boys may, in turn, commit sexual assault themselves in the future. Appropriate psychological therapy is necessary for improved long-term outcomes.

Prevention

Usually, rape and sexual assault cannot be prevented, and it is important that children and adolescents, who often think they are at fault after an attack, be told that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the attack. However, measures to reduce the likelihood of a rape or sexual assault and to increase the chances of an assailant being caught can be taken:

• Children and adolescents can be instructed on safety and strangers and inappropriate touching, and the importance of telling parents about any uncomfortable situation.
• Parents can monitor social activities, particularly for older adolescents, who may attend events (e.g., parties with no adult supervision) without their parents' knowledge.
• Adolescents can be educated about "date-rape" drugs and methods to prevent their consumption (e.g., never leaving drinks unattended at a party). And they can be informed about the dangers of alcohol consumption.
• Parents can encourage open communication regarding normal sexual development and activity and emphasize the importance of saying no in compromising or uncomfortable situations.

Sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention

STDs are a source of concern for many victims of sexual assault. The most commonly transmitted diseases are gonorrhea, chlamydia, genital warts , and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)/human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). STDs are transmitted in up to 30 percent of rapes. Treatment involves antibiotics and antiviral medications, depending on the STD. In some instances, cultures may be taken during the medical examination and at time point afterward to test for gonorrhea or chlamydia. It is important that the victim receive information regarding the symptoms of STDs and be counseled to return for further examination if any of these symptoms occur.

Pregnancy prevention

Female adolescents at risk of becoming pregnant after an assault should be counseled on the availability of emergency contraception . According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), emergency contraception (in the form of a course of pills) is not effective if there is a pregnancy but works to prevent pregnancy from occurring by delaying or preventing ovulation, by affecting the transport of sperm, and/or by thinning the inner layer of the uterus (endometrium) so that implantation is prevented.

KEY TERMS

Aggravated sexual abuse —When an individual is forced to submit to sexual acts by use of physical force; threats of death, injury, or kidnapping; or substances that render that individual unconscious or impaired.

Forcible sodomy —Forced oral or anal intercourse.

Forensic —Pertaining to courtroom procedure or evidence used in courts of law.

Incest —Unlawful sexual contact between persons who are biologically related. Many therapists, however, use the term to refer to inappropriate sexual contact between any members of a family, including stepparents and stepsiblings.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) —A disorder that occurs among survivors of extremely stressful or traumatic events, such as a natural disaster, an airplane crash, rape, or military combat. Symptoms include anxiety, insomnia, flashbacks, and nightmares. Patients with PTSD are unnecessarily vigilant; they may experience survivor guilt, and they sometimes cannot concentrate or experience joy.

Sexual abuse —Forced sexual contact through the use of threats or other fear tactics, or instances in which an individual is physically unable to decline sexual activity.

Sexual assault nurse examiner —A registered nurse who is trained to collect and document evidence from a sexual assault victim, evaluate and treat for STDs and pregnancy, and refer victims to followup medical care and counseling.

Parental concerns

Parents of children and adolescents who are raped or sexually assaulted are understandably upset, angry, and even violent toward perpetrators. For the best mental health of the victim, parents should strive to listen to their children, use healthy coping strategies, and reassure the victim that he/she was not at fault. Parents should resist letting anger toward the assailant take precedence over attention to their child or adolescent.

Because rape and sexual assault cause long-term psychological trauma, parents should be aware of symptoms of PTSD, depression, substance abuse, high-risk behaviors, and anxiety in their children. Long-term therapy with a counselor experienced in rape and sexual assault trauma can benefit both the victim and parents.

Parents should also be aware that PTSD and other psychological effects of rape can manifest as poor school performance. Impaired concentration, acting out in school, diminished energy, embarrassment, and frustration may all occur in traumatized children and adolescents. School officials and counselors should be contacted to help students with academic problems; temporary homebound instruction or day therapy programs may be necessary.

Resources

BOOKS

Matsakis, Aphrodite. The Rape Recovery Handbook: Step-by-Step Help for Survivors of Sexual Assault. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2003.

PERIODICALS

Kawsar, M., et al. "Prevalence of Sexually Transmitted Infections and Mental Health Needs of Female Child and Adolescent Survivors of Rape and Sexual Assault Attending a Specialist Clinic." Sexually Transmitted Infections 80 (April 2004): 138–141.

Pharris, Margaret D., and Sarah S. Nafstad. "Nursing Care of Adolescents Who Have Been Sexually Assaulted." Nursing Clinics of North America 37 (2002): 475–97.

Ruggiero, Kenneth J., et al. "Is Disclosure of Childhood Rape Associated with Mental Health Outcome? Results from the National Women's Study." Child Maltreatment 9 (February 2004): 62–77.

ORGANIZATIONS

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 409 12th St., SW, PO Box 96920, Washington, DC 20090–6920. Web site: <www.acog.org/>.

Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). 635-B Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20003. National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1–800–656-HOPE. Web site: <www.rainn.org/>.

WEB SITES

"Adolescent Update: Drugs and Date Rape." American College of Emergency Physicians. Available online at <http://www.acep.org/webportal/MemberCenter/SectionsofMembership/PediatricEmergencyMedicine/NewsletterArticles/AdolescentUpdateDrugsDateRape.htm> (accessed November 3, 2004).

Jennifer E. Sisk, M.A.

Rape

When people hear the word rape, it often conjures a mental image: perhaps a stranger with a knife jumping out of the bushes at night and forcing a woman to engage in sexual intercourse. Defining rape is no easy matter, however. Definitions come from the law, the media, research, and political activism. Even within any one of these domains, definitions vary.

Historically, in English common law, rape was defined as a man's engaging in sexual intercourse with a woman other than his wife against her will and without her consent by using or threatening force (Muehlenhard and Kimes 1999). Today, legal definitions of rape differ widely across nations.

Researchers studying rape must decide what definition to use (Muehlenhard et al. 1992). Much of the research on rape has taken place in the United States, and many researchers have relied on the legal definition used in a particular state. Others, however, have decided that the legal definitions are too narrow. Some feminist political activists have offered definitions of rape to highlight the social and economic pressures placed on women to engage in sex.

Incidence and Prevalence

Perhaps even more difficult than defining rape is the task of identifying the frequency of its occurrence. Incidence refers to the number of rapes occurring during a given period of time; prevalence refers to the percentage of persons who have been raped. Estimates of incidence and prevalence of rape depend on the definition used, the population studied, and the methods used to gather data (see Muehlenhard et al. 1994).

In the United States, several studies have provided estimates of rape incidence and prevalence. The National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sponsored the National Violence Against Women (NVAW) Survey. The survey consisted of telephone interviews with eight thousand women and eight thousand men in the United States regarding their experiences with various forms of violence. In this study rape was defined as "an event that occurs without the victim's consent and involves the use of threat or force to penetrate the victim's vagina or anus by penis, tongue, fingers, or object, or the victim's mouth by penis. The definition includes both attempted and completed rape" (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000, p. 5). The researchers found that 7.7 percent of women and 0.3 percent of men over age eighteen had experienced such an event (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000).

Reviewing international research, Lori L. Heise and her colleagues reported that between 19 and 27.5 percent of college-aged women in Canada, Korea, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States reported being the victim of a completed or attempted rape (Heise et al. 1994). The 1989 International Crime Survey collected data from fourteen countries in North America, Europe, and Australia. They found that 2.3 percent of women in the United States reported sexual assault (including rape and attempted rape), the highest percentage of any of the fourteen countries. Canada and Australia followed with 1.7 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively (Dijk, Mayhew, and Killias 1991).

Cross-nationally, acquaintance, date, and marital rape seem to be more common than stranger rape. Similar to research conducted in the United States, research in Chile, Peru, Malaysia, Mexico, Panama, and Papua New Guinea indicates that most rapes are perpetrated by someone known to the victim (Heise et al. 1994).

Rape is also a common form of war violence. There is evidence that rape rates are often drastically high in war-torn nations (Human Rights Watch 1995). For example, mass rape in war has been documented in Liberia, Uganda, Peru, Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia (Heise et al. 1994).

Rape is a widespread international problem. In particular, date rape and marital rape are highly prevalent in many countries. Most information about the rates of rape pertains to men raping women. Sometimes men rape men and women rape women or men, but little information about incidence or prevalence is available.

Characteristics of Rape Victims and Rapists

Internationally, girls and women seem to be at greater risk for being raped than are boys and men. Little research exists on characteristics of male victims.

In the United States, African-American women and European-American women seem to be at similar risk for being raped. In comparison, Native American women may be at greater risk, and Asian-American women may be at lower risk (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000). However, more research is needed to determine whether these differences are due to social and cultural differences or to a differential willingness to report rape. Although girls and women of all ages are raped, the greatest risk occurs in their teens and early twenties, approximately between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four years (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2000). Women who were sexually abused as girls are at greater risk for rape than are those who were not abused (Muehlenhard et al. 1998; Testa and Derman 1999). Additionally, experiences with rape are correlated with high rates of alcohol consumption and engagement in casual sex (Testa and Derman 1999). However, it is unclear whether these activities make women more vulnerable to rape or whether rape results in alcohol abuse and casual sex.

Reports from numerous countries indicate that most rapists are male, although women sometimes rape (Sarrel and Masters 1982). In the United States, most rapists are below the age of thirty and are slightly older than their victims. Rape occurs mainly between members of the same ethnic group. Compared with other men, men who rape tend to be more accepting of violence, have a more authoritarian approach to relationships, and feel more hostility toward women (Drieschner and Lange 1999).

Causes of Rape

Different rapists commit rape for different reasons, and any one rapist may rape for different reasons at different times (Muehlenhard, Danoff-Burg, and Powch 1996). Thus, no one theory can explain all rapes. However, many cultural factors seem to contribute to rape.

Commonly held myths such as these contribute to date and marital rape:

• A man must have sex to prove his masculinity;
• When women say no to sex, they really mean yes, so men should ignore women's refusals;
• If a woman engages in kissing or petting, she is obligated to engage in sexual intercourse;
• What goes on between a husband and a wife is no one else's business; and
• The man should be head of the household.

These are dangerous myths that can lead to rape (Burt 1991).

Traditional gender roles prescribing female submission and male dominance are linked to rape. In Australia, Germany, and Japan, rates of violent sexual offenses were related to national levels of dominant masculinity (Neapolitan 1997). Studies in several countries have suggested that rigid gender roles and promotion of an ideology of male toughness are related to violence against women (Heise et al. 1994; Sanday 1981).

Characteristics of the culture and gender role socialization, however, do not explain why most men do not rape, why some women rape men, or why rape occurs in gay and lesbian relationships in which both people have experienced similar gender role socialization. Individual differences are also important.

Some people hold beliefs justifying rape more strongly than others. Men who rape tend to believe more strongly in myths about rape, and they are more likely to engage in fantasies about coercive sex (Drieschner and Lange 1999). Compared with other men, rapists drink more heavily, begin having sexual experiences earlier, and are more likely to have been physically or sexually abused as children (Berkowitz 1992; Ullman; Karabatsos; and Koss 1990).

Consequences of Rape

Rape victims often suffer from postassault depression, feelings of betrayal and humiliation, problems with trust and intimacy, guilt, anxiety, fears, anger, physical problems, sexual difficulties, and lowered self-esteem in many areas of their lives (Muehlenhard; Goggins; Jones; and Satterfield 1991; Shapiro and Schwarz 1997).

Additionally, rape often results in physical injury to the victim or leads to medical difficulties (RAINN 2001; Tjaden and Thoennes 2000). For example, rape victims can contract sexually transmitted diseases from rapists. Female victims may also become pregnant (Heise et al. 1994).

In the United States, the consequences of rape have been conceptualized as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which focuses on the victim's repeatedly re-experiencing the rape (e.g., in dreams or flashbacks); feeling numb and attempting to avoid stimuli associated with the rape; and experiencing increased physiological arousal (e.g., difficulty sleeping or concentrating, outbursts of anger, or an exaggerated startle response).

In many cultures the stigma associated with rape is extremely damaging to victims. In some Asian cultures, women are driven to suicide or are killed by family members in order to relieve the family of their shame (Heise et al. 1994). Similarly, in Alexandria, Egypt, 47 percent of women murdered were killed by a family member following a rape, and almost 8 percent of all suicides were committed by women following a rape (Heise et al. 1994).

Male and female rape victims experience many of the same consequences (Mezey and King 1989). Although both genders may have difficulty seeking help from crisis intervention services or the police, men may have more because being a rape victim is inconsistent with the male stereotype. Gay and lesbian rape victims may have greater difficulty than heterosexuals obtaining help from social service agencies, which are often not publicized for or geared toward gay and lesbian clients (Waterman, Dawson, and Bologna 1989).

Rape Prevention

There are many approaches to rape prevention. One approach has been to warn women not to go out alone at night, talk to strangers, or wear certain types of clothing. Unfortunately, such advice limits women's freedom and is ineffective because it is based on the myth that most rapists are strangers.

Another approach involves self-defense training. This approach has the advantage of helping women defend themselves while not limiting their freedom. Active resistance strategies such as physically fighting, yelling, screaming, and fleeing are generally more effective in resisting rape attempts than more passive strategies such as begging, pleading, or crying; furthermore, these active strategies do not seem to increase a woman's chance of being injured (Zoucha-Jensen and Coyne 1993).

Particularly on college campuses in the United States, attempts have been made to create educational rape prevention programs to change attitudes that seem to contribute to rape among young adults. There is some evidence that such programs may effectively reduce students' beliefs in myths about rape (e.g., Pinzone-Glover, Gidycz, and Jacobs 1998). However, more research is needed to determine whether changes in attitude are maintained and to determine whether changes in attitude result in changes in rape rates among program participants.

Most important is the need to address the causes of rape. Working for gender equality and against the ideas that violence against women is sexy and that violence is a good way to solve problems could help to decrease the prevalence of rape. Both men and women can work for changes in the media, laws, and public opinion so that rape is treated as unacceptable, even when it occurs within dating or family relationships.

See also:Abortion; Child Abuse: Sexual Abuse; Family Roles; Grief, Loss, and Bereavement; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); Power: Marital Relationships; Sexually Transmitted Diseases; Spouse Abuse: Prevalence; Spouse Abuse: Theoretical Explanations; Suicide; War/Political Violence

Bibliography

berkowitz, a. (1992). "college men as perpetrators of acquaintance rape and sexual assault: a review of recent research." journal of american college health 40:175–181.

bureau of justice statistics. (2000). sourcebook of criminal justice statistics, 1999. washington, dc: u.s. government printing office.

burt, m. r. (1991). "rape myths and acquaintance rape." in acquaintance rape: the hidden crime, ed. a. parrot and l. bechhofer. new york: john wiley and sons.

drieschner, k., and lange, a. (1999). "a review of cognitive factors in the etiology of rape: theories, empirical studies, and implications." clinical psychology review 19:57–77.

heise, l. l.; raikes, a.; watts, c. h.; and zwi, a. b. (1994). "violence against women: a neglected public health issue in less developed countries." social science and medicine 39:1165–1179.

human rights watch. (1995). the human rights watchglobal report on women's human rights. new york: author.

mezey, g., and king, m. (1989). "the effects of sexual assault on men: a survey of 22 victims." psychological medicine 19:205–209.

muehlenhard, c. l.; danoff-burg, s.; and powch, i. g. (1996). "is rape sex or violence? conceptual issues and implications." in sex, power, conflict: feminist and evolutionary perspectives, ed. d. m. buss and n. malamuth. new york: oxford university press.

muehlenhard, c. l.; goggins, m. f.; jones, j. m.; and satterfield, a. t. (1991). "sexual violence and coercion in close relationships." in sexuality in close relationships, ed. k. mckinney and s. sprecher. hillsdale, nj: erlbaum.

muehlenhard, c. l.; highby, b. j.; lee, r. s.; bryan, t. s.; and dodrill, w. a. (1998). "the sexual revictimization of women and men sexually abused as children: a review of the literature." annual review of sex research 9:1–47.

muehlenhard, c. l., and kimes, l. a. (1999). "the social construction of violence: the case of sexual and domestic violence." personality and social psychology review 3:234–245.

muehlenhard, c. l.; powch, i. g.; phelps, j. l.; and giusti, l. m. (1992). "definitions of rape: scientific and political implications." journal of social issues 48(1):23–44.

muehlenhard, c. l.; sympson, s. c.; phelps, j. l.; and highby, b. j. (1994). "are rape statistics exaggerated? a response to criticism of contemporary rape research." the journal of sex research 31:144–146.

neapolitan, j. l. (1997). cross-national crime: a researchreview and sourcebook. westport, ct: greenwood.

pinzone-glover, h. a.; gidycz, c. a.; and jacobs, c. d. (1998). "an acquaintance rape prevention program: effects on attitudes toward women, rape related attitudes, and perceptions of rape scenarios." psychology of women quarterly 22:605–621.

sanday, p. r. (1981). "the socio-cultural context of rape: a cross-cultural study." journal of social issues 37(4):5–27.

sarrel, p. m., and masters, w. h. (1982). "sexual molestation of men by women." archives of sexual behavior 11:117–131.

shapiro, b. l., and schwarz, j. c. (1997). "date rape: its relationship to trauma symptoms and sexual self-esteem." journal of interpersonal violence 12:407–419.

testa, m., and dermen, k. h. (1999). "the differential correlates of sexual coercion and rape." journal of interpersonal violence 14:548–561.

tjaden, p., and thoennes, n. (2000). extent, nature, andconsequences of intimate partner violence: findings from the national violence against women survey (ncj181867). washington, dc: u.s. department of justice, national institute of justice.

ullman, s. e.; karabatsos, g.; and koss, m. p. (1999). "alcohol and sexual assault in a national sample of college women." journal of interpersonal violence 14:603–625.

van dijk, j. j. m.; mayhew, p.; and killias, m. (1991). experiences of crime across the world. boston: kluwer law and taxation press.

waterman, c. k.; dawson, l. j.; and bologna, m. j. (1989). "sexual coercion in gay male and lesbian relationships." journal of sex research 26:118–124.

zoucha-jensen, j. m., and coyne, a. (1993). "the effects of resistance strategies on rape." american journal of public health 83:1633–1634.

Other Resource

"rainn statistics." (2001). rape, abuse, & incest nationalnetwork. washington, dc. available from http://www.rainn.org/statistics.html.

zoË d. peterson
charlene l. muehlenhard

RAPE

RAPE is a crime of sexual coercion, most commonly committed by men and against women. While we have limited information about the incidence of rape in early America, there is strong evidence to suggest that many more rapes occur today, when rates are adjusted for population, than occurred in the colonial period. Estimates are that in the early twenty-first century at least one in eight women in America has been a victim of forcible rape, a crime that can cause acute and long-term trauma of both physical and psychological dimensions.

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, American rape law changed surprisingly little. Since the mid-1970s, however, the law has been modified considerably, largely due to the persuasive efforts of reformers who claimed that traditional rape law manifested biases and inadequacies.

Definition and Punishment

Throughout England and colonial America, rape was defined as the carnal knowledge of a woman obtained forcibly and against her will. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, rape was treated primarily as a crime committed by a male stranger against another man, an outsider's trespass against the property of the husband or father of the woman who was raped. Even in the twentieth century, after America had abandoned the formal notion of married women as property, its influence remained for many years in the form of the marital exemption from rape laws that irrefutably presumed a woman's consent even to forced intercourse with her husband. Because female slaves were the exclusive property of their owners, they too fell outside the reach of rape law.

In early English common law, rape was a misdemeanor punishable by fine or imprisonment. A statute enacted in England in 1285 made rape a capital felony. Likewise, in the American colonies, rape was exclusively a capital felony through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A rape conviction obtained in the past century, however, was more frequently punished by imprisonment.

Seventeenth Century

The law of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century England treated woman's accusations of rape with considerable skepticism. This attitude is captured in the oft-quoted language of the seventeenth-century English jurist Sir Matthew Hale in his History of the Pleas of the Crown: "It must be remembered, that [rape] is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, the never so innocent."

Although the skeptical approach to rape complaints characterized American law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it did not take hold instantly in the American colonies. Prior to 1700, when almost all sexual assault cases in colonial American courts involved attempted rape of white women by assailants they knew, conviction rates were quite high and magistrates articulated a philosophy of deterrence, often imposing severe corporal punishments on men convicted of attempted rape. In this Puritan regime, women who came to court alleging sexual violence that they had resisted were generally believed to be telling the truth. In the mid-1600s, Governor Theophilus Eaton of New Haven Colony explained that "a young girle [would not] bee so impudent as to charge such a carriage upon a young man when it was not so," especially when she would be subjected to intensive judicial questioning (Dayton, p. 239).

Although her account of sexual violation was generally deemed truthful, a woman who failed to report a sexual assault promptly might also receive corporal punishment, at a level less than her assailant, for concealing the offense for an unreasonable period. A woman pregnant out of wedlock who claimed to have been raped would not benefit from the presumption of truthfulness, as it was thought in that era that a woman could not conceive a child during a rape. These women, like those who were found to have encouraged or submitted to a man's sexual advances, were punished for fornication.

Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries

After 1700, colonial judges began consulting English legal sources more frequently and importing into American legal procedures the suspicion toward rape complaints that prevailed in England. In the 1700s, unlike the previous century, the noncapital crime of attempted rape by acquaintances was rarely prosecuted, and both rape indictments and conviction rates were low, especially if the complainant was an unmarried woman who had charged an acquaintance. As Zephaniah Swift, author of an eighteenth century treatise on Connecticut's laws warned, "the vindictive spirit of lewd women" has frequently caused charges of rape to be made from "motives of malice and revenge" (Dayton, p. 265).

When defendants were non-whites, the reluctance to sentence them to death for the crime of rape was [somewhat]diminished. In the eighteenth century, most of the men indicted for rape and virtually all who were convicted and executed were blacks, Indians, foreigners, or transients. Rape evolved into a crime committed primarily by strangers against white women. After 1700, father-daughter incest, no longer a capital felony, was the only crime of sexual violence for which local white men might expect harsh corporal punishment.

Racialized enforcement of rape law continued through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Forbidden sexual access to white women and stereotyped as sexual predators, African American men alleged to have raped white women were often vigorously prosecuted, even in cases where there was reason to doubt the allegation's veracity. This is the scenario that underlies the infamous Scottsboro Case in which nine young African American men were falsely accused of gang rape in 1931 in a small town in Alabama, tried without some of the most minimal protections of fair process, convicted, and in eight of the cases, sentenced to death. Ultimately the Supreme Court reversed all the convictions, but not before the Scottsboro defendants had served many years of imprisonment. Statistics show that African Americans constituted approximately 90 percent of the men executed for rape in the United States in the twentieth century. The Supreme Court highlighted this racialized pattern of punishment when it declared the death penalty for rape unconstitutional in the case of Coker v. Georgia (1977).

By contrast, when complainants were African American women, rape laws were notoriously underenforced. The institutionalized rape of black females by white slave owners as part of the system of slavery is well documented. Since a slave woman was considered "unrapeable" by law, she could not control her sexual accessibility and had no lawful options to resist being raped. Hence in 1855, when a young slave named Celia repeatedly resisted forcible sexual advances by Robert Newsom, her sixty-five-year-old Missouri slave master, finally striking him with a large stick that caused his death, she was tried for capital murder, convicted, and executed by hanging.

Reform Efforts

Model Penal Code. While late-nineteenth-century women's groups succeeded in their lobbying to raise the age limit for statutory rape, the first twentieth-century effort to modernize rape law came with the revision of the Model Penal Code (MPC) in the 1950s. The MPC is an influential model statute drafted by a group of learned legal experts. In the MPC revision, the rape victim no longer had to resist "to the utmost," as many states had required, to prove her nonconsent. Following this lead, states began to abolish resistance requirements. The MPC also established three grades of sexual assaults. Felony rape in the first degree was violent stranger rape. Violent acquaintance rape was a second-degree felony, and other kinds of sexual coercion constituted the third-degree felony of "gross sexual imposition." Adapting this model, many states have graded rape offenses by degree of severity in their statutory schemes.

Feminist Critiques. Subsequent reforms of traditional rape law came largely as a response to the critiques that began to emerge from the woman's movement in the 1970s. Feminist reformers [first] raised awareness of the extent of rape and the degree of harm it inflicts, then analyzed how, despite harsh penalties for rape, the law had failed to hold accountable most perpetrators. These reformers suggested that misunderstandings about the crime of rape were operating within traditional rape law and impeding its effectiveness.

Feminist writings portrayed the evidentiary and procedural rules unique to rape law as reflections of patriarchal skepticism about rape victims' claims. This led to such virulent attacks on victims' character and behavior in rape cases that the rate at which victims reported rape was reduced, as were the rates at which police arrested, prosecutors charged, and judges and juries convicted and sentenced. Feminists observed that a direct consequence of this preoccupation with false accusations was dramatic underprotection of victims of sexual assault.

In her book, Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No (1987), the law professor Susan Estrich asserts that only violent stranger rapes, which constitute a minority of rapes committed, are treated as serious crimes in the legal system. Estrich and others argue that disparate treatment of some rapes such as stranger rapes, and other rapes, such as acquaintance rapes, belies the fact that all of these actions violate the victim's bodily integrity and sexual autonomy.

Rape Law in the Early Twenty-First Century

Some rape law reforms have achieved broad acceptance. For example, state statutes tend to denominate rape by more descriptive terms such as "criminal sexual conduct" or "sexual assault," to define it in gender-neutral terms, and to encompass a broader array of conduct including oral and anal penetration. The age limit for statutory rape is typically the mid-teens, and the marital exemption from rape laws survives in a limited form only in a small number of states. Requirements that the victim's testimony be corroborated and that jurors be cautioned to give this testimony special scrutiny have largely disappeared. Rape shield laws that, with some exceptions, restrict admission of the victim's prior sexual conduct, have been widely adopted. Rarely is physical resistance formally required any longer to show nonconsent.

Other proposed reforms have received less widespread acceptance. For example, only a few states prohibit sexual coercion by certain types of fraud or by extortionate threats. A few states will not exonerate rape defendants who claim to have reasonably mistaken nonconsent for consent, while many others will. Whether and under what circumstances to permit mistakes about consent to provide a valid defense is an area of continuing controversy in rape law.

The impact of these reforms is unclear, as studies have detected only limited measurable effects from various reforms on victim behavior and case outcomes. This may reflect the fact that popular attitudes can be harder to change than written laws. Perhaps for similar reasons, the problem of rape in American penal institutions persists at high levels, with estimates that 350,000 sexual assaults are committed each year on male prisoners, typically by other prisoners. High levels of rape of female prisoners by male prison staff have also been reported.

Despite the fact that rape is largely an intraracial crime, studies suggest that cases involving black male suspects and white female victims still attract greatest attention from the courts and the press and are accorded the harshest punishment. This discriminatory treatment poses grave harm to African American men and contributes as well to cultural denial of the frequency and seriousness of other forms of rape. Studies also suggest that African American women remain least able of all rape complainants to obtain redress through legal process. Unfortunately, efforts to combat race bias in rape law enforcement are difficult to achieve through statutory reform. As with many of the other aspects of the problem of rape, they require deeper cultural change.

Two of the most famous rape trials of the late twentieth century, those of William Kennedy Smith in 1991 and heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in 1992, were based on allegations of date rape. In each trial, the victim testified that she was raped and the defendant testified that sex was consensual. In the Smith trial, the jury resolved credibility questions in favor of the defendant, finding Smith not guilty. In the Tyson trial, the jury resolved credibility questions in favor of the victim. As a result, Tyson was convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. As American culture continues to struggle with issues of date rape and acquaintance rape, reform affecting cases such as these will likely continue.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Estrich, Susan. Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.

LaFree, Gary D. Rape and Criminal Justice: The Social Construction of Sexual Assault. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1989.

MacKinnon, Catharine A. Sex Equality: Rape Law. New York: Foundation Press, 2001.

Schulhofer, Stephen J. Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Spohn, Cassia, and Julie Horney. Rape Law Reform: A Grassroots Revolution and Its Impact. New York: Plenum, 1992.

PhyllisGoldfarb

See alsoViolence Against Women Act ; Women's Rights Movement: The 20th Century .

Rape

PREVALENCE AND EFFECTS

DEFINITION AND PUNISHMENT

PROPERTY AND RACE

REFORM EFFORTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rape is a crime of sexual coercion that can cause acute physical and psychological trauma. Its victims are mostly female, although males may be rape victims as well. Nearly all rape perpetrators are male.

PREVALENCE AND EFFECTS

Research conducted in the United States provides a window on the prevalence of rape. Approximately 20 percent of American women report that at some point in their lives they have been forced to have sexual intercourse against their will. Approximately 8 percent of American females indicate that their first experience of sexual intercourse was coerced. Although legal and cultural climates surrounding the crime of rape vary greatly around the globe, research suggests that rape is a widespread phenomenon and that most rapes go undetected. Mass rape has also been used as a weapon of warfare, torture, and genocide—notorious in the 1990s and early 2000s in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur—and has been classified under international law as a crime against humanity. Rape in U.S. prisons is a significant problem that remains largely unaddressed.

Victims of rape report an experience of degradation, often with immediate effects of physical paralysis and mental dissociation. Studies indicate that victims of acquaintance rape can suffer as much or more psychological harm than victims of stranger rape, in part because they experience more intense feelings of guilt and self-blame. Almost one-third of rape victims experience fragmented memory, traumatic amnesia, or other long-term effects, similar to those associated with posttraumatic stress disorder. These common symptoms of sexual trauma can compromise the victim’s ability to report the crime in a coherent narrative and to demonstrate nonconsent for a legal proceeding.

DEFINITION AND PUNISHMENT

Historically, the law defined rape as a man having sexual intercourse with a woman through the use of force and without her consent. In his leading legal treatise of the eighteenth century, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), William Blackstone (1723–1780) described rape as “carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will” (p. 209). This definition remained remarkably static for generations.

In contemporary law, force and consent became irrelevant in statutory rape, which presumes involuntary any sexual relations with a person under an age specified by statute. First enacted into law in England in 1275, statutory rape laws are common in the United States but rarely enforced against consensual sexual relationships between adolescents. The rare statutory rape prosecution is likely to involve an older man and an underage woman, and some jurisdictions have statutes that require the perpetrator to be over twenty-one or significantly older than the victim. Originally the age of consent for statutory rape was twelve, later reduced to ten. Although the nineteenth-century women’s movement successfully lobbied to raise the age limit for statutory rape, in some states the age limit remains as low as thirteen. Other states consider sixteen or eighteen to be the appropriate age of consent.

In early England, rape was classified as a misdemeanor to be punished by a fine or imprisonment. By virtue of a statute enacted in 1285, rape became a capital felony, a classification imported to colonial America. During the twentieth century, however, imprisonment became the most common punishment for rape convictions.

PROPERTY AND RACE

From the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, notions of property shaped the understanding of rape. Female slaves, deemed the property of their owners, could not be raped under law and therefore received no protection from rape law. In situations where rape law applied, rape was understood as a crime of trespass committed by a male stranger against the property of another man, the husband or father of the woman who was raped. Hence, rape within marriage was considered legally impossible. Even after America’s formal abandonment of the notion of women as property, its influence reached into the twentieth century through the marital exemption from rape laws that continued to presume a wife’s consent to all intercourse with her husband, even when it was coerced. Although all states have abolished the full marital rape exemption, some still retain it in partial forms.

From the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth century, rape indictments and conviction rates in America were low, except when defendants were nonwhite. African American men alleged to have raped white women were zealously prosecuted, even in cases where there was reason to doubt the allegation’s reliability. About 90 percent of the men executed for rape in the twentieth century in the United States were African Americans. This racialized pattern of punishment was noted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1977 case of Coker v. Georgia, which held the death penalty for rape to be unconstitutional.

In marked contrast, when victims were African American women, rape laws were largely unenforced, especially during the slavery era. Rape of female slaves, which could reproduce more slave labor for the owner’s service, was a commonplace occurrence. Studies suggest that African American women who report being raped continue to have disproportionate difficulties obtaining redress through the legal system, as their reports are especially likely to be regarded with suspicion.

REFORM EFFORTS

For centuries a culture of skepticism surrounded all women’s accusations of rape. Such skepticism is revealed in the language of the seventeenth-century English jurist Matthew Hale (1609–1676) in his History of the Pleas of the Crown (1847): “It must be remembered, that [rape] is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent” (p. 635). Such an attitude is also apparent in the law’s traditional requirements that proof of rape entailed not only evidence of the use or threatened use of force but also evidence of resistance—resistance to the utmost of the victim’s physical capacities in some states— as a proxy for nonconsent. Additionally, some jurisdictions required corroboration of a victim’s testimony and cautioned jurors to give it extra scrutiny. Most of these procedural hurdles have formally disappeared in the United States, although some, such as corroboration requirements, remain in other legal systems around the world.

The first twentieth-century effort to modernize rape law in the United States came with the 1950s revision of the Model Penal Code (MPC), an influential model statute written by recognized legal experts. According to the MPC, rape victims no longer needed to resist “to the utmost” to demonstrate nonconsent. This revision led many states to abolish resistance requirements. The MPC also proposed three grades of sexual assault. Violent stranger rape was felony rape in the first degree. Violent acquaintance rape was a second-degree felony. Other kinds of sexual coercion established the third-degree felony of “gross sexual imposition.” Adapting this approach, many states adopted statutory schemes that graded rape offenses by severity.

Rape law reform continued in the 1970s and 1980s when feminist reformers raised awareness of the extent of the incidence and harm of rape and the law’s failure, despite harsh potential penalties, to hold most perpetrators accountable. In her book Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No (1987), law professor Susan Estrich observed that date rapes or acquaintance rapes are the most common kinds of rape, yet the criminal justice system is less likely to treat these cases as crimes and may even blame the victims for the incidents. Victims experience dehumanization from all of these rapes, all of them violate a victim’s bodily integrity and sexual autonomy, but only victims of violent stranger rape are likely to have recourse to the legal system.

Some proposed reforms have received widespread acceptance. For example, along with the broad elimination of resistance and corroboration requirements, rape shield laws that, with some exceptions, prohibit admission of the victim’s prior sexual conduct have been widely adopted. Studies, however, are inconclusive as to whether these reforms have made a measurable difference in victim behavior or case outcomes.

Other proposed reforms remain controversial, such as whether sex obtained through fraud or extortion can constitute rape. Another area of controversy concerns whether and under what circumstances to allow mistakes about consent to establish a defense to rape. Estrich’s book sparked a “no-means-no” movement, advocating verbal resistance as sufficient to establish nonconsent. Others have suggested that the absence of affirmative assent or of a verbal discussion about desired acts should undermine consent as a defense in rape cases. Strong arguments have been made to abandon force as an element of rape, because the use of force is inherent in unwanted sex. New Jersey did so in the case of In re M.T.S. (1992), and some state statutes classify nonconsensual penetration without force as a sexual offense, although typically one less serious than rape.

While reform efforts have been influential in drawing attention to a variety of problems in social and legal responses to rape, popular attitudes are harder to modify than written laws. Solving many of these problems will require deeper cultural change.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allison, Julie A., and Lawrence S. Wrightsman. 1993. Rape: The Misunderstood Crime. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Anderson, Michelle J. Negotiating Sex. 2005. Southern California Law Review 78: 1401–1438.

Blackstone, William. 1765. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dripps, Donald A. Beyond Rape: An Essay on the Difference Between the Presence of Force and the Absence of Consent. 1992. Columbia Law Review 92 (7): 1780–1809.

Estrich, Susan. 1987. Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Greenfield, Lawrence A. 1997. Sex Offenses and Offenders: An Analysis of Data on Rape and Sexual Assault. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/soo.pdf.

Hale, Matthew. 1847. The History of the Pleas of the Crown. Vol. 1. Ed. Sollom Emlyn. Philadelphia: R. H. Small.

LaFree, Gary D. 1989. Rape and Criminal Justice: The Social Construction of Sexual Assault. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Larson, Jane E. 1997. “Even a Worm Will Turn at Last”: Rape Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century America. Yale Journal of Law and Humanities 9 (1): 1–71.

MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2001. Sex Equality: Rape Law. New York: Foundation Press.

Parrot, Andrea, and Laurie Bechhofer, eds. 1991. Acquaintance Rape: The Hidden Crime. New York: Wiley.

Schulhofer, Stephen J. 1998. Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Spohn, Cassia, and Julie Horney. 1992. Rape Law Reform: A Grassroots Revolution and Its Impact. New York: Plenum.

Wriggins, Jennifer. 1983. Rape, Racism, and the Law. Harvard Women’s Law Journal 6: 103–141.

Phyllis Goldfarb

rape has always been deemed a terrible crime. What has changed over time is the perception of what constitutes rape. Since the 1960s, rape is increasingly considered as sexual intercourse without consent. Not very long ago physical violence was taken to be intrinsic to the notion of rape; this is no longer so. It was also assumed that rape occurred predominantly between strangers. Now the idea of rape within marriage is no longer thought a contradiction in terms.

Defined as the unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman by force and against her will, rape was a capital crime already in early Anglo-Saxon times. It was deemed a crime even where legal codes said nothing of it. Thus the Chevalier de Jaucourt (1704–80 cited the argument which Cicero (106–43 bc) had made around 46 bc:
[e]ven if there was no written law against rape at Rome in the reign of Lucius Tarquinius, we cannot say on that account that Sextus Tarquinius did not break that eternal Law by violating Lucretia, the daughter of Tricipitinus! For reason did exist, derived from the Nature of the universe, urging men to right conduct and diverting them from wrong-doing, and this reason did not first become Law when it was written down, but when it first came into existence; and it came into existence simultaneously with the divine mind.

Throughout the ages, political theorists warned princes of the consequences of rape. Machiavelli (1469–1527), for one, stressed the political danger it presented. ‘Among the primary causes of the downfall of tyrants’, he argued, ‘Aristotle puts the injuries they do on account of women, whether by rape, violation or the breaking up of marriages … absolute princes and rulers of republics should not treat such matters as of small moment, but should bear in mind the disorders such events may occasion and look to the matter in good time, so that the remedy applied may not be accompanied by damage done to, or revolts against, their state or their republic.’

Amongst those who wrote about rape, some, like St Augustine (ad 354–430), stressed that the victim of rape was untainted by it. ‘There will be no pollution, if the lust is another's; if there is pollution, the lust is not another's,’ he contended, adding; ‘While the mind's resolve endures, which gives the body its claim to chastity, the violence of another's lust cannot take away the chastity which is preserved by unwavering self-control.’ Critical of Roman culture and the importance it gave to honour, St Augustine criticized Lucretia for taking her life following her rape by Tarquin. Christian women, St Augustine argued, ‘did not take vengeance on themselves for another's crime.’ The public gaze did not unduly concern them, for they knew themselves to be chaste in the sight of God. In the seventeenth century, the jurist, Samuel Pufendorf (1632–94), was one of the many authors who reiterated St Augustine's point, although he stressed that this did not impinge on the right of women to kill their aggressors in self defence. Jean Barbeyrac (1674–1744) drew attention to the fact that, under several ancient legal systems, seducers were actually thought worse than rapists, because they violated not only the body of their victims, but effectively their mind as well, and hence exercised power over their whole person and over their family.

To recognize that we are by no means the first to attend to the issue of rape, is not to presume, however, that rape is a timeless or universal feature of social existence. Women have not always lived in fear of rape, at least not to the extent to which they now do in some parts of the Western world. Anthropological and historical studies reveal some societies and ages to be far more ‘rape-prone’ than others. In 1887 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: ‘No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically ‘unjust’, since life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive and cannot be conceived otherwise. Even more disturbingly, we have to admit that from the biological point of view legal conditions are necessarily exceptional conditions, since they limit the radical life-will bent on power and must subserve, as means, life's collective purpose, which is to create greater power constellations. To accept any legal system as sovereign and universal — to accept it, not merely as an instrument in the struggle of power complexes, but as a weapon against struggle (in the sense of Dühring's communist cliché that every will must regard every other will as its equal) — is an anti-vital principle which can only bring about man's utter demoralization and, indirectly, a reign of nothingness.’

Those who, like Cicero, endorse a natural rights theory, and who believe that natural law is the expression of God's will, have no difficulty in arguing what is wrong about rape. Nor should they face too much difficulty in making a case for a moral community which enforces certain ideals of conduct with respect to others and themselves. Those who don't ground their moral theories in a theocentric framework will have to come to terms with the fact that liberty is not an empty ideal, a licence for anything, and that the liberty of women is conditional on the struggle against their being considered in any way men please. Or as Nietzsche contended, that wills cannot be regarded as equal. The law is indeed an instrument of struggle; it is one of the means by which society struggles against barbarism. Other means must be deployed to make for a culture in which sex is conceived not as something individuals have a right to, nor independent of personal relationships and the duties and responsibilities they entail. This will not be the reign of nothingness, it will be the assertion of the will of civilized women, and men.

Sylvana Tomaselli

Bibliography

Tomaselli, S. and Porter, R. (ed.) (1989). Rape: an historical and social enquiry. Blackwell, Oxford.

Rape. All crimes must be viewed within their social and historical context, and this is certainly true of the crime of rape in America. Complicating the problem is the lack of a definitive historical study of the topic in the United States.

While both the legal history and the social and cultural understandings of rape have shifted dramatically from the Colonial Era to the present, several themes clearly emerge. For much of the period, rape was understood as a kind of theft by one man of another man's property (that is, a daughter or a wife). Further, some property was deemed especially valuable. In colonial New England, for example, rape was punishable by death, but of the tiny fraction of rape accusations that actually resulted in execution, all involved instances where the victim was married, engaged, or a young child; in other words, when she obviously and unambiguously “belonged” to a man. Another major theme in the history of rape has been a distinction based on the victim's race. Southern slave codes, for example, did not recognize the rape of a black female slave by her white owner as a crime.

Indeed, the racial politics of rape make the issue extremely complicated. Myths of the sexual voraciousness of African‐American males and females enabled white men during and after slavery to exert control over the bodies of blacks, male and female, as well as white women, to whom they stood as self‐appointed protectors. The notion that black men were genetically predisposed to rape, and that their preferred victims were white women, flourished in the postemancipation era. In these years, as Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has put it, rape stories functioned as the “folk porn[ography] of the Bible belt.” In this setting, lynching became an ever more popular response to these imagined fears. While only about a quarter of the lynchings of black males were actually motivated by rape accusations, the fusion of racial and sexual politics meant that lynching was widely understood as the honorable act of white men protecting “their” women. Leaders of the antilynching campaign, including such women as Ida B. Wells‐Barnett and Jessie Daniel Ames, of course, rejected the attempt to justify lynching as an expression of chivalry. Wells‐Barnett, an African American, further noted that black women were absent from the rhetorical defense of lynching as a means of protecting female virtue.

Studies of the history of rape in Canada, England, and other Western countries all suggest that it is and has been a crime that tends to take place within, not across, the boundaries of race, social class, and ethnic group. The American obsession with black men as rapists (though not the response of lynching) has a historical parallel, in Canada and England, with the notion that working‐class men are similarly incapable of controlling their animal instincts. But historical and contemporary studies suggest that the more similar in background and the better acquainted the alleged victim and the alleged rapist, the less likely that the alleged victim would be believed in court. This underscored the persistence, at least among judges and juries, of the popular misperception that rapists are most likely to come from outside their victim's social group.

The often humiliating treatment of rape complainants by the legal system, coupled with the emergence of a revived women's rights movement, helped to politicize rape again in the 1960s and beyond. The redefinition of rape by feminists, especially Susan Brownmiller's highly influential book about rape, Against Our Will (1975), changed the politics of the issue. Many feminists now viewed rape as a crime of gender power alone. As the foundation of a system of male dominance, some argued, rape united all women as victims, and all men—whatever their class or color—as potential rapists or beneficiaries of women's fears of rape. In this view, rape was seen as the key to patriarchal rule, the ultimate act of domination by which all men keep all women in a near‐constant state of fear. Yet as black feminists have continually pointed out, the racial dynamics of rape, and the legacy of the myth of the menacing black man, had yet to be directly addressed.

By the 1990s a reaction had set in, as some women writers criticized some feminists' obsession with rape as a revival, in a new guise, of old notions of women's sexual innocence and helplessness in the face of sexually aggressive male behavior. Nevertheless, a belief in women's bodily inviolability remained at the forefront of the antirape campaigns, campus marches, and rape crisis centers that proliferated in the United States as the twentieth century ended.
See also Crime; Feminism; Racism; Sexual Morality and Sex Reform.

Bibliography

Susan Brownmiller , Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, 1975.
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall , Revolt against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching, 1979.
Angela Y. Davis , Women, Race and Class, 1981.
Thelma Jennings , ’Us Colored Women Had to Go through a Plenty‘: Sexual Exploitation of African American Slave Women, Journal of Women's History 1 (1990): 45–66.
Karen Dubinsky , Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880–1929, 1993.
Mary Odem , Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920, 1995.

Karen Dubinsky

Rape

Sexual intercourse forced on a person without the person's consent.

Rape is essentially an act of power and dominance. Although an estimated 15 to 40 percent of American women are victims of rape or attempted rape, men are raped as well. Women are more likely to be raped by someone they know; between 50 and 70 percent of all rapes occur within the context of a romantic relationship, and more than half the time the assault takes place in the victim's home. Rape is one of the most underreported crimes in the United States, due to the victim's fear of embarrassment, humiliation, or retaliation by the rapist. Estimates of the percentage of rapes reported to authorities range from 10 to 50 percent. Because of the difficulty of obtaining a conviction, about two percent of all rapists are convicted, and most serve approximately half of their original sentence.

A survey conducted in 1987 found that 57 percent of women who have been raped develop post-traumatic stress disorder. These women may lose their appetite, become easily startled, and suffer from headaches, sleep disorders, or fatigue. Many women have difficulty maintaining a normal life following a rape, and may repress the experience for an extended period before they are able to talk about it. Over the past 20 years feminist organizations have fought successfully to change public attitudes toward rape as well as treatment of rape victims. Efforts have been made to increase the sensitivity of police and hospital personnel to rape victims through special training programs. Today, women police officers routinely investigate rape cases. Rape crisis centers in local communities throughout the nation counsel rape victims and perform other services, such as instruction on rape prevention, providing hot-line services and legal advice, and supplying hospital emergency room advocates to offer emotional support to victims and assure that they are treated fairly by physicians and the police.

Despite these and other advances in combating rape, it remains a difficult crime to prosecute. Traditionally, rape victims have been questioned about their sexual histories, although most states now place restrictions on the admissibility and usage of such information at trial. In some states, evidence by witnesses or proof of bodily injury to the victim are still required; in other states, a struggle between the woman and her attacker must be proven. Most states require physical evidence of recent sexual intercourse in which the victim most undergo a medical examination within 24 hours of the assault.

In recent years, increased attention has been focused on "date" or "acquaintance" rape, a widespread phenomena that is particularly insidious because women who are victimized in this way are more likely to blame themselves and are less likely to seek help or prosecute their attackers. A 1987 study of acquaintance rape at 32 college campuses sponsored by Ms. magazine found that one in four women surveyed were victims of rape or attempted rape, that most rape victims knew their attackers, and over half the assaults were date rapes. Only 27 percent of the women identified themselves as rape victims, and five percent reported the rapes to police. Of the

acquaintance rape victims in the Ms. magazine survey, 38 percent were between 14 and 17 years old. Rape can be particularly devastating for adolescents; the damage it inflicts on the victim's sense of personal integrity interferes with the fragile personal identity and sense of self-esteem that are being forged during this period. It also upsets the adolescent's need to assert some control over her environment . Young rape victims, who are often sexually inactive at the time of the attack, may have their ideas and feelings about sex distorted by the experience. Often, they have daily encounters with their attacker or his friends at school or social events, adding to their sense of shame and humiliation. Most are unlikely to report the rape to parents or other adults, fearing they will be blamed or that their parents may press charges against their own wishes.

Further Reading

Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. Bantam, 1986.

Guernsey, Jo Ann B. The Facts about Rape. Crestwood, 1990.

Parrot, Andrea. Coping with Date Rape and Acquaintance Rape. Rosen Publishers, 1988.

rape in law, the crime of sexual intercourse without the consent of the victim, often through force or threat of violence. The victim is deemed legally incapable of consenting if she or he is known to be mentally incompetent, intoxicated, drugged, or below the age of consent at the time of the rape. Such cases are known as statutory rape, and evidence of consent is not deemed relevant in court. Although the term rape has traditionally applied to the male use of force in sexual relations with females, applicable laws have been revised in many jurisdictions to include possibilities where a male is the victim.

Issues surrounding rape and the law have been fiercely debated for years in the United States, and recent efforts—particularly by feminist groups—have had marked success in expanding victims rights . One important reform, which has been in effect in most states in recent years, has been the removal of statutes requiring that rape victims physically resist the attack. Prior to this reform, victims of rape were required to display clear signs of injury in order to prove that they did not consent to sexual relations. Another reform has made marital rape a crime in many circumstances, with South Dakota becoming the first state to institute such law reforms in 1975. In the 1980s, "date rape," or acquaintance rape, became an important issue, particularly on college campuses. Victims of date rape contend that they were raped by an individual with whom they were acquainted. In many such cases, the establishment of guilt becomes difficult, particularly in cases where the victim displays no physical evidence of violence and there is only the testimony of the victim. In international law, rape was designated (2000) a war crime by the Yugoslav tribunal established by the United Nations at The Hague. Rape can cause profound psychological trauma in its victims.

Bibliography: See D. E. Russell, The Politics of Rape (1984); S. Tomaselli and R. Porter, ed., Rape (1986); Z. Adler, Rape on Trial (1987); S. Estrich, Real Rape (1987).

STATUTORY RAPE

Sexual intercourse by an adult with a person below a statutorily designated age.

The criminal offense of statutory rape is committed when an adult sexually penetrates a person who, under the law, is incapable of consenting to sex. Minors and physically and mentally incapacitated persons are deemed incapable of consenting to sex under rape statutes in all states. These persons are considered deserving of special protection because they are especially vulnerable due to their youth or condition.

Most legislatures include statutory rape provisions in statutes that punish a number of different types of sexual assault. Statutory rape is different from other types of rape in that force and lack of consent are not necessary for conviction. A defendant may be convicted of statutory rape even if the complainant explicitly consented to the sexual contact and no force was used by the actor. By contrast, other rape generally occurs when a person overcomes another person by force and without the person's consent.

The actor's age is an important factor in statutory rape where the offense is based on the victim's age. Furthermore, a defendant may not argue that he was mistaken as to the minor's age or incapacity. Most rape statutes specify that a rape occurs when the complainant is under a certain age and the perpetrator is over a certain age. In Minnesota, for example, criminal sexual conduct in the first degree is defined as sexual contact with a person under thirteen years of age by a person who is more than thirty-six months older than the victim. The offense also is committed if the complainant is between thirteen and sixteen years old and the actor is more than forty-eight months older than the complainant (Minn. Stat. Ann. § 609.342 [West 1996]).

further readings

Cocca, Carolyn E. 2004. Jailbait: The Politics of Statutory Rape Laws in the United States. Albany : State University of New York Press.

cross-references

Child Abuse; Sexual Abuse.

rape¹ / rāp/ • n. the crime, committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with him without their consent and against their will, esp. by the threat or use of violence against them: he denied two charges of attempted rape | he had committed at least two rapes. ∎ fig. the wanton destruction or spoiling of a place or area: the rape of the Russian countryside. ∎ poetic/lit. the abduction of a woman, esp. for the purpose of having sexual intercourse with her: the Rape of the Sabine Women. • v. [tr.] (of a man) force (another person) to have sexual intercourse with him without their consent and against their will, esp. by the threat or use of violence against them: the woman was raped at knifepoint. ∎ fig. spoil or destroy (a place): the timber industry is raping the land. DERIVATIVES: rap·er n. rape² • n. a plant (genus Brassica) of the cabbage family with bright yellow, heavily scented flowers, esp. a variety ( oilseed rape) grown for its oil-rich seed and as stockfeed. Also called cole, colza. rape³ • n. (often rapes) the stalks and skins of grapes left after winemaking, used in making vinegar. rape⁴ • n. hist. (in the UK) any of the six ancient divisions of Sussex.

Rape

What Is Rape?

What Is the Treatment for Rape?

What Is Rape Trauma Syndrome?

Prevention of Rape

Resources

Rape is forced, unwanted sexual intercourse. Rape can happen to males or females, children or adults or elders, healthy people or people with disabilities. Rape is a crime even if the rapist is an acquaintance, a friend, or a member of the family.

KEYWORDS

for searching the Internet and other reference sources

Acquaintance rape

Child sexual abuse

Date rape

Rape trauma syndrome

Sexual assault

Who? Whom? How Often?

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report the following statistics about rape and sexual assault:

• More than 80 percent of people who have been raped do not report the assault to the police.
• Among people who do report the assault to the police, 40 percent are younger than age 18, and 15 percent are younger than age 12.
• Approximately 50 percent of rapes against women are committed by friends or acquaintances, not by strangers.
• Approximately 25 percent of rapes against women are committed by intimate partners, dates, or husbands.
• More than 25 percent of women in college experience sexual violence that meets the legal definition for rape or attempted rape.
• More than 7 percent of men in college report aggressive sexual behavior that meets the legal definition for rape or attempted rape.
• Women who have been raped experience physical injuries in approximately 40 percent of cases, need to be hospitalized overnight in 3 percent of cases, contract a sexually transmitted disease in 4 percent of cases, and become pregnant in 4 percent of cases.
• Death occurs in approximately 0.1 percent of all rape cases.

What Is Rape?

Rape is forced, unwanted sexual intercourse involving the genitals or any other part of the body. Rape also is called sexual assault. It is an act of violence; it is not a form of consensual sex*, love, or intimacy. Being a rapist does not always mean that a person is mentally ill. Committing a rape is a criminal act. Rape and sexual assault may be committed against females or males; children or elders; wives, dates, or intimate partners. Many rapes are never reported to the police. Rape may be committed by a stranger, but often it is committed by someone known to the person who has been raped. Sometimes physical force is used during a rape. Other times there may be intimidation. Sometimes rape occurs when the victim is drugged, drunk, or otherwise unable to respond.

* consensual sex

is sexual activity in which both people freely agree to participate.

What Is the Treatment for Rape?

People who have been raped may want to keep the assault secret.They may be upset, confused, and even embarrassed, perhaps mistakenly thinking that they were responsible for the attack. But it is very important that they go to a clinic or hospital emergency room immediately, before showering or changing clothing. Immediate medical examination is necessary to treat injuries, to allow for further medical evaluation, and to gather evidence of the crime. “Rape kit” evidence may include body fluids like saliva or semen* from the rapist or samples of the rapist’s hair or clothing. Continuing medical care is necessary to prevent or treat sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. Emotional care also is important. Rape crisis workers who understand the trauma that rape can cause often are on hand to provide help, support, and referrals for counseling to aid in emotional recovery from the effects of the rape.

* semen

is the fluid that carries the sperm produced in the testicles, the male reproductive organs. Sperm are tiny, tadpole-like cells that can unite with a female’s egg to result in pregnancy.

What Is Rape Trauma Syndrome?

Rape trauma syndrome is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition to physical distress, people who have been raped may experience psychological symptoms that can include:

People who have been raped need immediate attention at a clinic or hospital for medical treatment and for the collection of evidence of the crime. Rape kit evidence may include saliva or semen, which can be used to determine the rapist’s DNA “fingerprint.” Visuals Unlimited, Inc.

• emotional numbness
• alert watchfulness or jumpiness
• sleep disturbances
• nightmares
• disturbing memories (flashbacks) of the sexual assault
• avoidance of healthy sexual activity
• increased levels of alcohol or drug use
• feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and hopelessness
• depression
• school failure
• suicidal feelings

People who are raped by acquaintances, dates, or family members may experience symptoms that are different from those of people who are raped by strangers. In such cases, in addition to the actual trauma of rape, there is the added trauma of loss of trust. Rape by a stranger may involve a weapon or other types of violence. When people who are raped also fear for their lives, it increases the likelihood of post-traumatic stress disorder. Some symptoms of rape trauma may ease with the passage of time, but often the help of a therapist or support group is necessary for more complete emotional healing to take place.

Prevention of Rape

Important steps toward rape prevention include avoiding alcohol and drugs that can lead to irresponsible or dangerous behavior, always discussing sexual activities with a partner and obtaining agreement about what will happen. It is also important to have friends or family members know details about a date, for example, where the date will take place and the date’s name. Speak up or stop a situation whenever abusive sexual behaviors are witnessed. Programs to prevent rape may involve male mentors counseling young men.

Resources

Books

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. New York: Puffin Books, 2001.

Draper, Sharon Mills. Darkness Before Dawn. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

Organizations

Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), 635-B Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20003. This nonprofit organization operates the only national hotline for people who have been raped. It offers free, confidential counseling 24 hours a day. Telephone 800-656-HOPE http://www.rainn.org

Date Rape Drugs

Several medications that are useful when prescribed as sedatives*, muscle relaxants, or sleeping aids also have been used to “force” people to have sex. These drugs have become known as date rape drugs:

* sedatives

are drugs that have a calming effect.

• flunitrazepam (sold under the brand name Rohypnol), nicknamed “roofies”;
• clonazepam (sold under the brand name Klonopin), also sometimes referred to as “roofies”;
• gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), nicknamed “liquid Ecstasy.”;

When used illegally as club drugs or date rape drugs, these medications can cause euphoria* and loss of consciousness. Sometimes these medications also can cause seizures* or coma. Date rape drugs may be added to drinks as a way of secretly giving them to someone. Caution about accepting drinks from others is one important part of rape prevention.

* euphoria

is an exaggerated feeling of well-being.

* seizures

occur when the electrical patterns of the brain are interrupted by powerful, rapid bursts of electrical energy, which may cause a person to fall down, make jerky movements, or stare blankly into space.

National Coalition against Sexual Assault, 125 N. Enola Drive, Enola, PA 17025. This organization works to end sexual violence through education and public policy. Telephone 717-728-9764 http://www.dreamingdesigns.com/other/indexncasa.html

National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Mailstop K65, 4770 Buford Highway NE, Atlanta, GA 30341-3724. This division of the U. S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention posts fact sheets at its website covering rape, dating violence, intimate partner violence, and sexual violence against people with disabilities. Telephone 770-488-1506 http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc

White Ribbon Campaign, 365 Bloor Street East, Suite 203, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4W 3L4. This nonprofit organization focuses on men working to end men’s violence against women. It publishes a newsletter, fact sheets, and a brochure called It’s Time for Guys to Put an End to This. Telephone 416-920-6684 or 800-328-2228 http://www.whiteribbon.ca

KidsHealth, sponsored by the Nemours Foundation and the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, posts articles for teens on rape and related topics. http://www.KidsHealth.org

See also

Abuse

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Substance Abuse

Violence

rape Crime of sexual intercourse without the victim's consent, often involving the use of force, implied or actual. If the victim is considered incapable of giving consent (for example because s/he is below the age of consent), this is known as statutory rape, and evidence of lack of consent is not required. Usually applied to male use of force against women, in some US states a man can prosecute for rape. Marital rape is now considered a crime in the UK and in many US states.

rape3 take by force XIV; ravish (a woman) XVI. — AN. raper — L. rapere seize, snatch, take by force.
So rape sb. †violent seizure, robbery; carrying away of a person by force XIV; violation of a woman XV. — AN. ra(a)p, rape rape of a woman, f. the vb.

stat·u·to·ry rape • n. Law sexual intercourse with a minor.