Tangential To Kansas - Impact of Rape

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This is a thread for the topic that developed in the Kansas thread.

[As I stated in the Kansas thread, this topic has the potential to really offend people. If you go into this thread, note that you may be offended. Please do not flame on that -- you should post your opinion, but no attacking other members because you think they are insensitive and/or disagree with their opinions] - dmc

I feel bad that I may have been percieved as insensitive.

Let me explain myself.

Rape is an attack upon a person's dignity and feelings of self-worth. A raped person has lost nothing other than the self-perceived.

Pity is something than can be given from only the superior.

When a raped person develops outward signs of internal loss of worth, to take pity on them is provide exactly what will prevent final healing.

Sorry if I hurt feelings in the previous thread. I often take long and ugly detours until I arrive at what I was trying to say...

[ October 25, 2005, 17:11: Message edited by: dmc ]

 

The loss is self-imposed or imposed by other people by means of self-imposition (which is still self-imposed but the situation is different). The suffering is real, though, and I think it's impossible to avoid the feeling of loss altogether. I can tell you from personal experience that it doesn't even take sex to feel a kind of loss after discovering you've been cheated on by someone or belied or otherwise deceived. Perhaps not a generic loss, but still as if something has been taken that will take long to regenerate. I suppose it's a natural reflex and, as any kind of pain, serves a purpose and is there for a reaon.

As for pity, I don't think I can fully agree with you. It does come from a person in a better condition in one sense or another and there's always the notion of the one who pities being able to handle it, while the pitied one isn't really. Some consideration, compassion, selfless help is something everyone needs from time to time, though, and I believe it's helpful in healing.

Where you are right, I think, is where you say it's damaging when victim brackets are created and people put in those. Once victim always victim is certainly not true and treating victims like normal people instead of pitying them on all levels is the way to keep them from wallowing in self-pity. I still think compassion, but not an egoistic pity (i.e. how good I am because I pity the oh so misfortunate you), is beneficial, however.

 

I agree with chev.

The difference between pity and compassion/sympathy should be noted. The former can be harmful, the latter is rarely so. Support does not equal patronizing.

Getting back on the saddle after falling off the horse might be a working analogue here. But to expect such strength from everybody is a bit unreasonable and can sound cold. Hence the harsh reactions in the Kansas thread.

 

I have been considering the difference between compassion and pity. I'm realizing this a topic that is challenging for me.

One thing I am certain of: There is no translatable scale of difficulty in being who you are.

The challenge of person X in being person X is just not comparable to the challenge of person Y being person Y. There are no scales by which a comparison can be made and any comparative relativeness is impossible as, despite the ability to communicate, you cannot truly don another's mind, heart, and eyes.

But yet we make comparisons all the time!

Therein lies deep harm that can be done by the well-meaning:

When person X thinks it is more difficult for person Y to "be" person Y than it is for person X to "be" person X, person Y, particularly if they are emotionally close to person X, will be seriously harmed by that relationship. Given that there are no more influencing mirrors greater than a loved ones eyes, making the perception reality is a trap that is subtle, comforting to accept, and painful to avoid.

So, when dealing with the abused, how do you avoid causing harm when helping?

I don't know.

I largely got better by balling my eyes out to strangers in drug-rehabs. How is that for a healing process? Talk to my family? Talk to my friends back then? So, for the most part, I largely dealt with this stuff, though certainly not isolated, definitetely with very little coddling.

Ex-girlfriends still dumped me when I deserved it, old bad friends continued to be bad friends and treat me poorly, and my family stayed as distant and cold as ever...

And thankfully so: I seemed to have ended up alright! Well, at least I think so...

I cannot help but wonder if it is the coddling that keeps others so bent out of shape.

...

And I am seriously starting to feel like the guy who comes out of the closet at Christmas dinner... I imagine everyone is thinking, "Too much information!", as the forks hang suspended before their open mouths...

[ October 25, 2005, 22:01: Message edited by: Late-Night Thinker ]

 

You have reached a great breakthrough in the realization that there is no transferable scale. Many people go their entire lives without even approaching this realization.
You have, perhaps, gone too far, however, in saying that no comparisons can be made. The 'difficulty' of a person is an integration of all their life experiences, their opinions, beliefs, positions, and a lot of other things we can't really quantify yet. Each person will therefore be different and no translatable scale is possible. However, by getting to know someone, you can see how a particular challenge, i.e. major surgery, affects them.
Also, a major event like rape will be so massive that, regardless of the scale, similar difficulties will be encountered. The key is to understand exactly what those difficulties are. If you, as am I, are not a woman that has been raped, you will have greater difficulty comforting a woman who has, but you can if you know her well and know how it has affected her. If you are a woman who has been raped, you know exactly what another is going through, but if you don't know her, you may deeply hurt her by 'helping' her deal with it the way you did. She may well be handling it a completely different way and see your attempts as attacks.

In the end, the best bet is to get to know the person. If they ask for help, give it. If they don't, don't give it until you know they need/want it. It is quite a balancing act, but the hardest lesson to learn for most is to pay more attention to others and less attention to yourself.

 

This becomes even more complicated when considering that asking for help isn't always so simple. People might deep down wish for help, but for some reason be unable to ask for it. Some may at one time believe they don't need help, but later realise they would've been better off getting some anyway. Some may wish help, thinking they need it, but the "help" they get doesn't really help them in the end.

On top of what NOG said I might add *offering* to help and only actually giving it if requested - letting the person know that if they at some point want your help, you'll be there.

I wish I had some great wisdom to impart on this subject.

 

But many people who want to handle it on their own, or who want to just get back to regular life, see offers of help, especially coming from all directions, as assumptions that they can't handle it and absolutely need help. They see it as a sign of pity. Again, it is a balancing act, and personal experience with the person is the best tool.

 

They might see it that way. Also consider that if you make no gesture whatsoever, they might make other kinds of conclusions.

Personal experience with a person is indeed a great tool, I don't contest that. But you can never truly *know* someone so well that you can see inside ther head, that there's no room for doubt as to whether you're doing the right thing.

 

Well done, Mr Christmas Closet Guy. This topic and the remarks in the one it sprang off from are among the best I ever read here on SP. Even more so because I find myself in 100% agreement with LNT's point of view. I don't see why you have to excuse yourself for relying on objective statements in the face of an emotionally charged topic.

The problem in treating rape victims and offenders is one of balancing several different interests and demands. First of all, we have the victim and the question of the possibility of his or her healing. The next one is the interest of the society to prevent further rape cases from happening. Society may furthermore have an interest in vengeance - not necessarily to ensure crime prevention, but rather to satisfy base motives of your average human being. And lastly we have the offender and the question of his possible healing. All these interests may not necessarily be realized to the same extent by the same actions - more often we will find that furthering one cause will impede another one.

For example, taking vengeance on the offender in form of a death penalty will most likely further crime prevention (in this one case) but will rather impede the healing and rehabilitation of the offender.

Don't get wound up if you think that there's no way for a molester to be rehabilitated. It's an example.

What I read out of LNT's posts was that in his opinion we nowadays put the emphasis on crime prevention and vengeance rather than on the recovering of the victim. This would be questionable even if we could be sure that a heightened awareness of rape as a social problem would prevent rapes from happening.

But since it is hard to imagine that the awareness could be any higher than it is today and I don't see any proof for the decline of rape cases I don't think that we're on the right way here.

I do think that in the question of mental healing of the victims we are often heading the wrong way indeed. Treating people like lifetime victims all the time will do nothing but ensure them of their worthlessness for society. The feeling of helplessness and guilt present in the moment of rape will be extended forever through our constant reminders of how unbearable a fate like this has to be.

I have nothing against compassion, but I'd rather see people encourage rape victims to take the moral high ground and try to forgive their offenders instead of people yelling "I'd castrate them bastards for their unforgivable deeds". It is the place of the victim to decide whether the deed can be forgiven. Not ours.

 

I agree and I also have been convinced that castration won't stop someone determined rape, but deterrents aren't so totally overrated and sterilising sex offenders (so that pregnancy couldn't result from any of their potential future crimes) is a good idea.

I suppose some victims have forgiven their rapists but I'm not aware of a single rapist asking forgiveness from the victim or a victim agreeing to have daily contact on a friendly or neutral basis with a rapist. It's probably different in rape by husband or family member out of sheer necessity (if you can't cut contact), but that's it.

So, yes, forgiveness is possible and would be ideal. I would encourage it. But if I were female, I could more easily forgive a guy who simply tried to kill me and I can't really imagine a rapist repenting and becoming a good citizen.

Next, I agree that mental healing after rape isn't helped by treating people like lifetime victims. Feeling of their own guilt is the worse thing they can get. Sometimes blaming oneself instead of the offender paradoxically makes things easier to put up with (as in, the world isn't so evil and unjust but the misfortune was just punishment for some imaginary fault). A small reservation is that I'm against telling anyone he has done nothing wrong if he really has, so I'd rather address all such self-imposed scruples than outright dismiss them.

In the matter of priorities, I believe the victim's rehabilitation takes precedence before the offender's one, but the offender's punishment shouldn't be treated as the victim's therapeutic measure. It may have a beneficial effect for the victim to see that justice has been delivered, the evil has been noticed and reacted to. But I don't like the idea of taking it out on the offender on the spur of the moment and under heavy influence of emotion. That's not justice. Bastards as they are, even rapists deserve justice.

Preventing them from reaching further victims (isolation) or impregnating them (sterilisation) as a protective rather than punitive measure is a whole different story and I wouldn't be too shy about it. Castration wouldn't be bad but in an ideal situation where you know completely for sure that the accused is guilty and if such a deterrent had a chance of success. Of course, nulla poena sine lege (no penalty other that isn't mentioned in the law), so it should have to be announced way ahead. On a personal level, I would be less inclined to cry over a rapist losing balls than a thief losing a hand.

 

Chemical castration has many problems, but physical castration is permanent and very hard to get around. The idea isn't just to prevent the rape, however, but to remove the impetus to rape. In some cases, this is all that's neccesary, in others, serious psychiatric therapy is required.

 

There is a basic difference between pity and sympathy. The first implies that a person is damaged, broken or otherwise injured, perhaps irreparably. The latter requires a much deeper emotional and personal investment in someone's recovery.

The real problem is that pity can perpetuate a mentality of victimhood; that is, the identity of oneself as "a victim" first and foremost. While I wouldn't argue that it's necessary to see oneself as a victim for a time, ideally, that self-conception must come to an end. For that to happen, victims of such serious crimes need support, sympathy and assistance, not pity. Certainly, there will be large differences in people's responses to rape; the impact it has will be shaped largely be a person's resilience and lived reality. However, if the goal is to help, rather than hold up as an example, emotional and practical assistance from friends and family are priceless.

The other issue is about Nils Christie's concept of the "ideal victim", which many rape victims do not fit into. Here's a brief excerpt (source: http://www.uplink.com.au/lawlibrary/Documents/Docs/Doc62.html - in sub-section #3, edited for briefness):

To this, Christie adds one more qualification - that the ideal victim is an ex-victim; one that does not identify themselves first and foremost as a victim and does not see it as the central factor in their life. In this sense, the use of victims of particularly horrific crimes as poster-children to campaign for policy change can be highly detrimental, on multiple levels. First, they become iconic victims; their moral appeal is reliant on them being seen as helpless victims. Secondly, since most such campaigns are about legal change, they drop out of sight afterwards and are forgotten. If they reappear, many will be somewhat hostile if "they already got what they were after". This, I feel, is the greater danger, and a strong argument against such (ab)use of victims as a basis to propel such campaigning.

Absolutely, on both counts. I'm not sure if I'd phrase it exactly that way, but basing one's life around the pursuit of vengeance is hardly a way to recover. I don't think that restorative justice is appropriate for many rape cases, but I don't believe that a desire for retribution is of any real benefit for a victim. Since the vast majority (90% or higher in most places) of rapes are committed by people the victim knows or is/was close to, there are usually many more issues to deal with. As chev has indicated, feelings of self-loathing or blaming oneself are a huge impediment to recovery; they can be much worse when it's a partner or family member who attacked the victim (a common theme in sexual abuse as well). I'd never suggest that it's qualitatively more or less terrible than "stranger rape", though.

Re: the castration argument - it really doesn't matter what you do to some people, short of isolating them; they will find a way to violate women. Rape is still a terrible thing, whether the attacker is using his penis, his fingers, or an object. For these people - the truly predatory - rape is more about gratification through power than sex; castration will not prevent them from re-offending. For others, rehabilitation may be possible; I am not optimistic about it, since I think acts of rape go to a very basic level about respect for others, and this is difficult to change.

 

Again, has anyone ever heard of a single rapist becoming a good citizen?

@NS: You've just addressed castration. What about making them infertile?

Next, do you have any stats on the proportion between "knows" and "is/was close to" within the 90% (which is already surprising)?

Reminds me of another problem. Probably a large share of known or close people are fathers, bosses, teachers and the like. I believe fathers should lose custody of all children and be made infertile, as well as banned from adopting; teachers convicted of any kind of sex crime involving violence or abuse of position should be banned for life from education; doctors from medical practice; state/military (and similar) officers from any position of authority; clerics from any work with the faithful ever after. Not just for N years. Indefinitely. I'm aware that such a solution could impede their healing, but the safety of potential future victims is more important. It's better to prevent rape than to deal with its impact.

 

Chev,

You'll get no arguments from me on that.

Again, I'm not sure that making a rapist infertile is necessarily going to prevent reoffending. Just as castration will probably not stop a "dedicated offender", I don't believe infertility will, either. Preventing impregnation is a distant second to preventing rape, IMO (and I'm sure most would concur). Unfortunately, rape is not always as clear-cut as we would like. While a clearly-guilty rapist is utterly undeserving of sympathy, it is hard to have such certainty when all you have is a he-says-she-says situation.

Still, this thread is about victims of rape, not consent - that's a whole different debate, and one which deserves its own thread(s).

These 2003 and 2004 figures from Australia are not as crime-specific as I would like, but were the most reliable stats I could locate. They are distorted somewhat by the inclusion of additional crimes in the calculation.

I still stand by that figure of 90% (although perhaps 85% is closer to the mark), since rape is a significantly under-reported crime, and reasons given for under-reporting support the hypothesis that stranger rape is better-reported than non-stranger rape. Unfortunately, without access to victimisation survey data, I can't reliably verify or refute that hypothesis.

 

One thing I hate about "certain judicial systems": if the crime isn't certain, what the **** is a guilty verdict doing there, first of all?

Infertilisation wouldn't have any effect on preventing re-offending and it would probably be a very poor deterrent, since rapists are the last people interested in family life and being normal fathers. Still, if we were to infertilise all sex offenders with any degree of violence involved in the crime, at least the problem of abortion after rape would be reduced. A woman pregnant from rape is in a no-win situation. She won't dodge the post-abortion trauma on one hand and the child won't likely be the mascott of the family on the other hand.

 

Actually, yes, I'd agree with that, Chev - I hadn't considered it that way, and since it's a logical natural consequence, one that should be part of the assessment. I wouldn't push for it as a standard or mandatory punishment, though; just as a judicial option (and only with psychiatric and/or medical assessment as well).

 

@ Chev

What is a good citizen? Do you mean one whom does commit crimes?

...

I think people whom have raped, as in all people, come in a vast array of shades of grey.

While there are surely those whom are the sociopathic we continually see depicted in movies and other media outlets, such as the nightly news for example, the vast majority are in fact individuals whom probably regard what they did as absolutely abysmal.

To dehumanize a child molester is simply simplistic in my opinion. I think the issue arises because the crime involves sex. Sex is the result of a primal drive, and as such, a person whom has sex with a child, as percieved by another, is forever going to be driven to rape children.

But I just don't think that is an accurate accounting of what commonly occurs. While there are surely a few out there in monster-land, whom are the very epitome of a parent's nightmare, often these crimes are the result of intoxication and/or familial dynamics.

Sex, while between two consenting adults, is the result/expression of love/lust, can also be other things; often it is an act that dramatizes superiority between two individuals. I think many of the sexual crimes perpetuated against children within families are in fact acts of one declaring absolute superiority over another, in an animalistic fashion to be sure, but lacking the lust/love an outsider would assiociate with the act.

I think, with regard to the medias, a drum is being continually beat, and its tone declares the absolute evil of child molesters coupled with their proximity to your children. I think this is having a negative effect upon the unfortunates actually involved.

Those that have been abused are told to see their rapists as inhuman, which prevents them from truly forgiving. And to truly forgive is to truly settle.

Those that have raped are continually told they are inhuman, which may prevent them from ever regaining a sense of normalcy in their lives, and I feel that is tragic. While surely they have hurt an individual, to be declared irredemiable by humanity at large is a fate I imagine to be quite awful, although awful is the only word I could conjure as my vocabulary has failed me. And I think "irredemiable by humanity at large" is a fate only placed upon child molesters and perhaps mass/serial murderers.

So how is it that one whom has been raped as a child numerous times ends up defending child molesters? Because I know he was human; what was done to me was not done by a demon, devil, monster, ect..., it was done by an individual whom has the ability to make choices. And with the ability to make choices comes a future that can be quite different than the past.

Don't misunderstand: If he opened a child-care center I would certainly consult the authorities; there are surely other ways to earn a living.

But to forcibly remove his ability to have children? Who has that right? Certainly not I...

Supposing he did have children, and supposing he did rape that child, the child would not be condemned. What life does not have an element of suffering? Who are we to compare the suffering of an else to an else? To take away a child molester's right to have children is only to prevent a child from entering this world, not prevent suffering, despite the intentions.

I just don't see the inevitability.

 

Firstly, whoever regards rape as abysmal does it rightfully. The only instance of rape losing abysmal character and gaining more of a human one that I can think about is provoked rape. But how often does it happen?

Secondly, intoxication is generally a gateway to the world of crime for those who have such urges. But family dynamics? Occasional heavy slapping or even a fight between an adolescent and a parent probably falls in here, but rape?

Thirdly, it's quite obvious that there is no love in rape. But lust? A male rapist needs to get his erection somehow. He can fantasise about anything, but there is always some connection and sexual satisfaction comes from rape. A twisted one, but still sexual, based on lust. Besides, if there were no lust involved, wouldn't it still be a sex crime because it's in the sexual area of human life? Does hypothetical absence of lust make rape any better? Is getting off on domination better than desperately wanting to get laid and crossing the line of consent?

As for taking away the rapist's right to have children, I was thinking primarily about preventing impregnation, secondarily about not giving a sexually coercive custodian any more opportunity.

Redemption... I believe is possible. Googling yesterday, I actually found a mention of a guy who converted to Christianity and turned himself in for four rapes. That would be the third I've heard about so far.