Rape is Not Personal
by Survivors of stranger rapes think something about them caused the rapes. In this story, a man convicted of several stranger rapes explains that rape is not personal. He would not recognize his victims if they walked into the room. Women blame themselves for rape, but this story shows that sex offenders know who causes rapes. It is not survivors.
If Sonny Boyd ever had to raise an army, he’d pick an army of sex offenders. “We have the most heart and nerve to dedicate ourselves to something stupid and foolish and throw away our lives without a second thought,” Sonny said. “I had a wife. I had children. I had a family.
“We just throw that to the wind, whereas other people hesitate. They weigh out the consequences. They think, ‘I got a thousand to one odds against me. I better not do this.’ I just told myself a whole bunch of lies.” Sonny had served more than 15 years in prison for burglary and rape. He had another year to go.
Don Ames could be one of Sonny’s recruits. A graduate of an upper-tier liberal arts college where he was a lettered athlete in tennis and golf, Don got seventeen years for rape. His wife divorced him. His business went bankrupt. Most of his family turned away. He lost it all because of the excitement of rape.
“Nothing ever gave me that intense kind of feeling like when I was driving around, and I would be thinking about it, maybe following somebody,” he said. “I had a physical reaction. I would be shaking, physically shaking, like teeth would chatter. I couldn’t stop. I never had that kind of physical reaction to anything else. I would also get butterflies. I can relate that to sports events, before a big game or something.”
Don explained that he didn’t get an erection before games but he did when he was driving around looking for a woman to rape.
His victims had to be women he didn’t know. “The less I knew about somebody the easier it would be to victimize them,” he said. “I couldn’t hurt somebody I know or that I had any kind of relationship with.
“I don’t mean relationship in terms of physical relationship, but just an acquaintance, anybody that I had any kind of contact with. I couldn’t do that because it was personal then. It was like for me [He thought for about five seconds.], rape was impersonal.”
Not only is rape impersonal, but Don decided who the women were and what the rape would mean to them. “If I take the right person, it’s not going to make a difference anyway,” he said. “The women I was raping were [He didn't finish the sentence.]. They’d been in bars looking for guys anyway.
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