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.
“My set up was that they’d been out in bars or loose sexually kinds of people. So they had it coming, or it didn’t matter to them. This wouldn’t be a big, big thing to happen to them.” After Don said this, I was speechless for 20 seconds. When I was able to speak, I asked him how he knew the women were loose. He said, “Well, I didn’t actually know that. I knew that because that’s the kind of people that were out at that time of night.”
I asked him what time of night that would be. He said, “This is another thing that doesn’t make sense because there were all kinds of times that I was out. Generally it would be late, like midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock in the morning, that kind of thing, but I was out in the winter time sometimes after it got dark, or not right after it got dark but maybe at seven-thirty or eight o’clock.”
As Don spoke I noticed how small he looked, not my idea of a rapist at all, but hunched, wrinkled forehead, pushing himself to explain how he thought about his rapes. I tried not to imagine him following me home, grabbing me in my garage, and throwing me to the floor. After dark, I don’t turn into my driveway but go around the block if there is a car in back of me. I check the rearview mirror for headlights.
Don doesn’t hold women responsible for their own rapes. “Most women would think that they have some responsibility,” Don said, “or there’s something that they could have done differently to change events or that there was something about them that made them attractive as victims. From my experience, that’s not true.
“The only attractive quality about victims is that they’re vulnerable at that time because of the situation. It didn’t have anything to do with how they looked or how they dressed or [Don paused for several seconds.] or how much money they made or anything. It is nothing about them. I’ve read things or heard things, victims talking about it.
“They can remember the way the guy smelled or the way he sounded or what he looked like or all those kind of things. I can’t remember anything about any of the victims. If any one of those victims walked into the room I wouldn’t know who they were.”
This article is based on interviews I did with men in prison. I changed the names and identifying information to protect privacy.
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