McCord and Ross have argued for the admissibility of the rape trauma syndrome in corroborating an alleged victim's accusation that a prior incident of sexual intercourse with the defendant was nonconsensual, arguing that the existence of the syndrome is direct evidence of the force used to achieve sexual intercourse with the victim. Research on the rape trauma syndrome is not probative of consent to prior sexual intercourse, however, because there are no data concerned with the relation between variations in the behaviors attributed to the syndrome and variations in the structures of rape incidents. Advocates of the probative value of rape trauma research treat all rape reports as functionally equivalent. There are no data to support this assertion. Regarding the value of the rape trauma syndrome as probative of a prior traumatic incident, this article reasons that what is apparently an increase in the probativeness of the syndrome has been achieved with a decrease in the relevancy of that being proved. It may be easier to provide research demonstrating that those reporting a rape exhibit behaviors having structural correspondences with those reporting other traumatic events, but the lack of a description of the structural characteristics of traumatic events may render that research relatively useless. 57 footnotes