NCJ Number: 143963
Title: "Riding the Bull at Gilley's": Convicted Rapists Describe the Rewards of Rape (From Violence Against Women: The Bloody Footprints, P 26-46, 1993, Pauline B. Bart, Eileen Geil Moran, eds. - See NCJ-143961)
Author(s): D Scully; J Marolla
Date Published: 1993
Page Count: 21
Sponsoring Agency: Sage Publications, Inc
Grant Number: R01 MH33013
Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
Language: English
Country: United States of America
Annotation: Data from interviews conducted with 114 convicted, incarcerated rapists in a Virginia prison 1980 and 1981 were used to address the question of what rapists gain from sexual aggression and violence in a culture seemingly prone to rape.
Abstract: The participants were all volunteers. The interviews used an 89-page instrument that covered general background; psychological, criminal, and sexual history; attitude scales; and rapists' perceptions of their crime and themselves. Interviews lasted from 3 to 7 hours each. The factual information obtained in the interviews was compared with reports on file in the prison. Results revealed that rape was often a means of revenge and punishment. Implicit in revenge rapes was the notion that women were collectively liable for the rapists' problems. Some victims were substitutes for significant women against whom the men desired to take revenge. Other victims were thought to represent all women. In both these cases rapists regarded women as a category and not as individuals. Other rapists regarded rape as an afterthought in that it was a bonus added to burglary or robbery. Other men used rape as a fantasy come true in that it gained access to sexually unavailable or unwilling women. The pleasure the rapists derived from raping revealed the extreme to which they regarded women as sexual commodities rather than as human beings. Findings indicated that it is not necessary to resort to psychopathology to account for all rape or other acts of violence. Instead, rape can be regarded as the end point in a continuum of sexually aggressive behaviors that reward men and victimize women. Findings suggested that to understand rape and rape prevention, it may be important to ask why some men do not rape, rather than why some men do. Figure, notes, and 43 references
Main Term(s): Criminology
Index Term(s): Criminal methods; Offender attitudes; Rape causes; Sex offense causes; Violence causes; Virginia
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