THE REDISCOVERY OF THE PLIGHT OF RAPE VICTIMS
Forcible rape is surely one of the most heinous vio- lent crimes imaginable, and yet for centuries the social reaction to this offense showed little regard for the well-being of the victim. In the distant past, rape was handled as an offense that harmed the interests of a man—either a father or husband— rather than a violation of personhood that threat- ened the emotional and physical health of the daughter or wife. Some rapists were punished
severely, but others went unprosecuted, depending on the status of both the accused offender and the female he harmed.
In biblical times, a man could be put to death for the rape of an innocent virgin. But if a married woman was raped, she could be executed too because she was considered blameworthy (unless her husband intervened on her behalf). During medieval times, a man seeking upward mobility might engage in heiress stealing—abducting and then raping a young woman from a wealthy family in order to compel her parents to agree to let her be his bride. As feudalism evolved, only the rape of a noblewoman was punishable; forcing a peasant woman to submit was not considered a crime. Dur- ing warfare, over the ages, the enemy’s women were taken by conquering soldiers as spoils of vic- tory; the triumphant army symbolically demon- strated to the soldiers on the losing side that they were so badly defeated that they could not even protect “their own” women. Rapists in military units around the world and through the centuries were rarely arrested, prosecuted, or punished during wartime (see Brownmiller, 1975; and Siegel, 1998).
Rapes involving people of different races become particularly controversial and polarizing. From the days of slavery up until the 1950s, black men who merely were accused of raping white women were in danger of being lynched by angry mobs without even being put on trial, especially in the Deep South. When rapists were executed after being convicted in state courts, most were black men found guilty of sexually assaulting white women. But white men were not put to death for raping black women. As a result of this imbal- ance, in 1977, the Supreme Court (in Coker v. Georgia) ruled that capital punishment was an exces- sive penalty for rape. Consequently, life imprison- ment became the maximum sentence. In 2008, the Supreme Court (in Kennedy v. Louisiana) struck down capital punishment for the forcible and aggravated rape of a child.
These examples illustrate the point that in the past certain rapes were taken very seriously while others were reacted to very differently. But in most cases, the wishes and well-being of the injured party
V I C T IMS OF R AP E S AN D OT H E R S E XUAL AS S AULT S 327
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either were not taken into account or were assigned a low priority by the men who determined a rapist’s fate. Clearly, when a rape took place, the offender became the focus of attention while the best inter- ests of his victim largely were overlooked.
At the start of the 1970s, feminists fighting for the rights of women to control their own bodies (particularly reproductive rights via contraception and abortion) called attention to the plight of rape victims. Instead of being regarded as some man’s “damaged goods,” feminists insisted that these girls and women should be recognized as individuals suf- fering from terrible violations of their personhood who deserved respect, support, assistance, empow- erment, and protection from further harm. This pro-victim, antirape movement exposed a legacy of injustice, institutionalized neglect, and routine abuse. Because of class, race, and gender discrimi- nation, most women did not report such offenses to the authorities, and of the incidents that were reported, most went unpunished.
Feminists argued that rape was more than a personal tragedy: It was a social problem and a political issue. They interpreted sexual assaults as skirmishes in what had been referred to traditionally as the unending battle of the sexes. Forcible rapes functioned as acts of terrorism that intimidated all women and served to keep them in their “proper place”—subordinate to males (dependent upon “good” men for protection against “bad” men) and outside of male territorial preserves. A sexual assault symbolized how “it’s a man’s world”—a male could exploit his power differential (his super- ior physical force) to have his way.
The way rape cases were handled dramatized how the men who ran the criminal justice system could not be trusted to act on behalf of victimized girls and women. Invariably, when accusations about rape were lodged, the all-male police, prose- cution, judiciary, and juries scrutinized the relation- ship between the two parties (especially their social class, race/ethnicity, prior contacts, and her alleged blameworthiness). These men often lost sight of the violence inflicted upon the target during the sexual assault (see Russell, 1975; Griffin, 1979; Rhode, 1989; and Muehlenhard et al., 1992).
Through books, articles, dissertations, discus- sions at consciousness-raising groups, demonstra- tions at trials, and public “speak-outs,” the antirape movement supported by feminist legal scholars worked to redefine the prevailing image of the crime and to rediscover its victims. Their outreach campaigns triggered public and private discussions about previously unnamed types of violations such as date rape, acquaintance rape, marital rape, serial rape, and male rape. Their aim was to shatter the myths surrounding the crime (see Koss, 2005). Since then, federal and state laws have been rewritten and victimization surveys have been reworded to recognize the pos- sibility that the attacker was not a stranger (see Fisher, Cullen, and Daigle, 2005).