Where's The Rapist? — Mia Leigh Renna

Unlike Waldo, rapists are hard to spot in a crowd and within your community. Rapists don’t have a striped hat and turtle neck sweater that they like to wear every day; rapists actually do not share many traits with each other at all! “Sex offenders comprise an extremely heterogeneous population that cannot be characterized by single motivational or etiological factors.” So how do we find them?

One way you may think, is to just ask. Surprisingly, many rapists will admit to performing acts of sexual aggression, but won’t admit that they are rapists. Essentially, “yeah, I’m named Waldo, but I’m not the Waldo you’re looking for.” Now, why would someone admit to doing these violent, disgusting things? Well, to them, they aren’t admitting to horrible things, because rapists have the tendency to justify their behavior, they are just stating what they did Friday night. Due to this, sexual predators do not feel the remorse that usually exists in people after doing something immoral, increasing the likelihood of doing it again.

Now we have a question that we can ask without any physical or personality descriptors, what part of town should we go to in order to continue our search in order to protect ourselves? Look no further than your own family and friends! That’s right, about 75% of rape cases are committed by a friend, spouse, or relative.

www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence

I know what you are thinking, there is no chance that someone you know can harm you in that way and now you are going to click out of this article. But don’t do that! You may very well be right, and you are in a safe, loving family that would do you no harm and that is fantastic and I am nothing but happy for you! But many people are not. Every 73 seconds another American is sexually assaulted. So we will keep searching now to help them.

Now that we aren’t asking our friends and family, who should we ask? Similar to other criminal offenders, rapists repeat their offenses at a rate of about 35%. Therefore, the best way to find out who is a rapist is by listening to the victims and pursuing charges against who they are identifying. Additionally, the defense of these cases can’t reference their roles in the community, religion, swim times, to make an argument as to why they couldn’t have done what the victim is claiming. Arguing that “she said no, but…” and “she was unconscious, but…” need to be rephrased as “she said no” and “she was unconscious” with no accepted excuse attached. Moreover, this may be hard to do when the victim is claiming that someone you love is the assailant. They never did anything to you, but they would do something to them? Remember that only 2% of all claims of rape are false, and reach out to support groups and mental health resources to try and fully understand the situation.

It is harder to find a rapist than it is to find Waldo, but there are a lot more out in a crowd to choose from rather than one man, in one striped hat.