In 1976, a Ph.D. student named Samuel Smithyman published a rather unusual advertisement in the newspapers of Los Angeles.
He was searching for a rapist for his research. He waited for his phone to ring, all the while skeptical that anyone would call. But around 200 people called him.
Among the callers was a computer programmer who had raped his girlfriend. A painter who had raped his acquaintance’s wife. And many others.
Dr. Smithyman interviewed around 50 such people and published a dissertation. His findings weren’t much different from that of Madhumita Pandey, who had researched the same topic 2 years before him.
Madhumita Pandey was only 22 when she first visited Tihar jail to interview a convicted rapist. During her research, she interviewed over 122 convicted rapists in Tihar jail.
Madhumita Pandey and Dr. Smithyman’s research are very rare. They teach us the mentality of a rapist. It’s important to understand a rapist’s motivations and thought processes as we seldom discuss them.
After the Hyderabad rape case, we focused only on two things: how to punish the accused, something that we recently observed, and what women should do to prevent rapes.
After the Hyderabad rape case, Telangana police issued an advisory that advised women to:
Always wait in crowded areas. And don't hesitate to call the police. In India, we focus more on the victim than the rapist.
But the editor of the Psychology of Violence journal contradicts such mentality. She says, ‘we would never come closer to understanding rapes until we understand the perpetrator.’
In this article, we’ll answer these crucial questions:
What are the motivations of a rapist? Why do they rape? What are the solutions to this problem?
There was something common in Pandey and Smithyman’s research, after a heinous rape case, we often label rapists as monsters or animals. As no human would ever commit such an awful crime.
But many researchers assert that when they talk to rapists they sound like sane individuals.
Smithyman said he was surprised to find the rapists conversing with him normally.
Pandey said many of the times during the interviews she felt sorry for rapists. She would even forget that they were convicted.
Even a Canadian researcher, who interviewed a rapist who had murdered his victims after the act, claimed the same thing.
This doesn’t mean we should justify the action of these criminals. But to solve the problem of rapes, we need to understand rapists first.
Many researchers state that most rapists show no remorse and don’t believe that they’ve perpetrated any serious crime.
Mary Koss, a professor of Public Health asserts that when she asks a rapist if they had forced themselves on their victims, rapists generally agree. But when she asks if they ‘raped’, they would deny it.
Studies have shown that people who kept sex slaves during wars didn’t accept that they actually ‘raped’ their victims.
Madhumati Pandey says that rapists don’t realize that they have committed a crime and raped someone. They show no understanding of the concept of rape itself. They even blame the victims for the incident. Madhumita says that rapists often convince themselves of an alternative reality. This is called Cognitive Dissonance, something that we saw in the BBC documentary India’s Daughter.
"It takes two hands to clap. Do you think the girls who roam outside after 9 at night are innocent?"
Let’s taken an example of Cognitive Dissonance. A 49-year-old man who had raped a 5-year-old girl stated in an interview with Madhumita Pandey that the young girl provoked him. That she and her mom had a questionable character that needed to be corrected. There are many reasons behind Cognitive Dissonance.
The rapist could simply believe that his sexual needs are more important than the victim was asking for it or that men’s sexual drive is uncontrollable.
Madhumita Pandey interviewed 65 murder convicts of Tihar jail to understand if other criminals blamed their victims too. But their responses were contrary to that of rapists. The murderers blamed themselves and not their victims. While the rape convicts blamed the victims.
Panday suggests that one reason behind the difference in this mentality could be because a murderer might find himself more accountable after the death of the victim.
But this doesn’t mean rapists don’t feel sorry for the victims. But most of the time they blame chose to blame their victim. Even when they regret it, it’s for an entirely different thing. The 49-year-old rapist that we talked about said that he ruined the life of the 5-year-old victim.
"Now she’s no longer a virgin and nobody would marry her. And I’m ready to marry her once I come out of jail. This shows us that the rapist has no understanding of rape and consent."
He focuses more on the victim’s honor rather than worrying about the pain that she must have gone through.
These observations might apply to many rapists. But we can divide the motivations of rapists into two types. The first reason is that men rape women for biological and evolutionary reasons. The explanation being that rape is a reproductive strategy by men to ensure the continuation of their genetic material and heredity.
If you believe in this theory, you can reason that every man tends to perpetrate sexual violence.
Another theory suggests that sexual violence occurs due to societal, cultural, or man-made reasons.
If you consider rapists to be monsters or animals then you most likely support the biological theory. But if you consider that a rapist is motivated by his society then you believe in societal or cultural theory.
The biological theory can’t explain the commonplace of rape in some countries and its rarity in others. If rape and sexual violence are natural things then every country should have a similar rape rate. But that’s not the case. Even if the biological theory holds some truth, sexual violence can’t be explained without cultural theory.
We can say both these theories play a part in explaining sexual violence as according to researchers there are different types of rapists.
For example, Opportunistic Rapists rape according to certain situations.
If a woman denies having consensual sex or if they realize that the woman and her family won’t take serious action if they commit the crime. The societal factors are more applicable in this case.
Specialized rapists find satisfaction through sexual violence. Biological factors will better explain this case.
There are little researches that could help us curb biological factors that lead to rape. But we can counter societal practices.
The first step would be to accept the fact that there’s a problem with our society.
By labeling rapists as monsters and animals we are saving our society from criticism. We should focus more on our society and its practices.
Just like we discussed in the previous article, the death penalty doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. In turn, it worsens it. It’s just a short-term solution to satisfy people.
Verma Committee which was introduced after Nirbhaya’s 2012 rape case, stated in her report that the death penalty is not a viable solution.
We need to understand that there’s not a ‘golden’ solution to this problem. One cannot change our society overnight.
What does a society include?
It includes us, our family, our schools. It’s people with whom we live. Until we don’t change these things we can never solve this problem. Even today we hear cases of female foeticide. Even when they grow up we put a barrier between them and the boys.
According to research, . There’s an unequal distribution of resources. Only a handful of girls are included in the workforce.
To change this attitude we need to bring a great reform in our education, legal and political systems. We need to campaign nationwide. Like the Ministry of women and child development released a short film named Komal, which addressed the issue of child sex abuse.
It’s easy to put away four rape convicts, but it’s difficult to interview 122 rape convicts just like Madhumita Pandey did to understand the root of rape to find a better solution.
