For some women who have been raped by men they know, rape-trauma syndrome does not emerge until years later, much the way that posttraumatic stress disorders have been shown to emerge a decade or more after the fighting ended for Vietnam veterans. “I put such a tight lid on all my feelings that I didn’t have to deal with any feelings. They were all buried very, very deep,” says Connie, a 35-year-old Illinois woman who was raped at 19 by a man she met at a local hangout.
