Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto

by Michelle Bowdler

According

to a study from the National Registry on Exonerations, “a black prisoner serving time for sexual assault is three-and-a-half times more likely to be innocent than a white sexual assault convict.”

Our ugly history of systemic racism impacts every aspect of our society, and rape culture cannot be defined or analyzed without addressing

the influence of racial bias.

But it is clear to me as a long-term survivor of rape that there is a striking disproportion between

the severity of the crime’s lifelong consequences for survivors and the seriousness with which it is treated by society and, specifically, by the criminal justice system. It is this disparity I question.

Data from this current decade shows that close to 25 percent of all rapes were reported compared to over 60 percent of robberies and assault and batt...

Network (RAINN)—using an amalgamation of federal data14—estimates that 230 out of 1,000 rapes are reported. Of those, 46 lead to arrest, 9 to prosecution, and 5 to felony conviction. Only 4 percent of all reported rape cases ever see the inside of a co...

Rape victims still are routinely discounted, and our pleas—first for the rapist to stop and then for law enforcement to help us seek justice—are largely ignored.

Studies estimate that between 2 and 8 percent of rape claims are deemed to be either false or baseless.

The term “unfounded”

in rape cases is supposed to be used when officers find a case is false or baseless.

In 2019 the city of Pittsburgh deemed almost a third of its rape cases unfounded.

In both Scottsdale, Arizona, and Oxnard, California, almost half

of rapes reported between 2009 and 2014 were classified as unfounded.21 Additionally concerning is that victims risk being charged with a false report if their case is dismissed in such a way—yet another disincentive for victims to go to law enforcement.

Describing in detail sexual humiliation

and unimaginable violence is not something a human being would choose to do if they had any other option.

These are merely a few examples in a long list of egregious comments delegitimizing rape as an act of violence.

It might be laughable if it didn’t work so much of the time.

Unprocessed memories too overwhelming to feel at a moment of terror have to go somewhere. It is like a cancer that goes into remission—not disappearing

but

lying in wait for the most inopportune tim...

Daily, I witnessed young people suffering both from their experiences with sexual violation as well as from the secondary pain of being disbelieved, shunned by friend groups, and unable to complete their studies.

I read that Massachusetts had thousands of untested DNA samples in its state crime lab going back as far as the mid-1980s and wondered about my unsolved case. Then I read further that there were untested, abandoned rape kits in cities everywhere—hundreds of thousands of them.

I must believe that, this time, a reckoning toward justice will occur. Otherwise, it is simply too crushing.

My manifesto is not a rallying cry for victims to act but a rebuke of current norms and a plea for change and accountability from law enforcement, whose job is to investigate and prosecute sexual assault, and from legislators, who speak too often about rape as if it is something other than a devastating crime of violence requiring a serious response. We can no longer allow the indifference toward

sexual assault that leaves victims unable to rely on seeking justice for the crime they endured.

At the time of my attack, most states gave men who “fathered” through rape the same custody and visitation rights as other male parents. As recently as 2012, thirty-one states still allowed these rights, and in the

present day a few have yet to change them.

That I am dead seems completely probable. This thought is more connected to reality than any thought I’ve had since several hours before, when two men came rushing toward my

bed in the middle of the night hissing at me.

I have only been with women since my freshman year in college, which started out as a complete surprise and then became an identity. I’d never had much experience with men before that: a few kisses, maybe, a little teenage groping. I had intended to

get around to men someday. It seemed like an experience in life I shouldn’t miss altogether.

While some medical schools and residencies include training on appropriate care for sexual assault victims, it is not yet part of physician training

nationally.

Knowledge of how to treat a trauma survivor matters enormously in the survivor’s willingness to seek medical care over a lifetime.

Yet trauma-informed medical care, something that’s been written about

and discussed within the mental health field for years, is not yet a uniform standard in medical training.

I am above my body on the ceiling once more, looking down on a person I do not recognize. She is a tiny girl with no control, eyes covered, feeling like nothing more than an object for the second time in less than a few hours.

the Department of Justice acknowledges that “even where law enforcement officers harbor no explicit biases or stereotypes about women or LGBT individuals, an officer’s unconscious bias towards these groups can undermine an effective response to sexual assault and domestic violence incidents.”

She looks at me with a frown and a head tilt and I want to accept the kindness and also to slap her.

my only introduction to the male body. It is a look of fear mixed with sadness, and it will be my lifelong torment.

I can never again be a person who does not have this story chasing me. I can never make it go away, or the look it brings to people’s faces. This is something I learn this very moment in the ER as I look at my examiner.

She has the same look in her eyes as the nurse did, but Lise’s is also mixed with love and worry, so I can stand to look back at her. “Can I hug you?” she says, hugging me.

And so this brand-new crisis takes up residence inside me as we finish our time at the emergency room. This night has changed my future forever. I am at greater risk than I was twenty-four hours earlier for interruptions in my career and education, intimacy challenges, and mental health conditions like a substance use disorder, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic

stress disorder, including a form of PTSD that is chronic.

While they will try to help me as the identified victim, they too are traumatized. This fact is undeniable.

Even though they’ll find a way to offer much despite their own pain, they’ll need help, too.

Secondary trauma has its own ripple effects: sleeplessness, nightmares, anger, and depression, among others. Studies of law enforcement personnel, mental health care workers, and medical professionals show that these symptoms have potential impact on a person’s ability to be an effective caretaker or first responder.

Secondary trauma manifests through avoidance, irritability, and many other ways. An officer may have intrusive thoughts about someone they love being hurt like the victims