Addressing some common misconceptions about rape and sexual assault

I sometimes meet people who think rape and sexual assault are very rare. Or who believe that if someone is assaulted and doesn’t report it, then that casts doubt on their story or means they’re (somehow) blameworthy. I also have heard people claim that if a victim stays in touch with (or is friendly to) the perpetrator afterward, it means the event must have been consensual (or else fabricated). I think these perspectives are based on misconceptions.

To help clear them up, I’d like to share with you some statistics, followed by what I’ve witnessed regarding sexual assault and rape (in my personal networks).

---

Here are some helpful statistics about the rates of victimization in general:

• According to RAINN, about 1 in 6 American women and 1 in 33 American men have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape (source). 

• According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) survey, 1 in 5 American women experienced completed or attempted rape during her lifetime, and 1 in 14 American men had been made to penetrate someone (completed or attempted) during his lifetime (source). Among women, 13.5% experienced completed forced penetration during their lifetime, 6.3% experienced attempted forced penetration, and 11.0% experienced completed alcohol/drug-facilitated penetration at some point in their lifetime. Among men, approximately 1.6% were made to penetrate through completed forced penetration, 1.4% experienced situations where attempts were made to make them penetrate someone else through the use of force, and 5.5% were made to penetrate someone else through completed alcohol/drug facilitation at some point in their lifetime.

Note that these estimates can vary quite a bit due to (a) different definitions being used/different question wording and (b) precisely who is being surveyed. I wouldn’t be surprised if anywhere from 1 in 2 to 1 in 6 women in the US have been raped and/or sexually assaulted (depending on who is asked and with which wording).

• According to RAINN, about 20% of sexual violence is committed by a stranger, 40% by acquaintances, 33% by a current or former romantic partner, and 3% by a non-spouse relative (source).

• According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only about 1 in 3 rapes/sexual assaults are reported to the police (source).

---

In my networks:

• Twelve people that I know have told me about being raped or sexually assaulted (11 women and one man) – note that I’m only talking here about one-on-one conversations I’ve had where the person told me some details about what happened. If you’re wondering, none of these were cases where consensual sexual activity was occurring, and then, in the heat of the moment, the perpetrator did something that they didn’t know the victim didn’t want. These cases are all very clear violations.

• In only three cases (i.e., 25%), the perpetrator was a stranger.

• Of the 12 people, only one of them (i.e., 8%) reported what happened to authorities or publicly named the perpetrator.

---

To see how common sexual assault experiences are among my Twitter followers, I posted two (anonymous) polls, both shown below. Of the respondents, more than 1 in 2 women and more than 1 in 7 men reported that they had experienced sexual assault, defined here as a situation they found very distressing where (1) they were forced to engage in a sexual act OR (2) a sexual act was performed on them against their will. These proportions were similar regardless of if it was (or wasn’t) specified that a reasonable person would have predicted they didn’t want the act to be done (this specification was added in the second poll).

---

This raises the question – why did victims so rarely report such cases to authorities?

The reasons I’m aware of for why people don’t report are that they…

• don’t think they’ll be believed

• feel shame or embarrassment

• don’t want their attacker (e.g., an ex-boyfriend) to go to jail or be harshly punished

• don’t want more people to know about the event

• are too young to know what to do

• are trying to avoid reliving the trauma or being retraumatized (since reporting it will require talking about the event extensively)

• are scared of retaliation by the perpetrator

• don’t believe that reporting it will lead to justice

Claire Z, who commented on an earlier version of this post, also pointed out the following additional reasons that people sometimes don’t report (which I don’t believe were major factors in the 12 cases I’m referring to above, but which I think can be important in other situations).

Some people don’t report because they…

• are too busy and don’t want to take the time to report, follow up, and possibly be a witness in a trial

• have fear related to admitting to the use of illegal substances during the assault

• don’t want specific people to find out about the assault (e.g., parents they think would react counterproductively)

• don’t think what happened to them was very bad or important

• don’t think what was done would be considered very bad or important (or even think people would consider it good – especially in the case of men assaulted by women)

• are genuinely uncertain what happened, e.g., because of substance use

In a nutshell, I think victims of rape and sexual assault usually believe that (all consequences considered) they will be worse off reporting the event to authorities. So, after an extremely upsetting and often traumatic event, they are in a situation where reporting it may make things even worse for them. Under such circumstances, is it any wonder that these events would often go unreported?

---

Another thing I’ve seen baffle people is that victims sometimes stay in touch with a perpetrator or even continue being nice or friendly to them. Such behavior sometimes leads people to think that the alleged event was consensual or fabricated. Yet, there are good explanations for why this sometimes happens.

Here are the reasons I’ve seen for victims staying in touch with (or even acting friendly with) the perpetrator afterward:

• they don’t want the perpetrator to slander them to people they both know

• they don’t want to come across as a threat to the perpetrator, which could raise their future level of danger (especially if the perpetrator has power over them or comes across as someone who may hurt them even worse if angered)

• there are additional negative consequences associated with not speaking to the perpetrator, or it is difficult to avoid talking to them (e.g., the perpetrator is a work colleague, a family member, tightly woven in their social circles, or has some kind of power over them)

• they want to hide from the perpetrator how negatively impacted they were by the event

• they have a strong emotional attachment to the perpetrator (or are even in love with them), and the terrible event doesn’t remove that attachment (e.g., it’s a situation of an abusive boyfriend/close family member)

• the perpetrator (or other people in the victim’s life) make the victim feel like they are to blame for the event, or at least that they are as much to blame as the perpetrator

• they feel some uncertainty about what happened because they were willingly (or unknowingly) consuming drugs before the event transpired

---

Thankfully, the norms around reporting rape and sexual assault appear to be shifting. It’s getting easier to report these events. That being said, I think the incentive structures still are such that victims often feel it is not in their interest to report.

In my opinion, shifting incentives so that victims benefit more from reporting rape and sexual assault (ideally without significantly increasing incentives for false reporting) is one promising approach to make outcomes more just and reduce how often these crimes are committed.

---

This essay was first written on January 9th, 2022, and first appeared on this site on January 21st, 2022.