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In studies of the rapists sent to the center over the past 16 years, Groth and his colleagues have identified four types of the act: displaced rape (brutalizing of women to strike back at a female in the rapist's past); compensating rape (an attempt to bury insecurities by controlling a woman, and sometimes trying to impress her with sexual prowess during rape); narcissistic rape (self-gratification rather than deep hostility, as in the case of the burglar who rapes a woman who happens to be in the house he robs); and sadistic rape (sexual pleasure comes only from inflicting pain).
Frederic Storaska, who has studied more than 4,000 rape cases as executive director of the National Organization for the Prevention of Rape and Assault, believes that there are two broad categories of rapists: the man who feels inferior, puts women on a pedestal and rapes to increase his own sense of worth; and the man who actually thinks women are "asking for it." Like the feminists, Storaska considers the principal cause of rape to be male aggressiveness, fostered by "the overall pressure our competitive society puts on its male contingent, giving men the impression that all things are there for the taking." Storaska is pessimistic about any attempts to curb rape by enacting tough new laws. "We have to change attitudes on juries," he says.
Feminists agree that juries remain a troublesome problem in their anti-rape drive, a point that is also supported by Judge Lawrence H. Cooke of the New York State court of appeals. Says Cooke: "The defense rarely ever waives a jury trial, knowing that the jury is an ally, not an enemy. Juries, which are often male-dominated, are extremely reluctant to convict." So are a surprising number of female jurors. Many middle-class women jurors prefer not to believe young, braless and freewheeling rape victims. In particular, the myth that victims somehow provoke and accept rape is still very much alive. "In our many years of work with the sexual offender," reports Psychologist Groth and Co-Researcher Ann Wolbert Burgess, "we have yet to find a genuine case of sexual provocation on the part of a victim."
The dilemma for women is that they are still unlikely to win a rape conviction if they cannot present evidence of a struggle with the rapist, though fighting back may bring mutilation or murder. In an extreme example of this bias, a one-armed Chicago woman who had been raped at gunpoint was asked accusingly by the defense attorney: "Did you even try to grab the gun?" Yet researchers increasingly agree with the feminist advice to fight back unless the attacker is armed. Says Clinical Psychologist James Selkin, director of the Denver General Hospital's Violence Research Unit: "A potential rapist looks for a woman who is vulnerable to attack." In Selkin's view, an unarmed rapist who approaches a woman on a dark street, seizes her and says, "Don't scream," is usually testing the potential victim by asking, in effect, "Can you be intimidated?" His advice:
scream, kick or flee instantly—since he has not yet committed a crime, the rapist can back down and pick a less troublesome victim.
Some women report success in engaging the rapist in calm conversation.