Psychology Of Rapists
In 1976, a Ph.D. student named Samuel Smithyman published a rather unusual advertisement in the newspapers of Los Angeles. the Psychology Of Rapists 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 more 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. When she first visited Tier 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.’
There was something common in Pandey and Smithyman’s research, Psychology Of Rapists 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 the rapusts. 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 rape, we need to understand the 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 rapists if they had sourced themselves on their victims, the 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.
There are many reasons behind cognitive Dissonance. The rapist could simply believe that his sexual needs are more important or that 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.
pandey suggests that one reason behind the difference in this mentality could be that 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. 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.
Another theory suggests that sexual violence occurs due to social, 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. There are little researches that could help us curb biological factors that lead to rape. But we can counter social practices. The first step would be to accept the fact that there’s a problem with our society.
