Ebony: The truth about date rape

The young woman was devastated. She had been reluctant to see her former boyfriend again, but he begged and pleaded with her to go out with him one last time and end their one-year relationship on a positive note. She finally gave in and consented, though she knew in her heart there was nothing he could say that would change her mind. After dating for a year, she realized they simply were not compatible. She felt he was possessive, insecure and jealous, even envious, of her relationship with her sisters. At times he had exhibited a foul temper, and, being a few months away from college graduation, she just wanted to clear the air and get on with her life.

As usual, he was a gentleman when he picked her up at the dorm, but rather than driving to a restaurant in a trendy of town, where he said he had reservations, he drove to a motel. When she turned to him in surprise, he insisted that he just wanted to talk in privacy "one last time." He grabbed her by the arm, forced her into the room, which had an outdoor entrance, and then she realized his true intentions.

For the next several hours, he tore her clothes off, beat her, tied her to the bed, raped her repeatedly, even put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger several times in a crude game of Russian roulette. She thought she would die; at times she wanted to. The next morning, when he finally untied her, he cried on her naked, bruised body and begged for forgiveness.

The student did not report the rape and did not talk to anyone about it for many, many years. She was even too ashamed to tell her father and sisters about the assault, afraid they would blame her, as she blamed herself After all, he was her former boyfriend, she had previously been intimate with him, and she willingly had gone out with him. It was her fault, she felt.

"I was stupid. I never should have gone out with him after I told him it was over," she says today. "What came out were personality traits that I saw under the surface, but I never imagined he could be so brutal."

This young woman is one of thousands of Black women who are raped each year by men they know and willingly go out with. Date rape is of growing concern. With all the talk and media coverage of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct, the question that begs an answer is whether date rape truly is on the rise, or whether women are just reporting and talking about it more today than they were 10 years ago.

It's hard to say whether there is an increase in the number of cases or just more talk about date rape cases in the media," says Adrienne Mebane, a prosecutor with the Cook County States Attorney's Office in Chicago. "We know that these things happen. We have reasonable individuals who are relating a terrible experience. You can see that it really happened to them. No exaggeration."

She concurs with others that the bold truth is that date rape is a real problem in Black America and in society in general, and something must be done.

The real problem, law enforcement officials and women counselors say, is the conspiracy of silence that clouds and cloaks the issue. For every rape and date rape that is reported to police, thousands more are perpetrated each year. While the crime and the perpetrator must be dealt with, experts also emphasize that victims must take more responsibility for their personal safety and for reporting the crime, which in the long run can act as a deterrent to others.

Dr. Gail Wyatt, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, says a recent study she conducted on rape reflects the finding she found in a similar late-1980s survey: Black women are the least likely to report sexual assault. "Things have not changed for African-American women. They still feel uncomfortable about reporting these kinds of experiences. Among the reasons is they don't feel they will be believed."

In addition, explains Dr. Wyatt, most date rapes are perpetrated by a man the victim knows, whether that is a past boyfriend or someone they recently met and with whom they had hopes of establishing a relationship. In many situations, the woman doesn't even perceive that she has been raped. Webster's dictionary defines rape as "sexual intercourse with a woman by a man without her consent and chiefly by force or deception."

Dr. Wyatt reports one counseling session in which she asked women if they had been raped. "One woman said, 'No, I've never been raped,"' Dr. Wyatt explains. "Then when I asked, 'Have you ever been forced to have sex when you did not want to?' She then said: 'Well, it was my fault. I was in his apartment.' Sometimes they even say they were in the bed with the man."

Even so, emphasizes Dr. Carl C. Bell, a psychiatrist in Chicago, when a man forces a woman to have sex with him, whether that woman is his date, his girlfriend, wife or a total stranger, he is guilty of rape. And it happens far too often. "What are men thinking?" Dr. Bell asks theoretically. "They are thinking what they always think: 'She went out with me, so she must like me.' A lot of times, there will be a certain amount of petting and kissing, and in the woman's mind, it is supposed to stop at Point L, and in the man's mind, it is supposed to stop at Point Z. If they are in bed petting and kissing, a man thinks she wants to have sex. Women think it will not go further. The messages sometimes are crystal clear. At other times they are not clear. Men get so far, and they don't stop. That is as much a rape, as much a crime, as a man raping a woman he does not know on the street. Knowing a woman, being in bed and petting is not consenting.... Just wait rather than force a woman. A lot of men think they own women."

He, like others, points to the frequent stories in the media about athletes, professionals as well as college athletes, who are accused of raping women, in many cases women who were in their company. "You see a lot of that in professional sports, but you don't see a major outcry from team management," says Dr. Bell, who is a member of the Department of Justice's Advisory Council on Violence Against Women. "We are trying to figure out a way to make it real clear from the professional sports side of life that this is not acceptable behavior."

Like other criminal justice officials and mental health professionals who have counseled rape victims, Dr. Bell emphasizes that rape is not a crime of passion, but a crime of violence. "Sure it may start out that way," he says, referring passion. "The guy likes the girl and to get something going he crosses that line because of how it started out. It is not as quickly recognized and prosecuted because they bad a relationship; they are congenial, friendly. But rape in such cases is just as much a crime of violence, not passion."

Experts say that rape is an expression of sexual aggression rather than an expression of sexuality. Rape is rooted in nonsexual motivation in the psychology of the offender; it is tied to hostility and anger and the need to exert power and control.

"Rape is a power trip," Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said in a previous Ebony interiew. "It's an act to control and subdue someone perceived as weaker or vulnerable, and to act out rage in that way. When someone rapes his date, it's a power trip in the same way."

And many perpetrators of rape, as with many victims, don't see their aggressive sex acts as rape, nor did many law enforcement officials until recent years. In many documented cases, when a woman reported that she had been raped by a date or boyfriend or acquaintance, she was confronted with a he-said-she-said scenario and oftentimes treated as a criminal herself.

But all that has changed, law enforcement officials say. In recent years, the courts have been much more responsive to victims of acquaintance rape and date rape. They say that the courts now realize that such crimes do occur and that these women are victims and that they do not necessarily contribute to the rape. "Women are afraid to report date rape cases," says Prosecutor Mebane in Chicago. "There is fear and embarrassment. The victim sees it as bad judgment on her part, but the victim should not see it that way, and she should not be concerned that others will see it that way. In recent years we have become much more sensitive to victims and victims' issues. We don't place judgment on who victims choose to go out with."

She, like others, encourages women to report rape. "As a prosecutor and a woman, I would encourage people to report date rape," she says. "The victims of date rape have to understand that for there to be diligent and religious prosecution of these kinds of cases, more victims must report the crime. It is important to report rape promptly. If rape is not reported promptly, we lose certain types of evidence. The rape may have occurred in the defendant's apartment or residence, and then we lose the physical evidence. Or the woman might bathe, and we then lose that evidence."

Mebane and Dr. Wyatt both assert that women must take steps to protect themselves from date rape. "My advice as a prosecutor and as a woman is this: If you are going out with someone for the first time, take your own car and meet the person so you have your own way of getting home. You may decide you want to go to lunch as opposed to dinner, and go somewhere that's busy with other people around. That doesn't mean that date rape doesn't happen in the morning or during the day."

She adds that women should do everything they can to get away: scream, holler, attract attention in any way you can. "If that means running down the middle of a busy street, then do it," says Mebane. "If that means getting away unclothed, then leave the place unclothed. The only other option is to stay where you are and get raped."

Dr. Wyatt says women should consider discussing sex with suitors before accepting that first date. "Tell the person that sex is not a part of the date," she advises. "If he tells you that if he takes you to dinner, to see a play, that sex is a part of the scenario, then you need to make it very clear that sex is not a part of the scenario when accepting a date for the first time." She adds that women also should be aware that they can be raped by other women.

She says that African-American women have bought into the myth that they are "powerful and can handle anything." But traumatic sexual experience can be like a nightmare. It can limit a woman's comfort level with sex and her willingness to give and show love to the right person.

It can also limit the ability of men to give love and to grow in love; and almost all experts say that we need to use every medium from kindergarten on to teach that message and create a new dating code of ethics for men and women.