The Impact of Rape

Abstract

Any really useful discussion of rape must begin with an exploration of the meaning of rape, because empathic treatment of rape victims is contingent on one’s comprehension of the meaning of the crime. The profound impact of the rape stress must be understood in the context of a crime against the person and not against the hymen. Bard and Ellison¹ remind us that victims of violent crimes in general frequently experience a life crisis which goes unrecognized. Burglary, for example, is experienced as a violation of the self in that one’s home and possessions are symbolic extensions of the self. Armed robbery intensifies the stress by the added dimension of an encounter between victim and criminal. The self-violation is thus compounded by a forced deprivation of independence and autonomy, in which the victim surrenders his/her controls under the threat of violence. An actual physical assault in addition to the robbery further stresses the victim for whom the injury to the body (or envelope of the self) serves as concrete evidence of the coercive surrender of autonomy. Rape, then, becomes the “ultimate violation of the self”¹ short of homicide, with invasion of one’s inner and most private space, as well as the loss of autonomy and control. In this schema, it becomes irrelevant to differentiate vaginal from oral or anal violation; it is the self and not an orifice that has been invaded. Thus, for the virgin, the prostitute, the housewife, and the lesbian, the core meaning of rape is the same.