The Ethos of Evil- Rapists

Rape is such a crime that does not see whether you are black or white, rich or poor, rural or urban, and illiterates or so-called elites.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

In 1976, Samuel D. Smithyman published a strange advertisement in a newspaper throughout Los Angeles. He was searching for rapists for his research. He was waiting for his phone to ring. He was not sure that someone would call him or not.

Later the phone did ring. Nearly 200 times. At the other end of the line. There was a painter who had raped his acquaintance’s wife, a computer programmer who had raped his sort-of girlfriend, and a school custodian who described 10 to 15 rapes as a means of getting even with “rich bastards”.

Smithyman nearly interviewed 50 of them. And published a paper. The findings, he got from those interviews were not that different from the findings of Madhumita Pandey.

Madhumita was 22 years old when she went to Tihar prison (An Indian Prison located in New Delhi) for the first time interviewing a convicted rapist. She interviewed 122 rape convicts during her research in that prison in 2013.

Samuel D. Smithyman and Mathumita Pandey’s research are very rare. It tells us.

How do rapists think? What is their motivation?

If there is a rape taking place, the focus is only on two things.

1- How to punish the accused?

2- How women can take preventive measures?

In India major focus is always on victims, not rapists. Sherry Hamby (Ex editor of Psychology of Violence) does agree with this. If you don’t really understand perpetrators, you are never going to understand sexual violence.

Now let’s come to the point

What is the rapist’s motivation?

Why do they do this?

What can be the solution for this?

There were two things common between Madhumita Pandey and Samuel D. Smithyman’s research. After every rape, the people and the media call those rapists monsters or animals because an ordinary man can’t do these activities.