Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (41 page)

The patterns of rape that Amir was able to trace were drawn

from the central files of the Philadelphia police department for 1958 and 196o, a total of 646 cases and 1,292 offenders.* One important fact that Amir's study revealed right off the bat was that in 43 percent of the Philadelphia cases, the rapists operated in pairs or groups, giving the lie to one of the more commonly held myths that the rapist is a secretive, solitary offender.

The median age of the Philadelphia rapist was 23, but the age group most likely to commit rape was the 15-to-19 bracket. A preponderant number of the Philadelphia rapists were not married, a status attributable to their youthful age. Ninety percent of the Philadelphia rapists "belonged to the lower part of the occupa tional scale," in descending order "from skilled workers to the unemployed." Half of the Philadelphia rapists had a prior arrest record, and most of these had the usual run of offenses such as burglary, robbery, disorderly conduct and assault. Only 9 percent of those with prior records had been previously arrested for rape. In other words, rapists were in the mold of the typical youthful offender.
t

Not surprisingly, the Philadelphia rapist generally lived in one of those inner-city neighborhoods that according to the census tracts are known for a high degree of crime, and most particularly for "crime against the person." His victim also tended to live in the same neighborhood. Since Amir was studying a large Northern city with an extensive black ghetto population, the sociologist's propor tion of black offenders was higher than the national average. The FBI, as I have mentioned, records that 47 percent of all arrested rapists are black. Amir in Philadelphia found that 82 percent of his reported rapists were black, as were
80
percent of the rapists'

* Amir's raw material differed from the FBI's. The FBI releases data based on those men actually arrested for rape and attempted rape. Amir's data was based on statistical infonnation about all reported rapes that the police felt were "founded." Amir did not include cases of attempted rape, but he did include profiles of "known" offenders who were never apprehended. The sociologist used "known" to mean "undeniably existing," not necessarily "known to the police." Of the
1,292
offenders that form the basis of Amir's study, only 845 men were actually arrested.

t
The FBI's "Careers in Crime" file, using more current statistics, shows that

nationally more than
70
percent of all arrested rapists have prior records. In addition, more than 85 percent go on to be repeaters in crime and show up on later police blotters, in descending order of frequency, for burglary, as sault, robbery, rape and homicide.

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victims. He concluded, "Rape was found to be an intraracial event, especially between Negro men and women." In other words, forc ible rape in Philadelphia was overwhelmingly black on black. Black men raped black women. In lesser numbers, white men raped white women. Most rapists, conveniently for them, raped women who lived in their neighborhood or close by. The percentage of interracial rape in the city of Philadelphia for the years i958 and i960, Amir discovered, was small. ( More recent studies differ with Amir on this point. A full discussion of interracial rape will be found in my chapter "A Question of Race.")

"Contrary to past impression," Amir wrote, "analysis revealed that
71
percent of the rapes were planned." This observation was another of Amir's most significant contributions
to
the study of rape. Far from being a spontaneous explosion by an individual with pent-up emotions and uncontrollable lusts, he discovered the act was usually planned in advance and elaborately arranged by a single rapist or a group of buddies. In some cases the lone rapist or the gang had a particular victim in mind and coolly took the necessary steps to lure her into an advantageous position. In other cases the decision to rape was made in advance by a gang, a pair of cohorts or a lone-wolf rapist, but selection of the female was lef t to chance. Whoever happened by and could be seized, coerced or enticed to a favorable place became the victim. As might be expected, almost all group rapes in Philadelphia police files were found to have been planned. As a matter of fact, advance planning and coordination proved absolutely essential to the commission of gang rape. A "secure" place had to be located; precautions had to be taken to guarantee that the rape-in-progress would remain undetected by passers-by, police or neighbors; and selection of the victim had to be agreed upon by the group.

One-quarter of the single-offender rapes in Amir's study were not planned. In his words, the spontaneous offender had "no previ ous idea of committing the crime . . . but opportunities (place of meeting, victim's behavior, etc.) created the impulse, or the offender's judgment was impaired, usually by the consumption of alcohol before the event."

Further observa tions tha t Amir drew from his computer were these:· Forcible rape in Philadelphia increased slightly during the hot summer months, but not by much. Rape was an all-year-round event, although group rape did show a noticeable summer increase.

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I
AGAINST OUR WILL

Friday night, Saturday and Sunday appeared to be the favored time for commission of the crime, giving
-
rape-for the rapists-an inter esting aspect of weekend conviviality and paycheck (or lack of paycheck ) celebration. Nights in general were favored over days: the top-risk hours for women were between 8
P.M.
and
2 A.M.
In 85 percent of the 646 cases Amir examined, some form of physical force or the display of a weapon was required by the rapist or rapists to achieve their goal. In the remaining
15
percent, verbal intimidation or the sheer physical presence of the offenders sufficed to overcome a victim's resistance.

When other crimes of violence are. compared statistically with rape, the profile of the forcible rapist falls at a point midway between the profile of the man who commits aggravated assault and the man who commits robbery.fr Variables that go into a profile include age, race, occupation, spatial patterns of the crime, modus operandi, the role played by alcohol, prior arrest record,
etc.
When offender profiles for rape, robbery and assault are viewed side by side, the rapist emerges as the man in the middle. His is the least sharp image. His profile "borrows" characteristics from the others, so to speak. The rapist is slightly younger than the as saultive offender and slightly older than the robber or mugger. He uses less physical force than the average man arrested for aggra vated assault, but he employs more force than the average robber. He drinks less alcohol before committing his crime than the man who is arrested for assault, but he drinks more alcohol prior to his crime than the man who goes out to rob. He commits his crime less in his own neighborhood than the average man picked up for assault, but he does not range so far afield as the man who commits armed robbery.

Two further comparisons are somewhat related: Rape is more frequently committed against a total stranger than assault, but less

*
I owe this valuable insight to the sociologist Lynn Curtis, another protege and student of Marvin Wolfgang's. The rapist as "man in the middle" is apparent from the FBI's
Uniform
Crime Reports; from Volumes
11
and
12
of Crimes
of Violence
(
1969),
the staff report submitted to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence on which Curtis worked as assistant director; and from Curtis' own work on the Big Four of violent crimes, which I read in manuscript. The profile of the murderer, by the way, is distinctively set off from the three other types of violent offenders.

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185

fequently committed against a total stranger than robbery
..