In February 2015, a young university student was killed in Turkey after resisting a sexual assault. Her body was found burned. Not long ago there was a wave of child rapes in India, many of which later turned up dead. In different African countries many women are raped with the intention of transmitting fear to the local population .

These and numerous other cases are examples of situations where sexual relations have been forced, i.e. where rape has been committed. And you don’t have to go that far to find cases: A well-known case within our borders occurred last year when a young woman was raped by several individuals during the San Fermin festival.

This is not an uncommon phenomenon: in our country alone, it is estimated that a woman is raped every eight hours. That is why psychology and other sciences have tried to elaborate a psychological profile of the rapist, finding common features that allow working on the elements that can lead to a sexual aggression. In this article we are going to try to find a series of twelve traits in common among rapists and we will see the psychological patterns that constitute the profile of the rapist .

What do we call rape?

While we all know roughly what we’re talking about when we hear the word rape, understanding something is a necessary step in finding ways to make it not repeat itself, so conceptualizing the term rape is a useful step in understanding what a rapist does and being able to identify his psychological profile.

Rape is understood as that aggression of a sexual nature through which an individual maintains nonconsensual sexual relations with another. These relations are carried out in direct opposition to the person who is the victim of the aggression, using coercion, force or elements that cloud the victim’s judgment, such as drugs. While it is generally thought that rape includes penetration, this is not necessarily the case.

In addition, it is considered a violation to commit a carnal act with subjects who do not have sufficient understanding or capacity of judgment to assess the situation (such as persons with mental deficiencies or problems that cloud their capacity of judgment, minors or even beings of other animal species) or who are not in a position to make their position clear on the matter (persons who are asleep, in a coma or on drugs).

Most rapes are carried out by men, although there are also cases where the aggressors are women. Although there are cases in which the victim is an adult male (whether the aggressor is male or female), the victims are usually female, persons with physical or psychological difficulties or minors. It is also frequent that the rapist knows the victim beforehand , not being strange that he belongs to the family or the close circle.

The main consequences of sexual assault

If the rape is experienced with violence, it is common for the victim to present avoidance of situations and places that remind her of the event, in addition to flashbacks, depressive and dissociative symptoms and other symptoms, being one of the most frequent and studied reasons for post-traumatic stress disorder.

In many cases this causes the person attacked to be afraid to report the abuse, either because they are reluctant to accept what they have experienced, or because they feel that they will not be understood or even blamed for the situation.

That is why there is a need for social awareness and psychological work in relation to preventing, detecting and treating cases of rape or other aggression (fortunately more and more cases are reporting their aggressors).

Types of sex offenders

Once the concept of rape is understood, we can move on to try to define a psychological profile common to all rapists .

However, the different studies and experts that have dealt with the subject have encountered a problem: there is a very wide diversity of reasons and ways in which one subject decides to force another to maintain relationships. Some types of sex offenders are as follows.

1. Circumstantial, occasional or opportunistic violator

These are subjects that use a situation or event in order to carry out the violation . This is the case of violations during parties and events. These are not usually pre-planned assaults.

They may act under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or take advantage of the victim’s use of drugs to act out and force the sexual act.

2. Explosive violator

This type of rapist seeks to subdue his victim as a result of a violent urge to dominate . He has the objective of carrying out a sexual aggression, regardless of who the victim is. For him, rape is clearly an act of power and violence, and not so much a sexual one (although this also occurs in the other types of rapists, although not in such an evident way).

3. Angry rapist

This subject uses rape as an act of punishment against someone he considers a representative of the gender , social group or collective that has produced some type of damage (real or imaginary). In other words, he or she experiences rape through a clear bias based on stereotypes and sometimes political content.

4. Rapist seeking trust or compensation

This is a type of rapist who has a distorted perception of the relationship between the aggressor and the victim . The aggressor considers that his actions will make the victim enjoy himself and will bring him closer to the object of his desire, and may even establish a romantic relationship.

4.Sadistic rapist

In this type of individuals we observe a link between sexual excitement and aggressiveness . The initiation of an interaction that the subject considers exciting may cause the aggressiveness of the subject to increase and experience aggressive impulses towards his victim, forcing him to do so. It is not uncommon for antisocial disorder and the paraphilia known as sexual sadism to be present, and in the case of rape to be expressed directly, without filtering.

6. Rape as a control mechanism

Some rapes are carried out with a purpose independent of the sexual satisfaction and power of the offender. This is the case of some systematic rapes carried out during wars, in which sexual aggression is used as a method of humiliation and control of the population and to lower the morale of the enemy country. It is a strategic use of this type of violence, aimed at achieving objectives beyond this action in itself.

The profile of the rapist and his characteristics

Although it is true that due to the high diversity of variables that influence the perpetration of an act of this type it is not possible to speak of a single profile of a rapist, it is possible to locate a series of variables that, although they do not apply in all cases, are very common among the different types of sexual offenders.

It’s important to note that: there is no single prototype of violado r , and the following characteristics while they may be common do not identify all violators.

1. They do not have to have a strange personality

Most people do not commit rape. This may lead one to think that a typical profile of a rapist must be that of someone with enormous particularities, characteristics that most people do not have and which make them, in their day-to-day life, lonely people without normal contact with society. Although in some specific cases this may be true, in general this is not true.

A great majority of violations are carried out by subjects with a personality within the “normal” and who have friends, family and work. In fact, many of them are people with partners, with whom they generally maintain relationships in a conventional way.

2. Power, not sex

One of the most common characteristics of most rapists is that the real purpose of their action is not to obtain sexual gratification.

Mostly, people who commit a violation knowing what they are doing look for and are attracted by the idea of exercising domination , of making other people do something against their will and obeying the interest of the aggressor. In other words, in a rape what is sought is not only sex, but also and especially what is sought is the exercise of power.

3. tend to seek out victims they consider weaker

Although there have been cases in which the victim is someone physically stronger than the aggressor, as a general rule individuals who commit sexual aggressions look for victims they consider physically weaker than themselves or who they know of weaknesses to take advantage of.

In either case, the choice of victim is linked to the possibility of exercising power either over someone they believe they can subdue or over someone they consider above and want to see humiliated and below them.

4. Feelings of inferiority and life frustration

Another element shared by most rapists is the presence of a high sense of frustration and inferiority that can be expressed through explosions of violence.

Although they do not have to show it in most facets of their daily lives and may even act in an overbearing manner, these feelings of inferiority can provoke a reaction in the form of a desire to dominate the other, a desire that in some people can lead to sexual aggression .

5. Low capacity for empathy

Whatever the reason for the sexual assault, rapists generally have very limited or no empathy. Thus, the sexual aggressor cannot, does not care or chooses not to think about what rape means for the victim , or he comes to consider that the satisfaction of his desire for power and sex deserves the suffering of the victim. This is visible in many of the cases that indicate that the victim did indeed want to have sex or that she enjoyed the situation.

6. Failure to Anticipate Consequences

It has been observed that many rapists never thought about what might happen after committing the act , whether the case would be investigated or whether they would be found and arrested. This reflects a certain deficit when it comes to anticipating the consequences of their own acts, be they for themselves or for others. This factor would not be determinative for persons who are actually looking for the consequence of the act itself rather than the act itself.

7. Possible history of abuse or learning about coercive sexuality

As with gender-based violence, many people who currently commit sexual crimes have themselves been abused or mistreated as children, or have witnessed abuse of other significant family members.

This means that in the long run they may identify coercion as a normal way of proceeding , and that even though they know it is socially frowned upon they may feel the urge to commit the act.

8. They consider that they have the right to commit the aggression

In a large number of cases individuals who commit violations consider that they had the right to force themselves on the victim , sometimes for cultural reasons. Thus, sexual aggressions are more frequent in people and regions where there is still a certain consideration of the superiority of men over women, or where they consider their needs to be above others.

9. Not mentally ill

While the typical image of a rapist is that of a psychopath or someone with a mental disorder, to consider sex offenders as people with a mental disorder would be false and reductionist.

It is possible to find that some personality disorders such as antisocial can facilitate this type of behaviour and it is true that cases of rape can be found during psychotic, manic or intellectually disabled states but as a rule sex offenders are able to judge the situation correctly and know what they are doing.

10. Most are fully chargeable

A consequence of the previous point. Given that most of the subjects who commit this type of act are fully aware that their actions are harmful and punishable by society, the violators are usually legally liable .

11. Evade responsibility

A common characteristic in many of the cases in which psychopathy or psychopathology is not present is the attempt to evade responsibility in the act . It is frequent to justify the behaviour by the use of substances or to pretend to suffer from a psychopathology to avoid punishment.At the informative level, beyond the judicial processes, it is common for the victim to be blamed.

12. Blaming the victim

Some of the subjects who commit violations usually indicate that the fault for the situation lies with the victim himself . Phrases like “I was provoking”, “I wanted to” and variations of them are frequent in sexual aggressors who have been arrested, avoiding taking charge of the situation and excusing themselves.

Bibliographic references:

  • Burguess, A. G.; Burguess, A.W.; Douglas, J. & Ressler, R. (1992). Crime Classification Manual. Lexington Books.
  • Cáceres, J. (2001). Paraphilias and rape. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis.
  • González, E.; Martínez, V.; Leyton, C. & Bardi, A. (2004). Characteristics of sexual abusers. Rev. Sogia; 1(1): 6-14.
  • Marshall, W. (2001). Sex offenders. Studies on violence. Ed. Ariel. p. 107.