When I posted this, I was unaware of the Grayson/Stein Study. Psychologists asked convicted perps (rapists and other assaulters) to watch videos of passers by, and asked them which ones they would have selected as victims. The video’s were then analyzed to see what these " victims" had in common.
Very interesting. If there are so many unconscious “easy victim” cues just visible in the way a person moves, that lends credence to the idea that there are similar cues in social situations.
I come at this from a slightly different angle just to be contrarian. This is not along the line of thinking you are seeking here. I think bad things happen repeatedly to certain people, for reasons that defy understanding.
About 15 years ago, there was a woman in the town where I grew up who hitchhiked a ride with a young man “out the road” to her home in a suburb. Along the way he stopped the car and raped her in the classic manner described under law. This is not a particularly common crime in this community, at least not in this context (alcohol and bars are the usual associations, not hitching). The young man was arrested, tried, found guilty, and imprisoned for a good stretch (he later committed suicide while in protective custody in prison).
A year or two later this young woman was walking on a sidewalk downtown in the early morning hours when a drunk driver lost control of his car, crossed onto the sidewalk, and killed her. Drunk driving is a major community problem (one of the hardest drinking towns in the nation).
But why her? Is there something in the lifestyle or personality that placed her in harms way, and lightning WILL strike twice? Or did she just have bad luck?
Statistics virtually guarantees that “luck” is not evenly distributed, but most people don’t really understand what random means. As an example, I did a Google image search on “random dots” for a good visual demonstration that random events are clumpier than people think.
This is a random pattern.
This is someone creating what they think is random.
However, hitch-hiking and walking around urban areas in the early morning are both high risk behaviors. (Relative to, say, driving your own car or walking in daylight hours in the country).
Very interesting. Alas, I couldn’t open your sites due to the Utah library filter (something about chat sites, I think, not sure), so I couldn’t SEE your point. If you can, give me another way to go about it I’m definitely interested.
So, do you have an opinion on Carl Jung’s “syncronicity,” or is this outside the professional means of calculating “chance” to consider? I’m not pushing syncronicity, just interested in coincidence that seems unlikely. Towit:
“Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events, that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner.” —Wiki
I once found a box of papers in the basement of my family home. It turned out to contain the effects of a dead man. He had been killed in a local fire in the 1930’s, and for some reason of kindness my grandparents had stored his papers for the family but not returned them. In it were his birth certificate, his baptismal certificate, personal letters, and other primary documents of keen interest to his family. I tracked them down and returned these 50+ years after his death. The family were ecstatic; this was a lost uncle and they had almost nothing on him. After 50 years, the final chapter of a family tragedy came to a close. A few weeks later, I heard a young woman in this family was killed in a terrible accident, the first member of the family they had lost this way since the uncle.
I’m not certain this is syncronicity as Jung defined it, but it seems odd beyond chance. Would you say this is just random coincidence in a world of possibility and odds, and an apparent human meaning is illusory?
(Hope I’m not wandering too far off topic here, Elendil’s Heir. I’m not trying to hijack your thread, I think this is someone who understands statistical odds, coincident events, and illusory correlation; that interests me.)
I was lucky enough to find out about this research at a fairly young age. I found it fascinating and worked at adjusting my behavior and body language accordingly - I used to have some of ‘easy target’ traits for sure, as a teen with a lot of emotional problems. I am so much smaller than most adult men that I have always been fearful of being physically overpowered.
These subconscious ‘victim’ traits are very apparent in more than one of my female friends who have been repeatedly victimized (bullies in school, men they know, people on the street); especially my best friend, who despite having 3" and 150 lbs on me and being physically capable of beating up many men, has been sexually assaulted repeatedly. 
I don’t know if it was you or someone else who had mentioned that study before, but I think it may go a long way towards explaining why am I (mis)taken for an easy target so often: a slight limp, which most people don’t notice consciously yet which is enough to make me walk “weird”. Mind you, I’m also asked for directions way more often than other people, so apparently the same traits that make a bully think “target” make someone who’s lost think “helpful person”.
And “reading” the best human mark extends even to the more basic world of animal observation of human behavior.
I recently read a blurb in a soft science magazine that researchers at the University of Milan (Italy) found dogs could observe and interpret brief interactions between humans well enough to judge, at a 5 to 1 preference, which of two humans would be most likely to share food with them.
I must have forgotten about this back when I first posted to this thread, but reading this again reminds me of something I noted locally quite a few years ago. I used to read the police reports in the local paper, and I remember seeing what was essentially the same report repeatedly:
A woman reports being raped
a) by an Hispanic man
b) who she met in a bar in a particular part of town (the part where the “dive” bars were located at that time)
c) and who drove her to an orchard where he raped her
These reports were so frequent (relatively speaking) and so nearly identical in nature every time, that I honestly started wondering if the woman in the reports was the same woman (or one of a number of women) every time, and if she was in fact one of the local prostitutes known to “work” those particular bars. Both these bars and the prostitutes catered mostly to Hispanic migrant workers. I had a friend who knew one of these prostitutes, and he said her normal method was indeed to pick up her customers (mostly Hispanic migrant workers) in these bars and then go with them to an orchard to complete the actual transaction.
I’d say it’s pretty likely that a rapist found a method that worked. Maybe he told his buddies about this method, or maybe he was very active.
Well, it’s why I said “… frequent (relatively speaking)…”; it wasn’t like these reports were a regular occurrence. The ones I saw appeared over a stretch of years, and it was just the similarity of the reports that struck me (I have a good memory for things I’ve read). It was basically, “I think I’ve read this one before…” If I noticed a pattern, I’m sure the police did as well, but there were never any stories or warnings about a possible serial rapist (which, I admit, isn’t to say that there wasn’t a serial rapist).
A rat.
Most people raped know their rapist. Most are family members or close co-workers. Often times not willing to share what has happened because they have a bond…a father, brother, mother, etc. Rapist are cunning. They play off their victims low self esteem, know their moods, their habits and understand their prey’s need to be needed/loved…often asking for help with some project. The victim, needing to be needed agrees…NEVER asking for what happens to them. The victim doesn’t willingly invite the rapist…but their body language, attitude often set them up. After being raped once, their self esteem falls even lower. Again, setting off a signal to those who look for that profile. With low self esteem, often the victim feels it is their fault…never coming forward, never getting the help they need. It is a sad cycle that does often repeat itself.
If you don’t understand how this happens, you are obviously not a woman. Many women are forced to have sex and are so horribly ashamed/frozen/despairing they don’t want anyone to know. What if your child was in the next room?
So far (haven’t read all the way down), almost all the posters seem to be men who have never been sexually harassed or threatened, have never experienced what life is like for women, and cannot imagine how rape could be a constant threat in some women’s lives, without it ever being their fault.
This thread is raising my blood pressure.
Can’t recall where I read this, but I read an account a while back from a woman who did this too, and she couldn’t get over the number of women who said they had been raped 10, 20, or even more times. :eek: She asked the center’s coordinator, “What are these women DOING to experience thing again and again?” and the coordinator explained to her about sexual abuse, high risk behavior, etc. and that some people (not just women) unconscious put themselves in situation where they will be victimized, often because they feel they deserve it or just don’t know any better. 
Hesitant to comment, as this thread has just come back from the dead after over a year of dormancy.
But here I go!
I assume that this has a lot to do with people being raped by people they know. If you’re in an abusive relationship and get raped, you will often get raped again–I believe this has been mentioned. If you’ve reported a rape (which lots of victims choose not to), you’ll likely report it again if it happens again. This has definitely been mentioned.
I couldn’t be more against victim blaming, and it is still 100% the fault of the rapist, but some lifestyles (drug addiction especially) do generally land people in situations with criminals. Rape is a crime.
I’ve been the victim of sexual assault multiple time. I want to make sure to state that I am in no way to blame for any of the instances. That said, I don’t think there was no connection or that it was just bad luck.
I was first assaulted as a preteen, by peers. These boys were sadistic and one of them went on to have such a versatile criminal career that it seems highly likely that he’s a sociopath (not sure what happened to the other dude).
A little less than a decade later, I was manipulated into a very abusive relationship. This man was highly intelligent (degrees from top schools, vast knowledge of psychology, etc.) and also sociopathic. I do not know if he has ever been diagnosed with ASPD because his family is very wealthy and has managed to keep him out of any trouble he can’t weasel his own way out of. However, he is criminally versatile, superficially charming, seemingly incapable of remorse or empathy, etc. I’m not a licensed psychologist but I know what’s on the psychopathy checklist and I would bet every cent I have that he would score above a 30 (psychopath territory). He raped and otherwise abused me many times because he created a situation that made it nearly impossible for me to leave, and I also think I had something along the lines of stockholm syndrome.
What I think these two circumstances have in common: sociopaths. People with ASPD often have the ability to easily pick up on human vulnerability. I was vulnerable in both of these instances because I was actively anorexic so 1) physically weak and 2) mentally ill in a way that manifested physically. Sociopaths also target people who are trusting, which I certainly can be to a fault because I want to believe that people are inherently good.
The last time I was sexually assaulted was, in part, a result of being a trusting person. I had been in recovery from my eating disorder for a while and was no longer a particularly vulnerable person. I slept in the same apartment (not the same bed–not that it would matter in terms of my “guilt” here) as a trusted friend of many years. He is probably very low-end autistic spectrum. He essentially performed sex acts on me while I was asleep, which eventually woke me up. When a mutual friend (who now, of course, is no longer a friend of the perpetrator of the assault) questioned the dude who did this to me, it seems like the perpetrator truly believed that I “wanted it” even though I was asleep.
I clearly didn’t deserve any of this, but I do see how certain personality traits may have made me an ideal victim. There is absolutely no excuse for rape/sexual assault under any circumstances.
I did not report any of these crimes, for the record. I was too young to understand the first one and too embarrassed to tell on the boys. I called an organization that assists rape victims regarding my abusive relationship, and they explained the reality of prosecuting a skilled manipulator with ample financial resources. In the last case, I really just wanted to move on and the dude. Friends had been very generous with him for years, especially given his social ineptitude, and was ostracized. That seemed like apt punishment.
I wonder how much trauma-induced psychological problems relate to these statistics. Trauma can certainly make an individual more likely to abuse drugs or to otherwise become more vulnerable in the eyes of a predator.
(Snipped by me.)
I think this is a valid point, and not victim blaming. Victims of trauma are more likely than the average population to become depressed, eating disordered, and otherwise mentally ill in a way that can create the mentality of being deserving of punishment. This is a kind of vulnerability than some predators can likely pick up on. It can also result (in my experience, so take this for what it’s worth) in staying in a situation that seems potentially dangerous because “anything that happens to me is something I deserve.” This IN NO WAY excuses rapists or other predators.
Wow, this post is full of typos. It’s “this”, not “thing” (maybe I meant “this sort of thing”) and “unconsciousLY put themselves in situationS”.
Cite?
I guess the basic OP question is - does thes ubsequent rape9s) happen after he first has been reported and dealt with? Or are we discussing completely separate incidents? Because a predator that finds a compliant victim - rape or molestation of a person known to them - will likely repeat the act given the opportunities, until something makes him stop.