I’m reading a novel, in which the following scenario occurs. I don’t want to get bogged down in discussing this particular novel, in part because I’m only about 1/3 of the way through it, so I’ve changed the names. Here’s the scenario.
Joe is married to Suzy. Bob is Suzy’s brother. All three are professional acquaintances of Betty. Betty was working in her professional capacity for Joe and Suzy, having been referred to them by Bob. Betty tells Joe that Bob recently raped her, but that she does not wish to report the matter to the police. A short time later, Suzy seemingly leaves Joe. Bob sets up a meeting with Joe to discuss Suzy’s disappearance. Of note, Bob is from a prominent family and is in the process of running for election to the House of Representatives (he’s not an incumbent), and Joe is unemployed and comes from a working class background. Bob tells Joe that about 1 week prior, Suzy confided in him that she was cheating on Joe and planned to leave him for this other, unnamed, man (whether this is true or not is obviously important to the novel, but not, I don’t think, to this discussion). Bob tells Joe something to the effect of “I want you to divorce my sister for everyone’s sake. I don’t want you to go looking for her, because nothing good will come of that”. In response Joe tells Bob something to the effect of “I know who you really are, I know your darkest secret. If I wanted to, I could reveal that secret to the world”. The twist is, however, that after the confrontation Joe thinks to himself “I was just bluffing, I don’t actually know Bob’s darkest secret.” In other words, even though Joe knows about Bob having raped Betty, he apparently considers that a minor enough issue that it doesn’t merit being considered Bob’s darkest secret.
Is that attitude towards rape something that would have been considered realistic in any recent society? Let’s say within the last 50 years.
I have heard that acquaintance rape was not taken as seriously in the past, but that has not been the case in my experience since I came of age some forty years ago.
Could Joe have meant that he suspects something even worse? IOW, not that rape is minor, but Bob might be the perpetrator of some worse horror (fill in your own blank).
I think that attitude is absolutely believable in 2026 let alone years past when marital rape wasn’t a crime.
Another interpretation though, is there any reason to believe that Bob’s done anything worse? Like, by implication has he come into power through shady means?
Without having the full context for the book itself… that would be my first thought. If he’s the kind of guy who can commit a rape, whose to say what else he could do?
And if the victim’s unwilling to prosecute — which is historically very likely, and currently still possible for, unfortunately, the same batch of reasons. And it’s probably not provable without physical evidence collected at the time, which she won’t have had done even if there was clear evidence of force.
Whether the person says he doesn’t know the darkest secret because he also doesn’t take the rape seriously, or because he does take it seriously but means he doesn’t know the darkest publicly provable secret, is a question that might or might not be made clear by the rest of the book. Either one is possible; so is both.
What, Joe thinks that if he makes a public statement about Bob raping Betty, Bob will probably be elected to Congress anyway because nobody gives a shit about women who say they’ve been raped? Yeah, I think that’s plausible for today.
