What is the true rape rate?

Factual Questions
1

The way they get their numbers seems crooked.

Last I checked, they get “rape rate” with a combination of reported rapes and some sort of mysterious estimate of unreported rapes.

The estimate is what I think is fudging the numbers. Last I heard, the estimate was that only 1 in 40 women will report a rape, therefore, they multiply the total number of rapes by 40 for the rape rate.

Nowadays, I feel that more women would come forward to report any form of assault, and that the 40X is too high and giving an unrealistic view of crime in the US.

One website I checked before writing this post said “1 out of 3 women will be raped in her lifetime.” That’s complete BS. The number I have is 1 out of 5 will be sexually assaulted in the US, and that includes attempted (but failed) rapes, groping, getting flashed, etc. On the other hand, the latest numbers of out South Africa are 1 out of 2 actual rapes, not just attempts.

So, my question is: what’s the true rape rate?

2

I don’t think anyone truly knows. By definition, you can’t compile good statistics on unreported events. For some reason, colleges are horrible about spreading different versions of these numbers to students which is one reason they stay in circulation even though it is essentially a bunch of urban legends. I am not sure why they pick the most absurd and unbelievable ones because they don’t make any sense and there is nothing to back them up. The definitions of “rape” and “date rape” are all over the place as well.

3

Impossible to answer. The only realistic and sensible figure to work with is the actual number of rape convictions. The rest is just guesswork and rhetoric.

4

Do you have any cites, including the one(s) you call BS? And if you are calling one BS, how do you justify that opinion?

5

You could surely do at least a little better than that. There are doubtless some cases where it’s undisputed that a rape occurred, but the rapist isn’t caught.

6

I will go out on a limb (as usual) and suggest the original poster means “attack/rape.” This is when a stranger comes out of no where, while the girl is innocently walking along and gets attacked and raped.

There are other “kinds” of rape, such as “too drunk to consent” "I was at a club and not watching my drink " and my favourite, “my husband came home from a strip club and want to have sex with me and is forcing his intentions on me.”

The latter actually used to happen in the building next to me. This went on for years, whenever the husband wanted sex, the wife would be screaming out the window “help he’s raping me, call the cops.” When it first happened the cops were quick on the mark but after months of this, people stopped calling the cops. (I found out by speaking with the owner of the building next door what was going on.) And I kid you not this “help rape,” went on for years. I would hear her at 3am and it got to the point I’d say, “either divorce him or shut up and accept it.” Which is an awful thing to think but that’s how irritating it was.

Most people I would say when they hear rape, equate it with an “Olvia Newton-John” type girl next door skipping down the sidewalk when Charles Manson ambushes her and attacks her and rapes her (yeah I’m showing my age).

I think the OP would have to do some hard searching for forced rape by strangers in specific settings. to get accurate stats. And this even leaves out things like “is it rape if he uses a broom handle” or “Is it rape if it’s only oral sex,” or “Is it rape if he starts and the woman beats the hell out of him and walks away.”

So you can see it’s an open ended question, perhaps the word “rape,” should be replaced.

I used to work with gay men and conduct surveys and we replaced words like “gay” and “down low” with the specific “men who have sex with other men.” Thus whether you’re bi or gay or straight, the meaning is clear.

7

The trouble is, the all-men-are-rapists school of feminism - not real feminism, as I’d define it - has encouraged all sorts of insane bullshit.

Example: many years ago, a guy I knew had a fully consensual one-night stand with a woman. According to a note she later wrote to him - which I saw - she decided the next day that she regretted sleeping with him, and that therefore their night together was now “rape”. I can’t recall the actual words she wrote, but she definitely used the word rape and said that she now considered herself a rape victim.

That’s ridiculous, but there are plenty of women who will accept her interpretation. Changing your mind about consent after the event - deciding you wished you’d said no at the time - is not rape.

Obviously I wasn’t there to witness the event, and I don’t know exactly what happened, but from the note that I read, she acknowledged that she had freely consented at the time, and there was no accusation of pressure or coercion against the guy in question. She just felt bad about it later and had now retroactively decided that it was, therefore, rape.

To a lot of women, her experience does count as rape. If that particular woman ever answered a questionnaire about sexual assault, I have no doubt that she’d tick “YES” to the question “Have you ever been raped?”

That, plus various other things I’ve heard/seen, makes me look at any figures on sexual assault/rape as being even less trustworthy than the promises of politicians. I’ve heard stories of rape/sexual assault that I believe to be true, but I’ve heard more that I believe to be total pernicious nonsense.

Really, there’s no way of knowing what the actual rate of sexual assault is in a society where a lot of women are encouraged to claim to be rape victims. Between the unreported actual rapes and the widespread false claims of rape, any numbers given are pure guesswork. I’m definitely convinced that the “one-in-five” type claims are only valid if you count every time a woman regrets her decision to have sex as “rape”. Which, of course, is exactly what the all-men-are-rapists school of “feminism” does.

8

Just like in Glen Ridge?
I think if its a sexual attack to the genitials and using the genitials…then yes its RAPE.
But just as in murder or whatver I’d have to say that there are degrees of rape…and even “degrees of being a rapist”
There’s the dangerous sociopath who for some reason feels like he NEEDS to prey on women. Then there’s there’s the frat boy/Yah Dude type who basicly doesn’t have the best values in regards to treating women…and then there’s the misunderstanding…that can also mean women or partners who misuse the sex act " Oh I’m now mad at them…they raped me!" (and I think something like that is prolly more common then you’d think)

9

And you know, how?

I’m sorry, but the woman you’re describing is batshit insane and/or criminally self-centered. I don’t know a single woman who would agree that she was raped. Most would be ready to sentence her to six months of filing and cross-indexing rape kits so that she could learn what rape really is.

10

I remember reading recently (no cite) that most women who lie about rape tend to be mentally unbalanced. And also that they don’t name a specific person but just say they were raped in a general sense (like by a stranger).

11

Even if your friend’s version of events is correct, I don’t know where you get your claim about “a lot of women”. I never heard of such a thing.

12

Here’s a link to Bureau of Justice statistics for 2006 in the US:

Table 27 shows about 260,000 instances of rape and sexual assault (but look at the index to see many other ways of breaking down the statistics for rape).
You can calculate a rate by deciding what population you want to look at.

If you are asking how many rapes go unreported or unclassified as rape and/or sexual assault, that’s a more difficult question because of disagreements over how rape is defined. You can look through the cite and get more detailed information such as whether the rapist was a stranger or not.

If one were to include a very liberal definition of rape such as a spouse who was coerced in any way to participate in sex, you would get a very different number from the BoJ stats, so that’s where considerable differences of opinion and controversy come in.

13

So nobody has ever actually compiled stats (guesstimates, etc.) for attack rape?