When this typical chain e-mail was sent to me, I was told to forward it to my lady friends, but after reading it and, correcting it, and deleting out some of the hoax information; I decided to post this in my various blogs for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. My male readers have female friends and this Information is too important to miss someone.
Don't Be Their Next Victim
Every 2 minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted
Every 6 minutes, someone in the U.S. is raped.
Every 34 minutes, someone in the U.S. is Murdered.
(Statistics From FBI Uniform Crime Reports www.fbi.gov)
PepperEyes.com is dedicated to assist those people who are unwilling to become a victim and are taking responsibility to protect themselves, their cars, or their possessions with the proper knowledge and the proper devices such as our pepper spray, stun guns, and other personal security products.
- Anyone can be a potential rape target, thou a very large percentage are women.. Rape victims have short hair, long hair, and no hair. They’re also young and old, short and tall, fat and skinny, femininely dressed or looking like they just fell off the tractor, and all points in between.
- Rape is also not always about getting sex quickly. Often it’s an act of rage or punishment directed at a vulnerable person for perceived injustices done to the attacker by others. Getting a woman out of her clothes quickly isn’t a factor in these rapes; terrorizing her and inflicting bodily harm is.
- Some rapist are looking for women who are not paying attention because they are on their cell phones, searching through their purse, or doing other activities while walking because they are off-guard and can be easily overpowered.
- Most rapes occur in the evening hours and into early morning, ending before dawn, not “between 5 and 8:30 a.m.” Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice fully support him in this claim: The DOJ says “Approximately two-thirds of rapes/sexual assaults occurred at night — 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.”
- Location is important in a violent sexual assault, but there’s nothing inherently dangerous about parking lots or public restrooms; what matters is their isolation. Areas heavily frequented by foot traffic are far less likely to be chosen by a rapist. Likewise, badly-lit, less-frequented places will be favored for this type of attack. These criminals are looking to grab a woman and quickly move her to another location where they don’t have to worry about getting caught.
- 1995 U.S. Department of Justice statistics show that weapons were used in 30% of all rapes, meaning the chances that your rapist will be armed is just a little less than one in three. Battling an armed attacker while unarmed yourself is rarely a wise course of action to take, and misstatements such as the 2% figure (as seen in the original e-mail) could well incite an attacked woman to thrust herself into that dynamic because she figures her chances are far better than they actually are.
- In a general sense, rapists fall into three motivational types: anger, power, and sadism. In anger assaults, the rapist is getting even for “some wrong he feels has been done to him, by life, by his victim at the time. He’s in a frame of rage and attacks someone sexually.” The anger rape is usually unpremeditated and impulsive, but the impulse drives the rapist into excessive force: the victim is punched, choked, and kicked into submission. Most such offenders derive little pleasure from the act, says Nicholas Groth, director of Forensic Mental Health Associates,, but “they want to degrade their victims, and sex is something bad, dirty, the worst thing you could do to someone. That reflects a lot of our values in society.”An anger rapist could be discouraged by a potential victim who yells at him or puts up a physical struggle, thanks to the unpremeditated nature of the attack. Because the aggressor may not yet have fully decided to pursue this course of action, resistance may well change his mind. Here, even a half-hearted attempt might prove to be all it takes to end the assault. On the other hand, the rage the attacker is feeling might well be further fed by active resistance — this could be taken as yet another instance of one more person trying to deny him something he wants.Power rape, according to Groth, is a form of compensation, committed usually by men who feel unsure of their competence. Rape gives them a sense of mastery and control. Power rapists usually hunt for victims or seize opportunities that present themselves unbidden. A power rapist is unlikely to be discouraged by resistance because his whole self image is wrapped up in his attempt to prove mastery. A woman who chooses to fight one of these had better do a darned good job of it, because she could well end up fighting for her life.Groth defines his third type, sadistic rape, as eroticized aggression perpetrated by those whom the very act of forcible sex excites in ways that consensual sex can’t. “If the anger components of aggression are eroticized,” he explains, “then you see sadistic acts, such as deliberate sexual torture, using an instrument to rape the victim.” A sadistic rapist is interested in inflicting pain and lasting harm. Any countering aggression on the part of the victim could well add to the attacker’s enjoyment of the experience, prompting him to further acts of depravity in an effort to provoke further resistance.
The question of to fight back or not is an age-old one, and there’s no one right answer. Granted, one particular rapist might be sent running bloody-nosed by a swift right hook, but try that on another one and a horrific experience could be transformed into a fatal one. Resistance advice of the type being circulated in the e-mail in question creates the false impression that escaping unscathed from the clutches of a rapist is only a matter of knowing which self-defense tricks to employ. Reality, however, is far different. Not all rapists can be overcome.
Does this then mean self-defense classes are a waste of time? Hardly. But they’re also not the surefire protection they’re too often touted to be, any more than a can of mace confers upon its wielder guaranteed safe passage through whatever mean streets and dark alleys lie in her path. Also, physical skills are only as good as recent training — someone who hasn’t practiced a move in the three months since she took a course is only a tad better prepared to fend off an attacker than someone who never had any training at all. Worst of all, such training can lead those who have aced their courses to develop a dangerous complacency about their own safety, inducing them into a state of overconfidence wherein awareness of their surroundings becomes a lost art, buried under the certainty that now bad things can’t happen to them.
Complacency kills.
As always, the best defense to an attempted rape is not to be there when it happens — either avoid potentially dangerous situations (none of this “Oh, it’s only a few blocks; I’ll just walk” at 3 a.m.) or run like hell if you find yourself in one. Escaping your attacker is a far wiser course of action to strive for than attempting to do battle with him. Forget about his needing a good beating followed by a lengthy jail term; your first priority has to be your own safety. Leave the Superhero stuff to the comics and films for and make like a track star vying for a gold medal in the 100m.
- Potential rapist usually do not pick on women who have umbrellas, or other similar objects that can be used from a distance, in their hands. Keys are NOT a deterrent because you have to get really close to the attacker to use them as a weapon. So, the idea is to convince these guys you’re not worth it.
See our other Blog on Self Defense Tips and Techniques
By Victor Swindell, owner of PepperEyes.com, a division of Swindell Enterprises. PepperEyes.com is dedicated to assist those people who are unwilling to become a victim and are taking responsibility to protect themselves, their cars, or their possessions with our pepper spray, stun guns, and other personal protection products.
Don’t Be their Next Victim
Defense Against Crime 
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