Crimes Against The Heart: Recognizing The Wrongs Of Forced Sex

Abstract

In this article, Professor Samuel H. Pillsbury argues that despite considerable change in recent years, traditional paradigms of rape and romance still govern many persons' assessment of incidents of forced sex between acquaintances. Many still assume that rape involves strangers attacking victims with near-lethal violence so that when a man coerces sex from a female acquaintance by nondramatic means, this is labeled bad romance, not rape. The modern emphasis on rape as a crime of violence proves counterproductive here by indirectly reinforcing traditional assumptions. The author argues for more emphasis on the sexual aspects of the victim's injury and perpetrator's motivation. The victim's primary injury is to her ability to trust and to form intimate relationships, an injury that results from the sexual nature of the attack. The offense should be considered a crime against the heart to provide a compelling emotional picture of the sexual/spiritual harm done. With respect to male perpetrators, the connection between common male understandings of sex and common sexual patterns tends to corroborate perpetrator reports of a sexual motivation. The author contends a more sexual understanding of the offense will address the central (and fallacious) assumption of skeptics that if the incident was sexual, it cannot be rape. The article concludes with a review of obstacles to acceptance of the sexual view, ranging from the dangers of a return to earlier patriarchal views of sexual responsibility to challenges to traditional male and female gender roles and sexual identity.