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    HoneybeaJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:27pm

    Far more common than who thought? Because I’m pretty sure most women are not surprised by the news that when rapists get away with one rape, they go commit more. That’s what happens when a society doesn’t take rape as seriously as it should.

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      KristyMasters-ChristiansonHoneybea
      6/06/16 4:31pm

      THANK YOU.

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      violetmoonHoneybea
      6/06/16 4:37pm

      I’m not surprised at all. I’m terrified. Not that I wasn’t entirely before hand, but it confirms why that’s a perfectly valid feeling.

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    whskygirlJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:24pm

    So you’re saying the Stanford rapist has either done it before or will do it again? Shocking. Good thing he only got 6 months for that 20 minutes of action, since I’m sure he will never again be a threat to society.

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      I'm Fart and I'm Smunnywhskygirl
      6/06/16 4:28pm

      3 months with good behavior. So basically he just has to spend his summer vacation not at the beach. Poor guy :(

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      HoneybeaI'm Fart and I'm Smunny
      6/06/16 4:35pm

      Excuse me, but he also isn’t eating his favorite foods. His dad doesn’t have to hide the pretzels anymore. THE HUMANITY.

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    NomNom83Joanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:30pm

    I’m trying really hard to keep my inner Lewis Black caged but, you know, the thing about serial rapists is that actually testing the motherfucking kits would help to catch and convict them and would lead to fewer rapes!

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      Mary-GraceNomNom83
      6/06/16 4:36pm

      Get outta here with that hoity toity common sense!

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      Salvatore CorasanitiNomNom83
      6/06/16 4:52pm

      Release the Black. Release the Carlin. It’s the only way to use the rage constructively, because both encourage action.

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    MisterJinglesJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:29pm

    It’s almost like we shouldn’t be ignoring rape kits. Who knew?

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      Sara Gonzalez-SweeneyMisterJingles
      6/06/16 4:38pm

      This comment needs to be the new title of this article.

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      puzzlepieceMisterJingles
      6/06/16 5:07pm

      Right? It’s almost like we should be looking at perpetrators rather than victims. Oops, I mean ‘individual incidents’.

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    noseriouslywhyJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:33pm

    I cannot imagine any other criminal scenario in which this is okay. Oh, we have the bullets used in 100,000 murders and each one has a clear fingerprint on the casing, but we aren't running the prints and, funny story, we even misplaced a bunch of the bullets. Sorry for the inconvenience; thoughts and prayers.

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      Zabellanoseriouslywhy
      6/06/16 5:20pm

      We’re sorry that robber shot you. What were you doing out so late? Why were you carrying around valuables? Did you had a few drinks and get friendly, offering to give money to this man and then changed your mind? Maybe you should rethink filing charges, have you considered the effect it might have on this man’s ability to keep robbing people?

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      somevariationonthelastonenoseriouslywhy
      6/06/16 5:23pm

      Exactly! Whenever I see a police department decline to investigate just because it’s there’s only the victim’s account and rape kit, I’m floored. Most murders, all there is is a body. The body can’t even identify the attacker. But you still investigate! Police seem way too willing to brush aside a rape case before they know whether they’ll find enough evidence to prosecute. This bias needs serious addressing.

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    mungbeanJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:27pm

    Yup, not surprising. This is seen in research regarding self-reported incidents of sexual assault by men as well. It’s usually the same dudes perpetrating over and over.

    Relevant quote from the article I linked:

    Twenty-three (63.9%) of the 36 events were perpetrated by participants (n = 8) who reported more than one SA event during the follow-up.

    23 sexual assault events by 8 men.

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      shootguuurlmungbean
      6/06/16 4:53pm

      That’s chilling.

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      rslwnmungbean
      6/06/16 4:54pm

      This is what I was trying to remember- totally consist with self-reported multiple rapists.

      Oh, and this wandered across my TL:

      None of us know what a serial rapist looks like until we hear it from enough people that we can no longer deny it.

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    Marx and SparksJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:57pm

    We’ve known this for a while.

    Something to be aware of, too, is that the rape kits represent rapes that were reported, which tend to be the ones that more closely resemble mainstream beliefs around sexual assault (a stranger, a weapon is involved, etc), whereas most sexual assaults do not involve a weapon, kidnapping, or additional physical violence. And a large majority of sexual assault involves substances—which is to say perpetrators either plying someone with alcohol or drugs, or waiting until someone is intoxicated and preying on them—and relying on social conditioning (be nice, don’t overreact, go along and hope it’ll end quickly) and fight-flight-freeze responses (freeze being the most common in cases of sexual assault for a variety of reasons).

    So while the serial rapists who are reported may use tactics like kidnapping and weapons, many unreported serial rapists do not. Likely the majority.

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      HildegardBingen2Marx and Sparks
      6/06/16 5:42pm

      So true. The way the system handles rape is just fucked up beyond words. Experiencing it recently first hand with someone very dear to me after a sexual assault just left me speechless with rage. First off she was almost 100% certain she had been drugged, and the ER where her rape kit was done had no way to test for date rape drugs. How the fuck do we not have tests for that shit??? Oh wait, another issue that disproportionately affects women, so not important I guess. Then the cop who investigated it spent most of the “investigation” trying to ascertain what kind of person the victim was, and asked me if she was “the kind of girl who brings guys home”, I shit you not, this was what these fuckwits were focused on, in a fucking rape investigation. And I guarantee you that rape kit is sitting in a back room, untested, while the fuck that did this walks free to rape again.

      End rant...(sorry for latching onto your post to vent Max and Sparks)

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      Marx and SparksHildegardBingen2
      6/06/16 5:54pm

      I’m so sorry someone you love went through that, and that you had to witness it. I’ve dealt with a lot of cops investigating sexual assault and domestic violence and it’s a total crapshoot who you get.

      Unsurprisingly, working with wealthy college kids means much better cops than when I worked with women living in extreme poverty, women doing survival sex work, women with mental health and addictions issues, and recent immigrants and refugees.

      But even the “good” cops are still cops operating within a fucked up and utterly unacceptable system.

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    selburnJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:31pm

    This is also true for acquaintance rape, IIRC. It’s not that EVERY drunk college douche is a rapist. It’s that the ones that are rapists (and get away with it) have multiple victims.

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      qwintsselburn
      6/06/16 4:55pm

      The evidence isn’t clear on that. You’re probably referring to the Lisak and Miller study but a more recent and larger study found much higher rates of ever committing a form sexual assault and lower rates of repeat offense. See this article for a general discussion, but Lisak’s claim that 90% of campus rapes are committed by serial rapists is at best controversial. That “few bad apples” narrative can be very destructive in fighting rape culture.

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      LemonShapedRockqwints
      6/06/16 5:21pm

      I agree that the evidence isn’t clear, but I am curious as to what you have in mind about that Lisak theory acting as an obstacle to combatting rape culture. I ask because always thought that the Lisak and Miller “Predator Theory” fit well with an approach aimed at dismantling rape culture. As I understood the theory, rape culture provides the environment in which serial rapists are able to act with impunity, and they exploit the opportunity repeatedly.

      As you point out, recent data throw Lisak’s theory into doubt, so this might be a non-issue. But I would have though that the dispute about serial rapists was orthogonal to a stance against rape culture.

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    kitteneyeJoanna Rothkopf
    6/06/16 4:35pm

    No shit. Rape is about an assertion of power. People do it so that they can assert dominance. You’re rarely going to find a person who is like “Meh, that one-time power trip was enough for me for the rest of my life.”

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      mschicklet8388Joanna Rothkopf
      6/06/16 4:51pm

      And the only reason these Cuyahoga County rape kits were tested and not still gathering dust was because of the perseverance and diligence of two Cleveland Plain Dealer journalists, Rachel Dissell and Leila Atassi.

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