Psychological profile of the rapist: 12 traits in common

In February 2015, a young university student was murdered in Turkey after resisting sexual assault. Her body was found burned. Not long ago there was a wave of rapes of minors in India, many of which later turned up dead. In different African countries, many women are raped with the intention of transmitting fear to the local population.

These and numerous other cases are examples of situations in which sexual relations have been forced, that is, cases in which rape has been committed. And you don't have to go that far to find cases: A known case within our borders occurred last year when a young woman was raped by several individuals during the San Fermín festivities.

It is not an uncommon phenomenon: only in our country, it is estimated that a woman is raped every eight hours. That is why psychology and other sciences have tried to develop a psychological profile of the rapist, finding common features that allow working on the elements that can lead to sexual assault. In this article we are going to try to find a series of twelve common traits between rapists and

we will see the psychological patterns that constitute the profile of the rapist.

• Related article: "Psychopathy: what happens in the psychopath's mind?”

What do we call rape?

While we all know roughly what we are talking about when we hear the word rape, understanding something is a necessary step in finding ways to make it not repeat itself, so conceptualizing the term rape is a useful step to understand what a rapist is doing and to be able to identify their profile psychological.

It is understood as a violation of that assault of a sexual nature through which an individual has non-consensual sexual relations with another. These relationships are carried out in direct opposition to the person victim of aggression, using coercion, force or elements that cloud the victim's judgment, such as drugs. While rape is generally thought to include penetration, this is not necessarily the case.

In addition to this, the carnal act is considered rape with subjects who do not have sufficient understanding or judgment to assess the situation (such as people with deficiencies or mental problems that cloud their judgment, minors or even beings of other animal species) or who are not in a position to make their position clear in this regard (sleeping people, in a coma or drugged).

The majority of rapes are carried out by men, although there are also cases in which the aggressors are women. Although there are cases in which the victim is an adult male (whether the aggressor is a man or a woman), in general the victims are usually women, people with physical or mental difficulties or minors. It is also common for the rapist to know the victim beforehand, not being strange that it belongs to the family or to the close circle.

The main sequelae of sexual assault

If the rape is experienced with violence, it is frequent that the victim presents avoidance of situations and places that remind him of the event, in addition to flashbacks, depressive symptoms and dissociative and other symptoms, being one of the most frequent and studied reasons for post traumatic stress disorder.

In many cases, this causes the attacked person to be afraid to report the abuse, be it because they are reluctant to accept what she has experienced, either because she believes that she will not be understood or even that she will be blamed for the situation.

That is why it is necessary to raise awareness at a social level and psychological work in relation to preventing, detect and treat cases of rape or other assaults (fortunately more and more cases report their aggressors).

Types of sexual offender

Once the concept of rape is understood, we can proceed to try define a psychological profile common to all rapists.

However, the different studies and experts that have dealt with the subject have encountered a problem: there is a very wide diversity of motives and ways by which one subject decides to force another to maintain relations. Some types of sex offenders are as follows.

1. Situational, occasional or opportunistic violator

These are subjects who use a situation or event in order to carry out the violation. This is the case of rapes during parties and events. These are not usually pre-planned attacks.

It is possible that they act under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or that they take advantage of the fact that the victim has consumed them to act and force the consummation of the sexual act.

2. Explosive rapist

This type of rapist seeks to subdue his victim as a result of a violent impulse to dominate. It has the objective of carrying out a sexual assault, being indifferent who the victim is. For him, rape is clearly an act of power and violence, and not so much a sexual one (although this also occurs in other types of rapists, although not in such an obvious way).

3. Furious rapist

This subject uses rape as an act of punishment against someone whom he considers representative of the gender, social or collective group that has produced some type of damage (real or imaginary). In other words, he experiences rape through a clear bias based on stereotypes and sometimes political content.

4. Violator seeking trust or compensation

It is a type of rapist who has a distorted perception of the relationship between the aggressor and the victim.. The aggressor considers that his actions will make the victim enjoy and bring the person who is the object of his desire closer, and may even establish a romantic relationship.

4. Sadistic rapist

In this type of individuals there is a link between sexual arousal and aggressiveness. The initiation of an interaction that the subject considers exciting can cause the subject's aggressiveness to increase and he experiences aggressive impulses towards his victim, forcing her. It is not uncommon for them to present antisocial disorder and the paraphilia known as sexual sadism, and that in the case of violation is expressed directly, without filters.

6. Rape as a control mechanism

Some rapes are carried out for a purpose independent of the sexual satisfaction and power of the perpetrator. This is the case of some systematic rapes carried out during wars, in which sexual assault is used as a method of humiliation and control of the population and to lower the morale of the enemy country. It is a strategic use of this type of violence, thanks to which to achieve objectives beyond this action itself.

The profile of the rapist and his characteristics

Although it is true that due to the high diversity of variables that influence the perpetration of an act of this type, it is not possible to speak of a single profile of rapist, it is possible to locate a series of variables that, although they do not apply in all cases, are very common among the different types of aggressors sexual.

It is important to highlight it: there is no single prototype rapist, and the following characteristics, although they may be common, do not identify all rapists.

1. They don't have to have a strange personality

Most people do not commit rapes. This may suggest that a typical rapist profile has to be that of someone with enormous particularities, characteristics that they do not have most of the people and that make that in their day to day they are lonely people and without normal contact with the society. Although in some specific case this may be true, in general this is not true.

A great majority of rapes are carried out by subjects with a personality within the "normal" and that they have friends, family and work. In fact, many of them are people with a partner, with whom they generally maintain relationships in a conventional way.

2. Power, not sex

One of the most common characteristics of most rapists is that the real objective of their action is not to obtain sexual gratification.

Mostly, people who commit a rape knowing what they are doing seek and are attracted to the idea of ​​dominance, to make other people do something against their will and in the interests of the aggressor. In other words, in a rape what is sought is not only sex, but also and especially what is sought is the exercise of power.

3. They tend to look for victims they consider weaker

Although there have been cases in which the victim is someone physically stronger than the aggressor, As a general rule, individuals who commit sexual assaults look for victims that they consider to be physically weaker. that they or those who know weak points to take advantage of.

In either case, the choice of victim is linked to the possibility of exercising power or over someone to who they think they can subdue or about someone they consider above and who they want to see humiliated and below themselves themselves.

4. Feelings of inferiority and vital frustration

Another element that most rapists share is the presence of a high feeling of frustration and inferiority that can be expressed through explosions of violence.

Although they do not have to demonstrate it in most of the facets of their daily life and they can even go so far as to act In an overbearing way, these feelings of inferiority can provoke a reaction in the form of a desire to dominate the other, a desire that in some people can lead to sexual assault.

5. Little capacity for empathy

If sexual assault occurs for whatever reason, rapists generally have a capacity for empathy very limited or nonexistent. A) Yes, the sex offender cannot, does not care, or chooses not to think about what the rape means to the victim, or that he comes to consider that the satisfaction of his desire for power and sex deserves the suffering of the victim. This is visible in many of the cases that indicate that the victim really did want to have relationships or that he thoroughly enjoyed the situation.

6. Not anticipating the consequences

It has been observed that many rapists never thought about what might happen after committing the act, if the case would be investigated or if they would be found and detained. This reflects a certain deficit when it comes to anticipating the consequences of their own actions, be they for themselves or for others. This factor would not be decisive for people who are actually looking for the consequence of the act itself rather than the act itself.

7. Possible history of abuse or learning of a coercive sexuality

As with the gender violence many people who currently commit sexual crimes have either been abused or mistreated in childhood, or have witnessed abuse towards other significant family members.

This causes that in the long run they can come to identify coercion as a normal way of proceeding, and that although they know that socially it is frowned upon, they may feel the urge to undertake the act.

8. They consider that they have the right to commit the aggression

In a large number of cases, the individuals who commit rapes consider that they had the right to force the victim, sometimes for cultural reasons. Thus, sexual assaults are more frequent in people and regions where a certain degree of consideration of the superiority of the man over the woman, or they consider that his needs are above the others.

9. It's not about the mentally ill

Although the typical image of a rapist is that of a psychopath or someone who suffers from a mental disorder, to consider that sexual offenders are people with a mental disorder would be false and reductionist.

It is possible to find that some personality disorders such as antisocial can facilitate such a performance and it is true that cases of rape can be found during psychotic, manic states or carried out by people with intellectual disability, but as a general rule, sexual offenders are able to correctly judge the situation and know what They are doing.

10. Most of them are fully attributable

A consequence of the previous point. Given that most of the subjects who commit this type of act are fully aware that their action is harmful and is punished by society, violators are generally prosecuted.

11. They evade responsibility

A common feature in many of the cases in which psychopathy or psychopathology does not present is the attempt to evade responsibility on the spot. It is common to justify the behavior by the use of substances or to pretend to suffer a psychopathology to avoid punishment. At the reporting level, beyond the judicial processes, it is common for the victim to be blamed.

12. They blame the victim

Some of the subjects who commit rapes usually indicate that the fault of the situation lies with the victim.. Phrases such as "he was provoking", "deep down he wanted" and variants of them are frequent in sexual offenders who have been arrested, avoiding taking charge of the situation and making excuses.

Bibliographic references:

• Burguess, A. G.; Burguess, A.W.; Douglas, J. & Ressler, R. (1992). Crime Classification Manual. Lexington Books.

• Cáceres, J. (2001). Paraphilias and rape. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis.

• González, E.; Martínez, V.; Leyton, C. & Bardi, A. (2004). Characteristics of sexual abusers. Rev. Sogia; 1(1): 6-14.

• Marshall, W. (2001). Sex offenders. Studies on violence. Ed. Ariel. p. 107.