Monday night David Lisak spoke as a part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Unlike most speakers who talk about the typical prevention tactics and more about the victim, Lisak took a different approach to covering the topic by focusing on the rapist, and more specifically, “The Undetected Rapist.”
Most of Lisak’s speech provided information to the audience about what the stereotypical rapist looks like and how the common myth seems to be the “ski mask, knife carrying, jump out of the bush,” attacker.
Lisak tried to prove this stereotype false, stating that the most common rapist is just an average “nice guy” who seems harmless until he chooses his victim.
Much of Lisak’s research deals with studies that pick out these “undetected” or non-stereotypical rapists.
Most studies that have been done through his research have been conducted on college age students with the intention that they will be able to pick out a rapist behavior and detect a pattern.
“All of the participants in the study are asked to go through a few steps and we weed out the candidates that we think are more likely to commit or have committed rape,” Lisak said.
The series of tests start out with a questionnaire that all first- time participants fill out, then from there comes a follow up call, a money offer and interviews and testing on subjects that could be labeled as rapist by certain answers they have provided.
Lisak said that only 10 percent of rapists are actually convicted due to the fact that most people think that if it is not the stereotypical “ski mask” rapist they don’t consider it a rape. “In most cases people only consider a rape when their assailant is your stereotypical suspect,” Lisak said.
He said that the actual suspect for rape would show signs in his daily routines and behaviors. Some of these signs could include: anger at women, the need to dominate women, viewing women as objects, viewing relationship violence as normal, believing rape myths, and they adopt a hyper-masculine attitude and belief.
“Even a simple rejection could spark an attack to the guy’s manhood and could cause him to pursue a victim,” Lisak said. Lisak also pointed out that alcohol comes into play throughout many of these cases as well. However, the use of alcohol in these instances is premeditated as much as the rape itself, Lisak said. Lisak also said that during a rape situation, the attacker couldn’t feel empathy for the victim.
“Without having empathy for their victims, a rapist usually uses tactics that freeze the victims making them scared to move,” Lisak said. “Some of these uses of force include: covering the windpipe so it makes it hard for them to breath, or an assailant will pin up the arms and hands of his victim.”
This power and force is what drives a rapist to attack, Lisak said.
Lisak said that often an attacker would not be easily picked out of a crowd, some do not show signs, and some are just your average guy.
“These non-stereotypical or “undetected” attackers, are the ones who are the most dangerous,” Lisak said.
