NCJ Number
135868
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 7 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1992) Pages: 31-43
Date Published
1992
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This study examined women's strategies of resistance to rape, using police reports and the court testimonies of 274 women who either avoided rape or were raped by subsequently incarcerated sex offenders.
Abstract
The sequence of behaviors in the offender-victim interaction was analyzed to determine whether or not women who resisted rape with physical force were, as some have suggested, exacerbating the potential for physical injury or were simply responding to the severity of the offender's physical attack. The results indicate that 85 percent of the women in the study who resisted with physical force did so in response to the offender's initiated violence. The remaining 15 percent who resisted with physical force did so in response to the offender's verbal aggression. Moreover, those women who responded with physical aggression to the offender's violent physical attack were more likely to avoid rape than were women who did not resist such force. Also, the potential for physical injury was no greater for these women than for those who used other resistance strategies or who offered no resistance. These analyses suggest that the correlation often found between physical resistance and victim injury might be the result of the initial level of the offender's violence and should not be used to discourage women from physically resisting rape. 1 table and 20 references