TARA WESTREICHER Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 12:00 am
He's a nice guy, confident, well-liked and athletic - almost always the center of attention. On the down-side, he's self-centered, manipulative and constantly boasts about his "scores" with women. He doesn't respond well to criticism or rejection, needs to "hang with the guys" and dodges long-term relationships.
These traits combined are typical of an acquaintance, or date rapist, according to Steve Thompson, one of the nation's leading experts in sexual aggression, harassment and stalking.
"I could be describing me - I could be describing a lot of guys. But the difference is, you as a female don't see this. I see this because of how he talks about you behind your back, how he plots the score. He sees women not as his equal, but as objects - as meat. And that's not a good man, good men don't see that," Thompson said.
As Tuesday's key speaker at the third-annual Sexual Assault Summit in Casper, Thompson, of central Michigan, shared what he learned in his decades of research and thousands of interviews with rape survivors and offenders.
He is consulted regularly in investigations and is often used as a criminal profiler for police. But Thompson never wanted to become an expert.
Instead, he aspired to be an athletic coach and was a martial arts instructor who taught classes specifically aimed at helping young women avoid being raped. But when a female martial arts student of his at an Illinois university was brutally attacked, his career course changed, he said.
"I thought rape was a street fight, so I taught street fighting," he said. "April 12, 1973, probably about three or four weeks after my class was done, one of those young women that was in my class, who trusted me, was raped and almost killed."
He felt responsible for the rape, he said. From that point on, Thompson made it his business to find out why these things happen.
Wyoming law enforcement agencies and advocacy groups, prosecutors and those in the mental and public health profession - anyone who will likely deal with the issue of sexual assault - gathered at the Radisson hotel ballroom for the three-day summit at which Thompson spoke.
Describing the typical date rapist, Thompson said predators go into social settings specifically looking for a few female targets, preferably girls younger than him who might be flattered by his attention.
Rapists like to hang out in places where alcohol is available, Thompson said. And they sometimes come to a party armed with drugs to slip into the drink of their intended victim.
Upon approach, the guy is nice, generously buying drinks. But he's assertive and controlling from the start. Before long, he tries to get the woman to leave to an isolated location, and that's where the rape occurs, Thompson told the group.
"He's gonna get you where you can scream and do all you want and you don't have any choice" but to comply, he said.
One way to avoid being raped, according to Thompson, is to "make men jump through hoops - make them prove they're worthy." A rapist will lose interest fast in women who play hard-to-get, he said, because "there are too many easy scores out there."
Thompson adds that male friends of those who fit the profile also bear some responsibility in keeping rapes from happening.
"You try to talk him out of it. You definitely don't let him do it while you're around and try to get women away from him," he advised.
Natrona County District Attorney Mike Blonigen said his office has seen a "remarkable drop" in adult reports of sexual assault, but that he isn't sure why.
Liz Baron, director of the Self Help Center, said one reason women might be less inclined to report a sexual assault is because they fear they will be re-victimized by the court system, she said.