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Overview
Undoubtedly rape is a highly controversial topic and it becomes even more so when the focus is on the perpetrators’ motivation to commit rape. Early explorations of rape motivation date back to the 1950s and 1960s when psychologists began studying rapists’ motives in earnest and propounded their first theories, which were mainly Freudian (Bryden & Grier, 2011). Soon after, the feminist factions put forth their motivational theories in the 1970s, which were later challenged by evolutionary psychologists. Since then, the issue of rape motivation was primarily to determine whether rape is a sexually driven act or whether it is fueled by the offenders’ ulterior motives such as the oppression or subjugation of women. Interestingly, rape scholars have failed to provide and agree upon concrete, evidence-based, critique regarding the motivating factors for rape, instead most of the literature is focused on criticizing past and existing rival ideologies without shedding light upon the feasibility and practicality of motivational theories of rape (Bryden & Grier, 2011).The purpose of this chapter is three-fold: (1) briefly describe the origin and relevance of the most influential motivational theories for rape, (2) compare the evidence on rape as being sexually or non-sexually motivated, and (3) to evaluate whether studying rape motivation serves a practical function to improve individuals’ daily life and increase safety. [Also mention here that the paper does not take a moral standpoint on rape in this paper and the paper principally focusses on perpretator's motives]

[Why it is important to study this: to identify sub-groups at risk for committing sexual aggression, and to framing interventions for preventing their aggressive acts. Such understanding might also help women to avoid becoming victims of sexual assault.]

Definition
Over the past decade, rape has been increasingly received attention of psychologists, socialists, and even biologists and legal thinkers (Bryden & Grier, 2013; Hegeman & Meikle, 1980; Jones, 1999). There was a sudden upsurgence in rape commentary since 1972, following Susan Brownmiller's [Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against&#x20;Our&#x20;Will Against our Will : Men, Women,] [Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against&#x20;Our&#x20;Will and Rape] which is still considered the most influential book on rape. Brownmiller's theories acted as the primary catalyst in bringing the topic of rape to social, legal, and academic circles from being a topic of psychiatry (Bryden & Grier, 2013; Jones, 1999). At this time, rape was considered to be a violent, sexual attack on a woman against her will. The limitations of this definition was soon evident as researchers found data on female sex offenders, and explored crime scene actions, which all implied that rape does not simply victimise women or that it is solely sex-driven (Fisher & Pina, 2013; Jamel, 2014).

The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network currently defines rape as any oral, vaginal, anal penetration that is forced upon another, irrespective of their sex or sexual orientation, using any body part or object (Aronowitz, Lambert, & Davidoff, 2012). Therefore, any individual can potentially be prey to rape, however due to the high prevalence of victimisation of women by men, men are more likely to be the perpetrators.

* differentiate between sexual assault

Identifying rape
Due to its high controversiality and stigmatisation, rape is a crime that most people do not like to discuss and explore in much detail, which limits the knowledge to those who unfortunately face such trauma. Even so, sometimes victims are not even aware what constitutes as rape, therefore, fail to report it. The following scenarios taken from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, 2013) demonstrate what can be legally reported as rape. 1. A man was entering his apartment when he was attacked by an unidentified man and forced into his apartment. The man was held down and sodomized. 2. A man worked as an aide at a residential facility for adults with a range of mental disabilities. He led a woman in his care who had a severe mental disability to the woods behind the facility. Once alone, he fondled her and sexually penetrated her. Because of the woman’s disability, she was unable to understand and consent to the sexual act.

3. One night, a woman’s husband was very drunk, and he accused her of sleeping around. He became enraged, pushed her onto the bed, and penetrated her with an object. She was too afraid to struggle.

4. A woman broke up with her ex-boyfriend three months earlier, but he showed up at her workplace and followed her home. Once there, he intimidated her and told her he wouldn’t leave until she had sex with him. He forced her to perform fellatio.

5. After a first date, two men were kissing and had removed their clothes. One man had initially consented to having sex, but changed his mind once they began. He told the other man he did not want to have sex, but the man held him down and sodomized him.

6. A woman took her young son to a secluded park. She told him they would have special time together, convinced him to remove his pants, and penetrated his anus with her fingers. She told the boy that she would go to jail if he told anyone and that his father would not love him anymore.

7. A 17-year-old boy coerced his 10-year-old sister into having sexual intercourse with him. She confessed to her parents who reported it to the police.

8. A man who owned a restaurant threatened to fire a waitress if she would not consent to sexual acts with him. When she refused, he threatened her. She was afraid to resist and he performed cunnilingus.

9. A college freshman attended an off-campus party. She drank heavily until she had difficulty standing and was slurring her speech. Two male students offered to walk her home. Once in her dorm room, she passed out. She awoke the next day in pain and found used condoms in her bed. She reported that she was raped to the local police department.

(FBI, 2013) Furthermore, the following three scenarios are cases that cannot be reported to the police as rape.

1. A 17-year-old boy was dating a 15-year-old girl. Her parents discovered them having sexual intercourse and reported it to the police. The age of consent in the state is 15, and the girl reported that the intercourse was consensual.

2. At a family reunion, an 18-year-old girl had consensual sexual intercourse with her 17-year-old cousin in violation of the state’s incest laws. No force or weapon was involved. The age of consent in the state is 16.

3. A man cornered a woman waiting at a bus stop and threatened to hit her if she screamed. He grabbed her breast through her blouse then fled.

(FBI, 2013)

Rape statistics
Rape in this day and age seems like a too-frequent crime. According to the Uniform Crime Reports, there were an estimated 79,770 rapes in the United States and the rate of rape per 100,000 inhabitants was 25.2 (UCR, 2013). However rape statistics are highly skewed and do not present an accurate measure of the rampancy of rape. Furthermore, we are all too familiar with United States, Europe, and Africa being rape giants and in comparison a much reduced rape statistic can be observed from Middle-eastern and Asian communities ("What statistics don't tell", 2014). Many people misunderstand this statistical disparity and attribute this to moral depravity of Western societies and think that Islamic and Indian societies are more morally and culturally grounded. However, this disparity essentially reflects that the West has a better judicial system to incarcerate offenders and that people are more likely to report rape in the Western societies.

Rape is grossly underreported globally for numerous reasons such as intense levels of social stigma, ineffective law enforcement, discriminatory laws, and a powerful patriarchal culture in these countries which tend to subjugate women and/or normalises their victimisation. In certain nations and societies, like Pakistan and India, not reporting rape is sometimes an act of self-preservation and protection, since sexual purity, or the lack thereof, defines the female's value, and publicising that loss by reporting it can have devastating, life-threatening consequences for the victims.

Another major caveat associated with rape literature has been that most of the knowledge on behaviour and characteristics of rapists, developmental precursors of sex offending, and underlying motivations, were sourced from incarcerated rapists (Lisak, 2008). This is not surprising since the majority of rapes never reach the judicial system, and nor do all rapists get prosecuted. Researchers have attempted to curb this limitation by studying non-incarcerated rapists, and the findings suggest similarities between the two demographics (Lisak & Roth, 1990). Finally, another major limitation in relying on rape statistics that was noted by researchers was the lack of substantial research regarding male rape and male victimisation by women (Fisher & Pina, 2013; Horrocks, 2010; Strickland, 2015).

Rapist motivations

 * "For every claim that is surely about violence, and not about sex, we hear a claim that rape is surely about sex, even if it is also about violence. For every argument that rapists are imbalanced and mentally infirm, there is an argument that the true rapist is Everyman, an omnipresent threat" (Jones, 1999, p. 831) The above quote effectively highlights the contradictions and disagreements that abound in rape theory literature. This section will briefly describe the origin of the most influential theories of rape motivation, leading into the discussion of which theories are most relevant to understanding rape and rapists' motivations.

Early origins
Scholarly exploration of rapist motivations began in the 1950s and 1960s, when psychoanalysts believed that rapists were motivated by sexual hedonism, and attributed rapists' characteristics such as anger towards women, and underlying insecurities of their masculinity to childhood traumas (Lisak & Roth; Bryden & Grier; Jamel; Hegeman & Meikle; Jones, 1999). From the perspective of these psychiatrists, rapists were sick men (different from men in general) who faced irresistible impulses, and their behaviour reflected mental instability (Jones, 1999). This was however highly contested by the feminist theory, which purported that rapists are "klansmen of patriarchy"(Bryden & Grier, p. 184), they are not deviates but men that are schooled in a society steeped in a culture objectifying women, inculcating traditional sex roles. The feminists maintained that rape is a political crime, "motivated by misogyny and a desire to subjugate women" (Bryden & Grier; Jones). Socialists concurred with the feminist viewpoint and attempted to shift rape research from rape motivation to the cultural context in which it occurs. They believed that cultural norms, existing attitudes about sex, foster a rape-prone society. On the other hand, evolutionary psychologists like Randy Thornhill, have identified rape as a conditional mating strategy, and that men who copulated forcefully have a greater reproductive success (Jones, 1999; McKibbin, Shackelford, Goetz, & Starratt, 2008). They also believe raping was an evolutionary trait that has survived over time because it aids in continuation of species (Lowell, 2010). Ofcourse, they do assert that, it does not mean rape is inevitable, that it should be tolerated, or that leniency be exercised (Jones, 1999). However the evolutionary theories cannot explain several statistical outliers, such as, victimisation of men by women, victimisation of men by men, intense violence and sometimes resultant death in rapes, and the rapes of children (Strickland, 2015; Jamel, 2014; Fisher & Pina, 2012. Furthermore, it also fails to explain, if rape was a product of natural selection, why are all men not rapists (Baumeister, Catanese, Wallace, 2002).

This chapter acknowledges the existence of these theories but devotes attention to those theories that are not only most popular, but those that explain rape more comprehensively.

Motivational theories
Due to the nature of the act, rape undoubtedly implies sexual deviance and a certain degree of sexual motivation (Hegeman & Meikle). However assuming that rape is solely sexually driven, is more of a myth than an empirical finding, and assuming that rape is an act of uncontrollable lust, or all rapists are deviants, can encourage victim-blaming, and inhibit the reporting of rape and hence the conviction of rapists (hegeman). Therefore demystifying the motivational aspects of rape are necessary.

Despite aforementioned disagreements, there has been considerable consistency in some psychodynamic patterns and principle motives that have been attributed to the rapist which suggests that rape begins with the offender’s psychological needs and an unstable personality development.The psychological approach of rape suggests that rape motivations can be classified primarily as a) sexual, although this can be of deviant nature, in how they are gratified, b) aggressive or c) both sexual and aggressive, though the proportions may differ in individuals.Groth and colleagues suggested that power and anger are the dominant motivations in rape, and rape has little to do with sex and lust. Though the rapist is described as a sex-offender, this classification lacks empirical soundness and warrants clarification. Groth contributed significantly by theoretically defining  rape as “sexual behaviour in the primary service of nonsexual needs” and proposed a modified definition of sexual deviance as “sexuality (used) to express needs or wishes that are not primarily sexual in nature and that jeopardise the physical or psychological safety of others” (Hegeman, p. 361).

Furthermore, Groth suggested that rape is a manifestation of built up anger and therefore is a pseudo-sexual act, and it is primarily associated with control, dominance, status, hostility, and sex is only used to achieve these psychological needs. Groth (2011) proposed this by clinical observation that the majority of all rape acts demonstrate an unnecessary level of violence and force, and for that reason the amount of aggression implies that sex is not the sole purpose of rape, and that the sexual nature of the act was more so to channel the rapist’s emotions of power, anger, and need for dominance (Jamel). For example statistics revealed that 40% of rapes have used more violence than was necessary to commit the crime (Hegeman & Miekle). Due to this, the link between aggression and sex have been extensively studied.

Rapists’ motivations of anger and power

“The motive issue of rape confounds the defining of rape as well as the typology of rapists (Hegeman)”. In 1979, Groth identified shortcomings in existing rape typologies which were considering sexual motive as a the primary basis and differentiating rapes on either the modus operandus (MO), or patterns of hostility, and performed factor analysis to differentiate rapists and their motives (Hegeman & Meikle).The ensuing results showed a hierarchical relationship between three factors: anger, power, and sex, where, anger and power were found to be factors with highest rankings, and sex was used as means to express the two. Following these findings, Groth published a typology of rapists in 1979, in which he dichotomised rapists by their principle underlying psychological determinant as being either anger or power (Lisak, 2008;). For a detailed description of each of Groth’s typologies, refer to Table.

Groth further delineated the “power” and “anger” categories into the power-assertive rapist, the power-reassurance rapist, the anger retaliation rapist, and the anger-excitation rapist.The rapists in the “power” category, are driven by a psychological need to dominate, and avoid being dominated and are generally less violent than anger rapists. The power rapist has been shown to threaten with weapon use, instead of brutalising in order to make his victim achieve submission, which in turn gives the rapist a sense of pseudo-intimacy. Furthermore, the act becomes pleasurable for the offender when victim feels threatened enough to comply with his every desire, thus fuelling the rapist’s sense of control over the victim. This sense of control also helps reassure the rapist’s sense of strength and masculinity, as well as, “negate his self-perceived sexual and/or masculine inadequacies” (Jamel). This type of rapist uses violence to achieve a sense of masculinity, and uses rape to negate feelings of sexual and/or masculine inadequacy, thus tries to become a dominant sexual, masculine being by the act of rape.

In contrast, the anger rapist is the one motivated by a hostility and resentment towards women, also shows proclivity to inflicting undue violence on the victim during the rape. The anger rapist is motivated by revenge and retaliates for a perceived or real rejection by women. Anger rapists have also displayed some sadistical enjoyment of the victim’s suffering (Horrocks; Jamel). This type of rapist uses violence to express anger, by attacking in the most degrading manner, is, characterised by a complete loss of control before and during the act, and the anger rapist rarely knows the victim. Finally, for these rapists, the act is not about sexual gratification received from rape, but from complete degradation of the victim.

The third less common type of rapist is the sadistic rapist, who achieves sexual gratification by inflicting pain on the victim. These rapes are generally the most violent, as the sadistic rapist will often torture their victims or perform ritualistic acts such as cutting hair, skin, nails, or washing the body. Furthermore, these rapists generally have a type of victim, and their victims will be similar in either occupation or appearance or both. These rapists tend to show high recidivism rates and the majority of sadistic rapists kill their victims.

These taxonomies as identified by Groth has survived over the course of time and has been the foundation to more refined rape typologies which have shown similar underlying motives, and helped identify developmental antecedents of rape (Lisak, 2008). It is also however vital that characteristics and personalities of incarcerated rapists are explored in order to prevent rapes and identify risks and use appropriate referrals. Not surprisingly, one of the primary precursors of rape is an history of childhood abuse. Furthermore, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect during childhood has also been more prevalent in lives of sexual offenders, as compared to non-offenders (Lisak, 2008).

Serial offending and rapist recidivism
Discuss limitation of this paper in general broad in scope but limited so mentions ideas not discussed and link them