One in Three Women

“A crime against women, a crime against wives. When the one you love commits an act of sexual violence against you, the scars lie deep and buried.”

BY LOUISE MCORMOND-PLUMMER

In 1987, I became free of a relationship that almost cost me my life. For two years, I had lived with a man who thought love equaled ownership, and who retaliated brutally when challenged. He had beaten me, threatened me with weapons, and terrorized me in other ways. Other things had happened in that relationship, too. This man forced sex on me many times, as punishment for his jealousy, when he needed to assert power, or just because I said no. Though it was the threats to my life that seemed most frightening at the time, I was not to realize until years later the severe damage inflicted by the sexual abuses. And I knew that even had I wanted to admit what happened or say that it hurt, I would get little empathy. It couldn't have done me any real harm - hadn't I willingly been in his bed? And didn't that imply unlimited consent? No, it was not real rape and my pain was not real pain. I had internalized the myth that "real" rape is committed by men with hairy palms and glazed expressions lurking in alleyways.

Nevertheless, some time after leaving, I began to seek new ways of making sense of my experiences. In studying partner rape, I found out how shockingly prevalent it is. Researchers have been telling us this for twenty years:

“A 1985 study estimated that 10 to 14 per cent of married women have been or will be raped by their spouses.¹

[More:]

“In researching marital rape, Diana Russell conducted 930 interviews with women from a cross-section of race and class. Russell concluded that rape in marriage is the most common yet most neglected area of sexual violence.²

“In 2002, the British Home Office published the results of a survey on sexual assault responded to by 6,944 women. 45 percent of rapes were committed by present partners, with a further 11 percent by past partners. This study also found that partner rape entails the highest occurrence of multiple rape and degree of physical injury.³

Further, research shows that men who rape their partners are more likely to kill them.⁴ Contrary to the widely-held myth that partner rape does no real harm to the victim, studies indicate that partner rape carries longer and graver implications than for women raped by strangers.¹

So, we see that partner rape is common, potentially life-threatening and highly traumatic. Yet, in attempting to heal, I found that despite the research, little was being said about marital/partner rape in a way that was accessible to many women who had experienced it. Much rape-recovery literature focused on stranger or one-off acquaintance rape, and wasn't scoped to capture the complexity of issues partner rape survivors often face. Domestic violence literature in general pointed out rape as another form of abuse, without going into the areas of special wounding that rape causes. The problem with this is stated by Finkelhor and Yllo: 'When treated as battered women, the wounds left by the sexual abuse often go unaddressed'.¹

I decided that I wanted to write not about partner rape - the studies had already done that - but for survivors. I gathered the stories of nine women from around the world, and my co-author, Dr. Patricia Easteal (also a survivor of partner rape), who has written several works about gendered violence, gathered twenty more. We fused these brave women's voices with marital rape studies, our own professional knowledge, and available literature of recovery from rape, domestic violence and trauma. In 2006, our book, Real Rape Real Pain: Help for Women Sexually Assaulted by Male Partners was published and launched.

Besides being a useful aid to counselors and workers, the book is for women who are still with the partners who raped them, those women who have left, or those contemplating doing so. We begin by speaking about emerging memories and feelings that may arise as women read, and suggest that they seek help from a counselor. Because partner rape is surrounded by so much social mythology about what real rape is, early chapters confront and deconstruct myths, reframing them with truth. Chapter Six looks at perpetrators and why they rape, with a view to giving them back responsibility. We then look at issues like leaving, safety strategies, and coping with feelings in the aftermath. Later chapters focus on the legal process, healing, sexuality and future relationships. Explored also is secondary wounding, (those responses by unsupportive people that compound the survivor's trauma), Post-Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and specific effects of partner rape. The last two chapters speak to people supporting a survivor, and finally, the changes that need to happen in society to bring partner rape out of silence.

Our hope is that readers who have experienced marital/partner rape will know that they're not alone, that what happened to them is a crime and a real wound for which they deserve healing and support.

References
1 Finkelhor, D., and Yllo, K., License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives, The Free Press, New York, 1985
2 Russell, D., (1990), Rape in Marriage, MacMillan Publishing Company, USA
3 Myhill, A. and Allen, J., (2002), Rape and Sexual Assault of Women: Findings from the British Crime Survey, (Online) Viewed 16 October, 2006, homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r159.pdf.
4 Bergen, R., Wife Rape: Understanding the Reponses of Survivors and Service Providers, (1996), Sage Publications Inc., California.

Dr Patricia Easteal
0405143702

Adjunct Professor in Law
School of Law
University of Canberra
Canberra, ACT 2601
02 6201 5779 (tel)
02 6201 5764 (fax)
patricia.easteal@canberra.edu.au