3 ms·

90% of victims of rape and sexual assault know their attacker. The prototypical rapist is not a disheveled homeless man attacking you in the middle of the night

90% of victims of rape and sexual assault know their attacker. The prototypical rapist is not a disheveled homeless man attacking you in the middle of the night. Rather, he is your boss, your friend, your relative, your date. If you find yourself warning people of rape and assault when talking about the homeless, think hard about why that is. Because going by the numbers, it’s the housed who you should be afraid of when it comes to rape and sexual assault, not the homeless.

mbrodersen 5y ago
I am surprised you were downvoted. What you are saying is 100% correct. Most assaults/rapes/… are committed by people you know. Not strangers.
- Jiro 5y ago
  He should be downvoted. The fact that most rapists are people you know is related to the fact that most people you encounter are people you know. It does not mean that one individual person who you know is more likely to be a rapist than one individual person who you don't. More people have died of the flu than obscure cancer X, but you could not logically conclude that catching the flu is more likely to kill you than getting obscure cancer X. And this doesn't even consider that "person you know" is not the same as "person you know positively". A stalker is a person you know. Your Mafia boss or your drug dealer is a person you know. For that matter, if you let the homeless guy into your office more than once, he's a person you know.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    Breaking down that 90%, 24% is from family, 23% is romantic partners, and 44% falls into the “other people I know category” which seems to be the one you are nitpicking could include stalkers and mafia bosses. Be that as it may, total strangers account for just 9% of cases, yet the “beware of strangers, they may rape you” seems more aptly applied to lovers and family (50% of cases).
    - Jiro 5y ago
      No, you don't understand. That's only the second half of the objection. The first half of the objection is that "most rapists are people you know" just does not imply that a person you know is more dangerous than a stranger. It implies that the entire class of "people you know" causes more rapes than the entire class of strangers you have substantial contact with, but it doesn't imply that a single person from the first class is more dangerous than a single person from the second class, because the classes are of different sizes. I'm pretty sure that more people are killed by slipping in the bathtub than by falling into a volcano. You should not conclude that falling into a volcano is safer than slipping in a bathtub, because people encounter bathtubs a lot more and you have not corrected your figures for frequency of encounters.
      - ModernMech 5y ago
        The lopsided nature of the numbers is not an accident. That half of all sexual assaults and rapes occur at the hands of intimate partners and family is reflective of the nature of these crimes -- usually they are perpetrated when the assailant has isolated his victim, many times starting from a place of trust. The point of noting that 90% figure is not so you can come up with some sort of Bayesian probability of your getting assaulted based on population level statistics. It's to shift the narrative of the nature of sexual assault and rape to something more reflective of the reality of these crimes in practice. You even see it here in this thread, the idea that homeless people are lurking in the street ready to rape and assault you if you make the mistake of offering them kindness. But that's not how 90%+ of these crimes actually happen in practice, so why should our first response to the homeless be one of profound distrust? > I'm pretty sure that more people are killed by slipping in the bathtub than by falling into a volcano. You should not conclude that falling into a volcano is safer than slipping in a bathtub, because people encounter bathtubs a lot more and you have not corrected your figures for frequency of encounters. Again, it's not just about the frequency of encounters, it's about the nature of them. On any given day I encounter more strangers than I do friends and family. But my interactions with strangers are not conducive to the crimes of rape and sexual assault. Friends, family, and acquaintances work to gain your trust before they violate it. If we really want to get into it, then the thing to watch out for is not stranger versus familiar status of a person, but whether they direct certain manipulative behaviors toward you.

mbrodersen 5y ago

I am surprised you were downvoted. What you are saying is 100% correct. Most assaults/rapes/… are committed by people you know. Not strangers.

Jiro 5y ago
He should be downvoted. The fact that most rapists are people you know is related to the fact that most people you encounter are people you know. It does not mean that one individual person who you know is more likely to be a rapist than one individual person who you don't. More people have died of the flu than obscure cancer X, but you could not logically conclude that catching the flu is more likely to kill you than getting obscure cancer X. And this doesn't even consider that "person you know" is not the same as "person you know positively". A stalker is a person you know. Your Mafia boss or your drug dealer is a person you know. For that matter, if you let the homeless guy into your office more than once, he's a person you know.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Breaking down that 90%, 24% is from family, 23% is romantic partners, and 44% falls into the “other people I know category” which seems to be the one you are nitpicking could include stalkers and mafia bosses. Be that as it may, total strangers account for just 9% of cases, yet the “beware of strangers, they may rape you” seems more aptly applied to lovers and family (50% of cases).
  - Jiro 5y ago
    No, you don't understand. That's only the second half of the objection. The first half of the objection is that "most rapists are people you know" just does not imply that a person you know is more dangerous than a stranger. It implies that the entire class of "people you know" causes more rapes than the entire class of strangers you have substantial contact with, but it doesn't imply that a single person from the first class is more dangerous than a single person from the second class, because the classes are of different sizes. I'm pretty sure that more people are killed by slipping in the bathtub than by falling into a volcano. You should not conclude that falling into a volcano is safer than slipping in a bathtub, because people encounter bathtubs a lot more and you have not corrected your figures for frequency of encounters.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      The lopsided nature of the numbers is not an accident. That half of all sexual assaults and rapes occur at the hands of intimate partners and family is reflective of the nature of these crimes -- usually they are perpetrated when the assailant has isolated his victim, many times starting from a place of trust. The point of noting that 90% figure is not so you can come up with some sort of Bayesian probability of your getting assaulted based on population level statistics. It's to shift the narrative of the nature of sexual assault and rape to something more reflective of the reality of these crimes in practice. You even see it here in this thread, the idea that homeless people are lurking in the street ready to rape and assault you if you make the mistake of offering them kindness. But that's not how 90%+ of these crimes actually happen in practice, so why should our first response to the homeless be one of profound distrust? > I'm pretty sure that more people are killed by slipping in the bathtub than by falling into a volcano. You should not conclude that falling into a volcano is safer than slipping in a bathtub, because people encounter bathtubs a lot more and you have not corrected your figures for frequency of encounters. Again, it's not just about the frequency of encounters, it's about the nature of them. On any given day I encounter more strangers than I do friends and family. But my interactions with strangers are not conducive to the crimes of rape and sexual assault. Friends, family, and acquaintances work to gain your trust before they violate it. If we really want to get into it, then the thing to watch out for is not stranger versus familiar status of a person, but whether they direct certain manipulative behaviors toward you.