According to Thomas MacAulay Millar of Yes Means Yes!, via the Washington City Paper's Sexist blog, researchers David Lesak and Paul M. Miller asked 1882 college students the following questions:

1) Have you ever attempted unsuccessfully to have intercourse with an adult by force or threat of force?
2) Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone who did not want you to because they were too intoxicated to resist?
3) Have you ever had intercourse with someone by force or threat of force?
4) Have you ever had oral intercourse with someone by force or threat of force?

As the Sexist's Amanda Hess points out, you'd think no guy would admit to any of these acts. But 120 respondents, or 6% of the sample (which, by the way, was ethnically diverse, and included older students, up to the age of 71), answered yes to at least one of the questions. 76 of those men had committed more than one rape or attempted rape — these recidivists averaged 5.8 offenses. That is, writes Millar, "just 4% of the men surveyed committed over 400 attempted or completed rapes."

The study had two important implications. One is that rapists aren't really all that secretive about their activities — as long as you don't come right out and call it "rape." The other is that one common assumption about date rape or "gray rape" — that it's usually the result of miscommunication and happens when good guys get the wrong idea — appears to be wrong. As Hess says, we hear a lot about "the acquaintance who 'misreads' the situation and 'goes too far'" and "the longtime friend who genuinely thought you had consented, and is shocked when you tell him that, no, it was rape." When we conceive of acquaintance-rapists this way, solutions tend to be woman-focused — women need to say 'no' louder, to avoid sending mixed signals, or, most upsettingly, to accept that the vagaries of sex are such that occasionally someone will just "accidentally" rape them. This thinking also trivializes date-rape and rape involving alcohol, leading to scenes like the one in Observe and Report (pictured above) in which sex with an unconscious woman is played for laughs. But Lisak and Miller's research shows that many acquaintance-rapists aren't just nice guys who screwed up once — they have a history of repeated assault. Rape isn't just an unfortunate feature of everyday male-female relations — it's a crime committed disproportionately by a few. And yet rather than being ostracized, these few are frequently protected by those who say, in Hess's words, "He's my friend, so he can't be a rapist." Hess continues, "We need to reverse that equation-'He's a rapist, so he can't be my friend.'"

Rapists Who Don't Think They're Rapists [Washinton City Paper]
Meet The Predators [Yes Means Yes!]

She realizes he popped on on her radar because one of her Facebook friends is friends with him virtually. She writes:

Should I attempt to contact him, or just let bygones be bygones? Honestly, I could take it or leave it. My only worry is that he will think date rape is OK. ...
All I want to know is that he knows what he did was wrong, and is sorry for it. But is it worth contacting him, if the answer may be "no" or "I don't know what you're talking about"?

I mean, if — and that's a big if — the man in question has acknowledged to himself that he raped her, admitting it to her and/or apologizing for it could result in his prosecution as it did for William Beebe. But even Beebe, who was motivated for his own reasons to apologize for raping Liz Seccuro, had difficulty saying the word "rape" when apologizing, seeking to minimize his own culpability and the violence he inflicted on his victim. To confront one's rapist via a social networking site seems unlikely to yield the desired result of an apology, if that's even the true desired result.

On some level, I think most victims want their rapists to have lived an unhappy life (as William Beebe reportedly did). You don't want him to have gotten up from that moment and walked away without consequence or thought or fear. You don't want his life not to have changed in that moment because in some way — or in many ways — yours did. And yet, Facebook can tell you it doesn't work that way. A close friend found her rapist there one drunken night, all smiling and normal looking, proudly proclaiming his good job and relationship status. My date rapist is on Facebook, too, and his arms-length self-portrait shows him with his arm around a woman who looks not dissimilar to me. You don't want to think that he's the seemingly normal one now — but too often, he probably seems as normal to everyone else as he did to you before he became your rapist.

Cary Tennis suggests that the woman speak to a therapist rather than to her rapist and to not go running around to any of their Facebook friends making charges until she understands what she's dealing with herself — probably because she says she doesn't care and that she needs an apology in the same sentence, which suggests some internal conflicts. But given the prevalence of acquaintance rape, sexual assault on college campuses and the increasing ubiquity of Facebook, Cary Tennis' reader isn't likely to be the last person that this happens to.

My Date Rapist Is On Facebook As A "Person I Might Know" [Salon]

Related: The Letter [MSNBC]

The results from a study of jury trials in rape cases are pretty stark.

Until now, it’s been impossible to know exactly how many of these cases collapse in court, because no prosecution data was being collected. But the research and training group End Violence Against Women International in Addy, Washington, just completed a four-year study across eight states and has allowed SELF an exclusive early look at its conclusions. Of all the rape cases that come across prosecutors’ desks, stranger-rape cases have the best courtroom odds, with 68 percent ending with a conviction or guilty plea. But when a woman knows her assailant briefly (less than 24 hours), a mere 43 percent of cases end in a conviction. When they know each other longer than 24 hours, the conviction rate falls to 35 percent. Even fewer, 29 percent, of intimate partners and exes are punished. “And keep in mind, the cases that come through the prosecutor’s door are the strongest ones — strong enough for the police to have referred them along in the first place,” notes EVAW International research director Kimberly Lonsway, Ph.D.

And, that doesn't even include the women who choose not to report to the cops who serve as the gatekeepers for referring winnable cases to the prosecutors.

According to government estimates, a mere 19 percent of rapes, including stranger rapes, are ever reported in the first place. As Valliere notes, women who have been sexually assaulted find so many reasons not to call police, including denial, shame or their hazy grasp of the facts due to drugs or alcohol. Many survivors assume they won’t be believed. Still others, such as Marie and Leigh, are mortified into silence by what they see as their complicity in their own attacks.

And, if that's not depressing enough for you — because, notably, it doesn't mention whether those acquaintance rapes involved violence or not — the reasons why are even more so.

“To a juror, a rapist is a guy who jumps out of the bushes and throws a woman to the ground,” [Lynn Hecht Schafran, director of the National Judicial Education Program of Legal Momentum] explains. “She has terrible injuries, and she leaps up and reports it immediately to the police. Anything that falls short of that story is questionable.”

So, basically, if your rapist isn't violent enough, you're going to have trouble securing a conviction if you're even one of the 1 in 5 women who goes to the police in the first place — which might be part of the reason plenty of victims don't.

Since we last wrote about Marsalis a year ago, he pled no contest to "unlawful restraint" charges in an 11th sexual assault case in Philadelphia that hadn't been part of either of his first two trials —- in exchange for prosecutors agreeing not to pursue another trial on one of the rape charges on which the jury had deadlocked in his second trial. After fighting it for the better part of a year, he was finally extradicted to Idaho in August to face charges of raping a co-worker there in 2005. That trial is expected to begin in January of 2009, 4 years after he sexually assaulted his victim. Whatever the results, he will eventually have to return to Pennsylvania to serve out the remainder of his 10-21 year sentence on the 2 sexual assaults prosecutors managed to actually convict him of. Marsalis is a walking reminder of the statistics: having known most of the 12 victims in these 4 cases more than 24 hours, at best, he'll be convicted of assaulting 33% of them.

Date Rape Cases Still Hard To Win [Self, via MSNBC]

Related: Marsalis Removed From Pa. Prison, Sent To Idaho For Another Rape Trial [Philadelphia Daily News]
Attorney Alleges Perjury In Marsalis Rape Case [Idaho Mountain Express]

Earlier: How To Rape 100 (Cute, Educated, Upper Middle-Class) Women And Get Away With It
Can Rapists Get You Off? Our Questions About How Serial Rapist Jeffrey Marsalis Got Away With It, Answered

Mirren told GQ:

If a woman voluntarily ends up in a man’s bedroom with her clothes off? It’s such a tricky area, isn’t it? Especially if there is no violence. I think she has the right to say no at the last second. But I don’t think she can have that man in court under those circumstances.

Mirren admits that she couldn't have reported her date rapes when they occurred, but, apparently, it's better that way. "I guess [date rape] is one of the many subtle parts of the men/women relationship that has to be negotiated and worked out between them," she says.

The attitude — as demonstrated by the Daily Mirror's Sue Carroll — that all date rape victims are women who wake up next to a guy they don't like and go running to the cops is so beyond ridicule that it's hard to even try. Carroll says:

Though in recent years we've become confused by the endless court cases where rape charges are totally demeaned by scorned, ruthless women seeking revenge against men.

Right, naturally. Carroll obviously lacks quite a bit of familiarity with both the legal system and "feminists" — who she accuses of encouraging women to report rapes that weren't rape-y enough for her taste.

Reporting a rape involves a physical examination of all your orifices (without lubrication, by the way, so as not to contaminate the samples) and hours of questioning by police officers, if not a search of your home and the confiscation of your possessions. It involves meeting with prosecutors if someone is even arrested and if you decide to prosecute, "pretend" cross examinations intended to make you cry and question yourself, and lots and lots and lots of talk about your sex life and other personal habits — the rape shield law doesn't shield you from much, actually. Cops will question your friends, they'll ask your significant other (if you have one) to submit a DNA sample and basically your whole life will be rooted through for quite a while to make sure you're not the half-mythical woman crying wolf. Like a rapist, the kind of person who would falsely report a rape is a seriously disturbed individual and not someone who slept with someone regrettable and is looking for some kind of excuse.

So, no, Dame Helen, women and men can't just work it out amongst themselves — unless women and (normal) men agree that all "date" rapists are just, you know, rapists. Knowing him, however briefly, or kissing him does not give him the right to force you (and it didn't give Helen's rapists the right to force her) and every woman should have an absolute right to prosecute her rapist. And a few sick women who get off on falsely accusing men shouldn't tar the rest of the world's victims or be held up as the reason the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to prosecute any more than a few sick men who get off on raping wome,n should be the reason I don't kiss a man I want to kiss, or hang out with a guy I don't intend to fuck.

Mirren Criticized Over Rape Remarks [Time]
Helen Mirren Talks About Being Date Raped, Loving Cocaine [LA Times]
On Helen Mirren: Women Must Wake Up To The Reality Of Date Rape [Mirror]

Roger Graef argues in the Daily "Male" that the there needs to be some sort of less-unhappy medium found between women's right to drink themselves silly — and their right not to be assaulted — and the acknowledgment that drinking can make a person more vulnerable to predators. Actually, he doesn't so much "argue" as create a bulleted list of sometimes contradictory points about rights, perceptions, changing values, and the need to respect victims' rights. He also claims that many women who think they were date raped by men using date-rape drugs often "find" out that it was just too much alcohol because no drugs are detected in their systems afterwards, ignoring the fact that some date rape drugs can't be detected by the time you're coming to. It's actually kind of a messy, wishy-washy cop-out of an argument in which the headline ("Don't blind-drunk women who cry rape bear any responsibility for what happens to them?") is the most strident position taken in the entire piece. Yes, getting blind-drunk without being cognizant of the risks of doing so is foolish — for men and for women. But it doesn't make anyone any more culpable for being preyed upon by a criminal.

Zoe Williams argues in The Guardian that being drunk, while it does make one more vulnerable to predatory criminal elements, does not lessen the culpability of the criminal or increase the culpability of the victim. She does, however, argue that the culture of alcohol and excessive drinking that she finds pervasive in society should be discussed and dealt with.

The problem, as I see it, it thornier than either of them teased out. There are supposedly two kinds of sexual assaults going on, about which people feel very differently. One is acquaintance rape, or date rape, in which the assault is committed by someone known to the victim, with or without the addition or alcohol or drugs. The picture most people carry in their minds about this kind of assault — since it doesn't normally involve a weapon or a savage beating (though it can) — is of a man who, through some combination of brute strength and impairment of the victim, is able to sexually assault her. (Yes, men can be victims, but this is the general picture). The other type of assault is stranger rape, in which victim is assaulted by a perpetrator unknown to the victim, with or without the use of a weapon. In most people's minds, this is the stereotypical, old-school version of rape, a less common and perhaps more easily prosecutable version.

Both parties are assuming that the women in the case of the CICA were victims of acquaintance rape, though reports have said Helen's attacker was a stranger. If you think about that for a second — are you more offended that Helen's compensation was reduced for being drunk while being raped by a stranger? And, if you were, did you then think to yourself that you're thinking about it wrong?

Most people — even many feminists, like Camile Paglia — view date rape as separate and different from stranger rape, as something that women can protect themselves against and, by protecting themselves, prevent entirely. She says:

These girls say, "Well, I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guy's room without anything happening." And I say, "Oh, really? And when you drive your car to New York City, do you leave your keys on the hood?" My point is that if your car is stolen after you do something like that, yes, the police should pursue the thief and he should be punished. But at the same time, the police—-and I—-have the right to say to you, "You stupid idiot, what the hell were you thinking?"

It sounds like a vaguely convincing argument, only it's not.

As I know too well, you don't have to be stinking drunk to be raped by an acquaintance, just physically weaker and unwilling or unable to commit to taking a beating in the hopes of leaving with only external bruises. Or you can be drunk, and still say no and mean it and still be too physically weak to get away. Or you could forget to watch your drink like a hawk and end up under the influence of more than alcohol. Or you can not know your tolerance well enough one night because you didn't eat enough. Or you could be drunk, passed out in your own apartment with the doors locked when someone breaks in and decides he won the criminal two-fer lottery: your vagina and your stuff. The kind of "man" (and I put that in quotes for good reason) who gets his rocks off by holding a woman down and forcing her, or sticking his dick in an unconscious person or having sex with someone he's first paralyzed with fear or physical pain isn't going to not rape someone because there aren't any drunk girls passed out upstairs at a frat party — because he's not doing it for sex or to just to get his rocks off, he's doing it because he has a fucked up power-trip of a mental idea of what sex is, and that idea is that rape is sex. And we can all be sober as judges, and wear jeans and turtlenecks and live by whatever set of rules someone decides means we didn't leave our collective keys on our collective hoods and those men will still decide to rape women because there is no motivational difference between date rapists and stranger rapists — it's just their modus operandi and how they choose to gain access to the women they intend to victimize that differs.

So, Camille and Roger, just because I have one more orifice than a man doesn't mean I should have to spend the rest of my life protecting it from what some sick fucking rapist wants to stick into it. My body is not a car, and there are no keys to my vagina that I can inherently protect any more than I can protect the rest of my body against any other random act of violence. It is random, and a rapist is a rapist is a rapist, regardless of whether he uses a gun, a hand, a pill or a better alcohol tolerance level. And the sooner people recognize that I didn't "let" myself get assaulted by an acquaintance when I was sober any more than I "let" myself get assaulted by a stranger when I was drunk, the better.

Payout Review In Drink-Related Rape Cases Ruled Out [The Guardian]
Don't Blind-Drunk Women Who Cry Rape Bear Any Responsibility For What Happens To Them? [Daily Mail]
Victimhood Isn't A Matter Of Degree For Others To Dictate [The Guardian]
Date Rape Drugs [Women's Health]
Rape Victims Awarded Less Compensation For Drinking Before Attack [Telegraph]