There are some demands aggressors make that are at times worth complying with e.g. handing over wallets, car keys, money etc however one demand that should be never agreed to is changing the location of the crime – an attempt to isolate you from a situation in which you have your greatest chance of survival. If a rapist (or mugger for that matter) demands that you follow them, tries to force you to move somewhere else, this should be your signal to act. This represents the moment you have the greatest chance of survival. The location you are in is obviously not conducive to what the attacker/person making the threat has in mind. Yielding to such a demand means you are moving yourself to a far worse situation i.e. you are isolating yourself further. It also indicates that the crime that will be committed against you is going to be longer in duration and more involved e.g. a straightforward mugging can be conducted very quickly and in any location, whereas a rape or sexual assault can’t.

The moment the demand is made to change the location of the assault, everything should be done to resist and escape. If you comply with the demand your chances of resistance and escape diminish considerably. This is why your assailant wants you to move.

It may be that a ‘promise’ is used alongside the threat to get you to comply e.g. ‘if you come with me, you won’t get hurt, if you don’t I’ll kill you.’ Someone who is prepared to use violence in any shape or form is also prepared to lie. There is no reason to believe this. Your assailant is relying on a phenomenon where both parties believe they are benefiting from the lie i.e. the victim believes that if they believe what they’re being told they won’t get hurt and that this is easier to believe than that of being killed.

Even if the victim knows that their abuser is lying they may still comply as Paul Ekman a behavioural psychologist whose area of study is that of lying says, “In many deceits the victim overlooks the liar’s mistakes...helping to maintain the lie, to avoid the terrible consequences of uncovering the lie.”

What Ekman is saying is that, even if the victim ‘sees through the lie’ and knows that their assailant will hurt them, they may still go along with the demand so as not to have to experience the consequence of not doing so i.e. being killed. What should be remembered though is that if the situation/location is not in the assailants favour for the crime they are intending to commit e.g. rape, mugging etc it is probably not going to be conducive to inflicting the consequences of a victim not co-operating with the demand e.g. killing them.

We often choose not to expose a known lie because we wish to avoid the consequences of doing so e.g. a husband or wife may choose not to expose their partners’ affair. In a threatening situation however a lie is intended to put the victim in a more detrimental situation where the options for survival are decreased further.

Any demand that will see an individual’s options limited further should not be complied with e.g. a demand to let the assailant tie the victim up etc.

Monopolization Of Perception

Those committing an assault want their victim to focus everything on their predicament. The assailant wants to get the victim to focus all of their attention on how they can keep their abuser happy. If they can monopolize their victims view of the world, to the situation they are in and how they can keep their aggressor satisfied, there will be little time spent considering resistance or escape.

The victim starts to focus on compliance as their survival tool, rather than considering other options. This is all in the assailants favour.

The person conducting the assault may well make promises to cultivate this state of mind e.g. ‘If you do this I’ll let you go’, ‘if you don’t resist it will be over quickly’ etc only to then make other demands e.g. ‘there’s one more thing I need you to do...’

This approach keeps the victim focussed on ‘managing’ the assault and coping with the situation rather than doing anything to change it. Isolation involves separating the victim from other stimuli; monopolization of perception involves centring focus on how to manage/cope with the ‘new’ situation.

In an abusive relationship, either with an emotional partner or with a predator who taken a captive, the abuser makes the victim solely responsible for meeting all of their wants and needs. Overwhelming them with this task/role they will have little time/thought to construct any strategies that would enable them to resist or escape the relationship. By isolating the abused individual from the outside world, the abuser becomes their world.

Induced Physical & Mental Exhaustion

When exhausted our will to resist decreases and our desire to give in increases i.e. nothing can be worse than what is being experienced at present. This exhaustion may be achieved by maintaining the assault over a long period of time or in an abusive relationship with a ‘loved one’ may be achieved by constant arguing and forcing the victim to do all of the cooking, cleaning etc.

When the abuser becomes the abused world i.e. they have been isolated, their perception monopolized, the victim will soon become exhausted by what is demanded of them to keep that ‘world’ going.

Threats

Threats are what assailants use to focus the mind of the victim on their specific demands e.g. ‘give me your wallet or I’ll kill you.’ As discussed these may be accompanied by or worded as promises e.g. ‘give me your wallet and I’ll let you live.’

In understanding an attackers/assailants end game i.e. what they actually intend to do, the way the threat is worded can be telling. When a promise is made it is less likely to indicate the truth than a simple threat. The promise of, letting a person live if they comply is less likely to be true, that the explicit threat of killing them if they don’t.

This may seem a small matter of semantics but this is not the case: the way people word threats are important. A threat that explicitly states a negative outcome is simple i.e. do this OR this WILL happen however one that attempts to spin the threat in a positive light has the smell of deception about it e.g. do this AND this WILL happen. If a person is trying to hide what they are intending to do, they are more likely to try and convince you that this isn’t their intention.

A line such as, ‘...and I’ll let you live’, has been considered, whereas, ‘...or I’ll kill you’ hasn’t i.e. it’s a far more obvious threat.

Threats and promises that have an air of consideration about them are real warning signs of an assailant or potential aggressors motives. One of the red alerts to violence that Gavin De Becker (an expert in predicting violent behaviour), refers to is the, ‘unsolicited promise’ i.e. a promise that hasn’t been asked for.

He recalls the story of a client who was subjected to a rape that ended with an attempt on her life, state that her assailant, who was helping her carry some shopping bags up the stairs to her flat, gained access to the flat by using the line, "Hey, we can leave the door open like ladies do in old movies. I'll just put this stuff down and go. I promise."

This, although not an explicit threat, reveals a lot about the person’s intentions i.e. that they are going to do the opposite of what they say.

When the hair on the back of my neck rises up, when I’m dealing with people i.e. my fear emotion is telling me there is something wrong, I make a real effort to listen out for the AND (in a person conversations rather than the OR. An OR indicates however falsely that the victim is being given a choice and has an element of control over how the situation unfolds an AND eliminates choice and offers no control however superficial to the victim.

Threats are often enough to get a rape victim to comply, a NCAVC study suggests that in 84% of total rapes, minimal or no force is used. To putt this another way, in 84% of rapes a threat(s) was enough to force a victim to comply.

There are some threats that are possibly worth complying with e.g. ‘give me your wallet or I’ll kill you’, with the only loss to your person being a wallet. There are others, which I believe aren’t e.g. ‘get in the car or I’ll kill you’, which involves changing your location to one that suits the assailant better. It is also worth considering how a threat or a promise is phrased (difficult under stress) as this can reveal what a persons true intentions are.

Occasional Indulgences

Occasional indulgences are the ‘carrots’ that predators/abusers present to maintain or develop a relationship. These indulgences achieve the following: a) they keep the victim in a state of confusion as they try to understand their abuser thinking, which occupies their mind with thoughts other than that of how they can change the situation and/or escape – it might be the victim even begins to doubt their own understanding of the situation – and b) to convince the victim that their situation is changing for the better and that it might be coming to the end.

In the case of Rape, it is unlikely that an aggressor who has systematically inflicted punishment in a controlled manner e.g. one who has sadistic leanings, has any genuine concern for a persons well being. Any indulgence is not there for the victims own good but will be used to coerce further compliance; compliance that is possibly needed so they can engage in even more extreme acts.

There are many cases of rapists who murder their victims, going to great lengths to make them ‘comfortable’ before they kill them. Individuals who have been held captive (and later found by law enforcement agencies etc) reported that towards the end of their captivity, their captors started to treat them better with occasional acts of kindness. After interviewing these abusers it was found that they had determined that they were going to kill the victim.

It could be argued, that over any period of time a relationship will form between captor and captive and that this will naturally lead to acts of kindness however individuals who abduct people to play out ‘sexual fantasies’ etc have a different value system to normal people and their actions can’t be judged to be motivated by the same emotions. A psychopath who is unable to feel any empathy or sympathy is not going to engage in kind acts other than to achieve purely selfish ends.

Small acts of kindness, occasional indulgences, do not indicate that the situation is changing.

Demonstrating Omnipotence

By demonstrating their omnipotence rapists and sexual predators, stress the futility of resistance by the victim; this also can prevent the victim from reporting the crime.

Many rapists will end the assault informing the victim that they, ‘know where she lives’, ‘who her friends are’, ‘which school her children go to’ etc, etc. They may also state that they have powerful connections, so it’s pointless for them to think about going to the police.

During the assault itself or in the moments preceding it they may tell their victim, things they know about them or inform them as to what sort of person they are e.g. ‘I bet you’re the sort of person who runs every day’, to someone they’ve watched run everyday etc. Telling the victim facts about themselves, projects the image of someone who knows or can tell everything that is going on. This is implicitly telling the victim that they have control over their life.

It is important to understand and not be shocked by the fact of a predator knowing a lot about you – they may well have done their research. Often what they will tell you is stuff that a neighbour is aware of, or anyone who has the opportunity to observe you knows. What is frightening and feels like an invasion of privacy is that a ’stranger’ or someone who shouldn’t have that level of opportunity e.g. a work colleague, has observed these things and knows about them.

The abuser wants you to believe that they know everything about you, don’t buy into this.

Degradation

Sexual predators abuse their victims for two reasons: a) to elevate themselves and feel good, feeding of their victims sense of shame and humiliation and b) to lower their victims will to resist.

By treating a person as worthless and forcing them to act in a way, which confirms this, the victim begins to believe they are worthless e.g. ‘These are the actions of an animal and I’m doing them; this is what I’ve become.’ Accompanying this is losing the will to resist further.

The cost of resistance is more than that of capitulation to the abusers demands.

However small the resistance is, even if it is just internal denial of what the abuser is saying e.g. ‘that’s right, suck it like the slut you are’ etc, there must be resistance. It is hard when being degraded to look objectively at the situation but to hold on to a sense of worth that may fuel further resistance and lead to escaping the situation is important. It is necessary to tell yourself, ‘this is not who I am’, ‘this is not a choice this is the only survival option open to me at this time’, ‘I am doing this till the opportunity to resist effectively presents itself’. Thinking in this way allows you an element of control in the situation.

It is important to hold on to the correct images of self, not those the abuser wants to portray you as.

Enforcing Trivial Demands

Abusers to create a habit of compliance in a victim will enforce trivial demands. The military do this in basic training to develop an unquestioning mind in the new recruit. There is often no practical need for a soldier to obey certain orders or behave in a certain way however if they get into a habit of following these demands, they are less likely to question more serious demands that are placed on them.

This also reinforces the idea of the abusers omnipotence.

Conclusion

Many victims of crime and abuse comply with those who make demands of them. In some situations a simple threat is enough, in others a combination of methods may be used. There are threats that should never be complied with e.g. changing the location of where the crime is being committed etc, and others where compliance will end the situation.

If resistance is ever offered, it should be done so in the first instance that the situation presents itself for what it is e.g. if an individual realises that the person faces them intends to rape them, they should make their exit immediately, or start to fight immediately, the situation should not be allowed to develop any further. The longer the situation is allowed to continue or develop the greater the aggressors/abusers control of it is.

The longer the situation/encounter goes on, the more likely the attacker is to use different methods of coercion. Understanding these methods allows an individual to have a realistic picture of what is happening and how the situation is likely to develop. It will also help focus the mind on the need for further resistance and when to display or execute such resistance.

Regards

Gershon

P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page

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One of the most popular urban myths about rape suggests that dressing provocatively incites/invites either a) men who wouldn’t ‘normally’ rape, to assault or b) attracts the attention of those who are rapists. This myth needs to be debunked for the following reasons:

The first reason needs to be dismissed, not just because it’s unfair and incorrect to place blame on the victim but because it suggests that dressing in a non-provocative manner is a way to reduce the chances of being raped, which is not the case. There is no evidence to suggest that a rapists’ primary selection process involves the length of a skirt or the depth of a neckline. The way a woman chooses to dress may make them stand out to a rapist but only because those clothes have a personal significance to their attacker e.g. their mother used to wear a similar coat, an ex-girlfriend used to wear similar clothes etc.

Changing the way you dress adds nothing/little to reducing your chances of being raped.

The second reason and third reason also need to be dismissed as they suggest that ‘normal’ male sexual urges are the main motivation in rape. Both men and women are sexual creatures and can admire/experience emotions when watching someone who is attractively/sexually/sensually dressed. This is normal human behaviour. There is quite a jump from being ‘turned on’ by a woman to sexually assaulting them.

I am not someone who views the world through rose-coloured glasses and I believe that under the ‘correct conditions’ both men and women have a side to them that can think/act in the extreme and without conscience. However I think it naive and overly simplistic to say that the condition to prompt a man to rape is satisfied by the amount of flesh a woman displays e.g. a man who has never had a masturbatory rape fantasy sexually assaults a woman because of the shortness of her dress/skirt. It also suggests that the same thing/style of dressing sexually stimulates all men, which is not the case.

Although a rapist (or any man for that matter) may experience a degree of lust or sexual emotions when confronted with a woman who is dressed provocatively, this is not a deciding factor for a rapist when selecting a victim. Rapists are sexual predators who act like any predator searching for prey: they need access to potential victim(s) and to identify amongst them those that represent the least challenge i.e. the weakest.

Rapists want the easiest victim. This is primarily how they identify the person they are going to rape. They want someone, who is not going to resist, is going to comply with their demands and is likely to believe any threats they make, so as not to notify the police or other authorities. This is the easy victim and rapists are very good at spotting them.

Many rapists will spend a relatively long time observing and targeting their victim. They will watch, how they act: how easily they seem to comply with others demands, if they are overly apologetic, if they appear to yield/respond to people who take authority, if they stand/speak up for themselves, if they stick to their guns etc. This period of observation may last a couple of minutes if the rapist is looking to find a victim in an instant i.e. they have gone out with the sole intention of committing an assault or it may last weeks or months if the rapist is a friend, colleague etc, or someone who requires a certain type of emotional involvement with their victims.

It may be that the rapist approaches their victim and engages them in conversation or uses a subtle ‘con’ so as to observe them at first-hand and assess their potential. Whatever way the rapist uses to make his selection he is looking for the following things:

How Easily An Individual Can Have Their Decisions Changed

If a stranger asks you to get into a car with them I would expect your first response to be a negative one however many victims have gotten into cars with rapists, after having first thought ‘no’ - and unfortunately suffered the consequences of changing their mind. This is not to apportion any blame to women who have done such but to illustrate that many rapists are very successful at getting people to put aside their doubts and act against their better judgement. What may not seem convincing, when you read or think about it, can be very believable when you’re in a situation, experiencing it.

If you were to be approached by a sexual predator inviting you into his car I would stake my mortgage on the fact that he’d have an answer for every argument you could make about why you wouldn’t. A rapist knows you are not just going to accept an invitation into a stranger’s car and so he will have asked himself a set of questions along the line of: ‘what arguments would a woman make against getting in to a strangers car?’ ‘In what situation would a woman agree to get into a strangers car?’ etc. Every concern that you might have about doing so will have been thought out and a suitable counter created. These will then be blended together to create a ‘cover story’ and a situation, which is almost impossible to logically question/argue your way out of. His argument(s) will be watertight.

You may read this and be thinking, it doesn’t matter what arguments are made or what the situation is, I still wouldn’t get into a strangers car and yet women who have thought exactly the same, have and been raped.

Rapists are well aware that we rarely act/rely on our gut instinct and that instead we prefer to consider the facts and come up with a considered and logical response – we don’t want to appear irrational after all. All a rapist has to do is create a situation where there is only one logical and acceptable response i.e. to get into the car. Every instinct might initially be screaming out not to do so however as long as the predator can keep all the arguments (which he has the answers for) at a rational level and answer them confidently he knows he can induce a ‘change of mind’.

We’ve all had the experience of, ‘I knew there was something wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it’ and gone against that feeling, choosing to logically consider the situation and all the factors in it.

You maybe sitting, reading this and saying to yourself, ‘I would never, ever get in a strangers car...’ and yet there may well be a situation where you would, you just need to be presented with it, when in the right frame of mind.

Take the following scenario: You are sitting (parked) in your car in a supermarket car park and suddenly someone crashes into the front of you. Both of you get out to examine the damage and exchange insurance details. You’re obviously shaken from the crash and your thoughts are on the car, how the crash happened, if you’ve sustained any injuries, what if the other drivers not insured etcetera, etcetera. The other driver (a man) apologises profusely and opens his passenger door, saying he’ll get his insurance details etc from the glove compartment. He then might do one of the following: he might start to say that you’ve gone extremely white and you look as if you’re going to faint and so you should sit down indicating the passenger seat; he might suggest that you sit down and write his details down and then you can both go back to your car and he’ll take yours etcetera, etcetera.

He’s apologetic, even distraught: he looks as much a victim of the crash as you are. It’s obviously his fault but you still feel a bit sorry for him and after all accidents do happen.

He gets back into the drivers seat to write down his details, put his hazard lights on, or for some other reason and whilst you sit there He then closes his door and pulls a knife out, sticking it against your ribs, telling you to close your door and put your seat belt on. The car is stolen and the crash was a set up. If you think this sounds extreme then let me tell you that this would not be the first time a rapist used a car crash as a means of getting access to a victim and/or convincing them to get in a car.

Never underestimate the length sexual predators will go to.

The set-up works because he has created a situation where you’re not thinking about personal safety and any thoughts you might have on this issue can easily be dismissed or explained away. The predator has assumed a role within the situation and is acting in character: he’s disclosed no facts to suggest that his intentions are anything but honest and genuine – if you’re looking to spot a lie, there isn’t one there.

He knows you would never get in a strangers car, normally but he knows there’s a chance he can get you to change your mind and go against your better judgement. If you do, you’re a victim.

Getting people to change their mind is a ‘control’ issue and rape is about control. Sexual predators are always looking for those ‘targets’ that can be made to change their mind due to suggestion. It may be as simple as a man in a bar who offers to buy you a drink. You may initially say ‘no’ but if he can get you to change your mind then you will have identified yourself as someone who is open to suggestion and willing to hand over control of a situation to others. This alone doesn’t mean that there is only one conclusion i.e. rape but it does mean you’ve appeared on a predator’s radar, which is a danger in itself.

On the subject of ‘No’, Gavin De Becker (a world renowned expert at predicting violence) states that, ‘No, is a complete sentence’ and that everyone should be wary of those who don’t accept/respect that, believing it to be a debating point.

How confident the individual is in the way they act and deal with people

Are you someone who avoids eye contact? Are you someone who apologises a lot? Do you back down or accept responsibility in 50/50 situations?

These are behaviours that predators look for.

Society has a lot to blame for the way that women are brought up and educated during childhood. The education in lessons of ‘lady like’ behaviour that some girls undergo during childhood is detrimental to their ‘survival’ in later life.

N.B. Equally girls who are taught to be too self-confident can become targets for child rapists i.e. they are more likely that they can influence control over adults and adult (situations). This is true of boys for that matter however if over-confidence in girls continues into adulthood with the belief that they can control situations and environments within which sexual predators work, then they may find themselves increasing the potential risk of assault.

Rapists look for easy victims. If they can identify someone who ‘backs down’ in normal, everyday situations they will conclude that such a person is likely to back down, when threatened and/or intimidated e.g. as one predator who used to stand by his car and ask women for information stated to Dennis J. Stevens in an interview, that if a woman when she answered one of his questions, “glances down or looks away”, then she is victim material.

Another states, “Patty (White Irish) girls are trained to be polite” and look away, rather than lower class women who, would tell him, “to go fuck himself and stare him down.” Whether class has anything to do with it or not is irrelevant, the fact is that he avoided those women who ‘stared him down’.

Sexual predators are normally good judges of character. They may make their victim selection in a few moments or they might take days or weeks. They may observe how someone acts in a shopping mall or supermarket like the rapist quoted who observed that woman who bumped into other shoppers and were, “overly apologetic, were dead give-aways.”

It may be that they take their time observing a potential victim, over several days or weeks and take this opportunity to build up a ‘cover story’, which will help them to cast doubt on a victims account of the rape, should the rape ever go to court.

Rapists rarely have to use force to on their victims to get them to comply (they might use force/violence due to their motivations for the rape). Part of this has to be down to appropriate victim selection i.e. identifying people who act in a non-confident manner, who back down in everyday situations etc.

The appearance of confidence is a great deterrent to a predator, whether it’s presented by the way you carry yourself when you walk down a street or in the way you deal with a shop assistant. If we refer back to the scenario of a potential rapist driving into your car in a supermarket car park, the question would have to be asked, ‘why that woman’s car?’ Is such an act purely random? I would guess not. My guess would be that the rapist, watched, maybe even followed, a selection of women round the supermarket looking for someone who moved aside for other shoppers, who apologised for taking too long to pack her shopping at the checkout etc and for someone who generally looked flustered.

How aware an individual is of their surroundings/environment

If a woman is in a rush, looks lost or is even just ‘spacing out’ etc, then these may well be signals to a rapist that she has a reduced awareness of her surroundings/environment. Reduced awareness is something that all criminals rely on in choosing a victim, whether it’s a mugger, a rapist, someone looking for a fight etc.

As one rapist states, “If she’s dizzy say at K Marts checkout, it means she probably won’t make a decision to strike back till it’s too late, if she’s going to do it at all.” (Rapist interviewed by Dennis J. Stevens PHD)

Lack of awareness allows a predator an easy access to their prey. If you are aware that you are being watched you can take actions to distance yourself from danger. If you are aware of people are acting suspiciously it is difficult for them to make contact with you.

As has been stated, sexual predators observe their victims before they approach them. One interviewed by Anna C. Salter said to her, “From the car to the house. From the house to the car...You have no idea how vulnerable you are.”

If you are aware of your environment you will: a) be aware of how you are acting including the signals you send off and b) you will be aware of who is behaving/acting out of place. Lack of these things can mark you out as a victim:

“If she’s not watching what’s happening all around her, then doesn’t know how to handle herself, how to use the things around her to hurt me or get caught.” (Rapist interviewed by Dennis J. Stevens PHD)

I have talked about awareness previously and so don’t want to talk about awareness strategies here.

Things That Can Be Exploited

Rapists are good judges of character and understand that there are times that we are more willing to protect something or someone else than we are to comply to an unacceptable demand e.g. we may be willing to fight back and risk injury if we were on our own and yet if a threat is made against one of our family, we may feel out of a desire to protect them that it is better if we comply.

The numbers of cases of rape that involve the rapist using a threat of violence against a third-party to get a person to submit to them are uncountable. Often a rapist will use the threat of violence to a third-party as a means of keeping their victim from testifying.

“Finally, I saw this broad in the parking lot carrying a load of food with a little kid hanging on...I pushed her into the car and grabbed the kid by the throat. I slid in on top of her and said to the bitch, if you ain’t a good little girl, I’ll kill the kid.” (Rapist interviewed by Dennis J. Stevens PHD)

The things that are used to exploit can be extremely subtle as well. Threatening friendships and/or family relationships are common exploitation tools used by rapists e.g. ‘if you don’t do as I say I’ll tell your parents/husband/partner that...’ etc.

This tactic can also be used to keep a victim from testifying against their attacker. Many rapists who assault victims, who are sisters, friends etc of people they enjoy strong relationships rely on the fact that the victim may say nothing out of a fear of not being believed or risking the fact that the rapist may be chosen over them in a relationship decision e.g. ‘X would never do that, I’ve known him all my life...’

These threats are designed to work in the heat of the moment. They may seem unrealistic or even not particularly frightening, when thinking about them in a un-phased/non-stressed state however when in a state of real fear there effect can be enormous. Also, in the trauma experienced after a rape, these threats may still have potency.

There is little you can do to avoid having the possibility of other individuals, such as children being threatened/used as leverage to force compliance and so any overall rape strategy that is created/developed, needs to build in solutions for when third parties/dependants are involved. This includes the way that the post-rape phase/counselling is managed.

Victim Selection Conclusion

Being aware, presenting yourself/acting confidently (but not being over confident in your belief of being able to handle/control situations) and sticking to the decisions that your gut-feel tells you are right is your best way to reduce your victim rating on a rapist’s radar.

Regards

Gershon

P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page

< Read The Previous Article On Types Of Rapists  ::  Return To Main Site

For more information on self defense please click here.

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There are four basic types of rapist (as identified by Nicholas Groth – his definitions are used by the FBI for profiling). It must be remembered that these are basic types and that certain rapists might share traits and characteristics between groups. However most can normally be quite clearly identified as belonging to one distinct set.

Anger Retaliatory Rapists

One type of rapist who characteristically rapes in a spontaneous manner is classified as an: ‘anger’ or ‘anger-retaliatory’ rapist. Out of all the types of rapist, the sexual aspect is the least important component for these individuals. Their profile is one that involves a deep (often suppressed) hatred of women, usually deriving from an experience(s) involving one particularly strong and dominant female that has played/plays a prominent part/role in their lives: this could be a mother, wife, sister etc. They are driven by a desire for revenge against women in general based on their perceived treatment/injustice by this/these particular female(s). In this case rape is a tool for punishment.

These individuals don’t necessarily walk the streets, looking for victims to rape but depending on their mind-set, the situation they find themselves in etc they will commit such sexual assaults. Sex is used as a means of expressing anger. Although, not always actively looking for an opportunity to rape, the individual may deliberately put themselves in situations where they will be presented with such.

Attacks by these types of individuals tend to be brutal in nature and although they lack the controlled violence typified by rapes conducted by sadists (who tend to work of scripts and have an order/ritual to the way they inflict pain), the level of violence may be more than enough to seriously injure (or even kill their victims either intentionally or unintentionally.

Often the attack comes right out of the blue e.g. the attacker makes an extreme physical assault on the victim without warning, literally ‘blitzing’ them into submission before they engage in any sexual act. The NCAVC describes this method of approach as a ‘blitz’.

N.B. A ‘method of approach’ is the way a rapist sets the rape up e.g. these are normally classed as a) blitz – extreme physical violence before the rape itself, b) surprise – suddenly engaging is the assault, either by suddenly announcing their intention or by simply starting the assault or c) by deception – using a cover story etc to gain access and the confidence of the victim.

Based on the statistics, the blitz is the least favoured method of approach by rapists (23% of attacks by first time rapists are of this nature) and for repeat offending rapists its use diminishes to 17%. This partially reflects the fact that anger rapes make up a small proportion of all reported rapes. The figure may actually be even smaller than this due to the fact that these are the types of rape most likely to be reported (due to the level of injury sustained), with the majority of rapes not being registered at all.

The violence experienced is far out of proportion to what is needed to intimidate someone into compliance for a sexual act(s) and is often conducted with no physical control i.e. the whole rape is a means to let loose extreme rage and frustration. It is often questioned that if such individuals want to punish, exert control and dominance over women, why are they not satisfied with the beating alone? Why engage in a sexual act? The thinking is that the act of rape represents to these men the ultimate offence/violation that they can commit against a woman.

Often these rapists have histories of violence against men as well as women although they reserve sexual punishment for women alone i.e. they are generally violent individuals. Often drinks and drugs play a large part in setting their ‘violence’ off.

For most rapists but especially these types the victims are faceless: they are impersonal targets for the rapist’s frustration and anger. For many victims of such assaults, they are surprised when they come face to face with their attacker, in court settings etc because their attacker fails to recognise/identify them. What is for one party a very personal experience is a totally blank one for the other.

These are the type of rapists/rapes that the media likes to report on and they are the types of assaults we naturally think about when talking on this subject. However The NCAVC study suggests that in 84% of total rapes, minimal or no force is used and so it can be seen that these types of attacks where the victim is subject to real violence are the exception and not the norm (despite the medias concentration on the). This is not to say that rapes, which don’t employ this violence are not terrifying ordeals and of course it should be remembered that the victim is never sure that extreme force will not be used however these types of rapes are relatively small when the complete picture is considered.

These types of Rapists are often infrequent or even one-offs i.e. the only assault an individual commits. Often rapists motivated by this type of anger will wait sometime before their next attack. This is because during the attack they exhaust themselves of emotional anger and so to act again they need to: a) wait for their anger to develop again and b) find themselves in a situation, which will trigger them to attack.

Summary:

Power-Reassurance Rapists

These are individuals who usually plan their rapes in advance. They are the men who believe that the woman they are raping, will fall in love with them or start to desire them during the assault. As a consequence the level of violence exhibited is often low (although the degree that is used in a threat for compliance maybe high), as they want to imagine/create a consensual situation.

These are individuals who are socially awkward individuals who have difficulty forming significant relationships: they want to enjoy a ‘proper’ relationship with women but are unable to do so. Unable to form relationships conventionally they will have a confused sense that if a woman were to be presented with them as a choice of partner the result would be ‘a fait a complait’. They normally will have an idealised sense of themselves believing that women just need to be shown a dominant, strong male (them) and they will succumb. Often these men will have difficulty accepting that the encounter was an assault, believing/convincing themselves that the woman consented. This is a coping mechanism that is used so that they don’t have to accept that a) they are incompetent in their ability to create and maintain relationships and b) that a woman presented with him for sex would not be willing. The quote below, made by a power-reassurance rapists sums this up:

“I began to have the thought that perhaps sometime if I did this, that the woman would agree or perhaps almost attack me - perhaps just my appearance or whatever would just turn her on and she would almost literally attack me in a complete state of sexual excitement, that she would rape me as if I were just what she had been waiting...”

He will idealise the event, taking trophies as if they were ‘gifts’ (different to the way sadists take/use trophies) and may even write/talk about the event. These type of individuals need to be re-assured as to their masculinity due to low self-esteem, as such they fantasise about the ‘relationship’ they had with their victims.

They may express concern for the victim during the rape e.g. ‘am I hurting you’ etc. They want the victim to become involved in the act, to enjoy it and express feelings towards them. Their attacks will usually involve foreplay and they will attempt to bring their victim to climax, usually by masturbation. They do these things in order to convince themselves that they are sexually desirable and that their victim is responding to them.

They plan their attacks in advance and have an idealised view of how it will go. They may even try and make contact after they have committed the assault, believing that the experience for the victim was a positive one. The rape becomes a re-assuring event to convince the rapist of their virility and desirability.

The method such attackers use on their victims are normally ones described as, either ‘surprise’, where the attacker waits for their victim in an unexpected location and then presents himself, or ‘deception’ where they use a cover story. These are the most common forms of approach, with serial rapists using surprise attacks between around 50%of the time.

The fact it is referred to as a surprise approach does not infer that the victim is unaware of who their attacker is just that their attacker has surprised them rather than ‘blitzed’ them. Often the power-reassurance rapist has approached their victim before trying to make their feelings apparent. These individuals may be friends, family and acquaintances who have stalked their victim for sometime or ‘admired them from afar.’

This type of rapist can often be talked out of what they are doing/going to do, without even having to resort to physically fighting. In fact by ‘playing along’ with the attack, enough to convince the attacker that they are in fact desirable, it may be possible to escape the situation, without the rapist knowing that this is what’s happening e.g. by responding to their advances – convincing them that they are desirable – it may be possible to talk your way to another place e.g. suggest that you’re less likely to be disturbed if you go to a hotel, a friends, whose of town, house that you have a key for extra etc anything that allows you to move to a location where you can make a proper escape from or alert someone to your problem.

You should only ‘play along’, after you’ve verbally resisted and made clear your position i.e. that you are not consenting to sex, which your attacker is ignoring. ‘Playing along’ should not be a default behaviour towards anyone individuals who make sexual advances.

Verbal resistance is your first line of defense once your attacker has made his intention known. With anger rapists who typically ‘blitz’ their victims there is little chance for this but with reassurance rapists there is usually an opportunity as the rapist is looking for their target to respond. In the NCAVC study the rapists questioned said that only 53% of victims, verbally resisted them the first time they raped and only 43% verbally resisted the last time they raped. This is not to blame the victims for not acting. If you don’t know what to do or are too scared to do anything you’re not going to make any response.

Another tactic that has been used successfully with this type of rapist is to invoke feelings of guilt. These are individuals with low self-esteem and by asking them questions, such as, ‘how would your mother feel about you treating me like this?’ you may be able to combine this with your approach of complying e.g. ‘ wouldn’t your mother rather we at least went for a meal first before we do this?’ Such an approach hits at their low self-esteem and gives them a direction, which is in-line with their fantasy of a woman, who finds them desirable and wants to be with them.

It is always important to add a note of caution to this. If you act outside the ‘fantasy’ that the rapist is trying to create during the attack, there is always the possibility that he will resort to violence out of anger, so should you verbally question what he is doing, you must also be prepared to protect yourself physically. Unfortunately there are no 100% guarantees about how to act when dealing with a rapist and his fantasies.

Key points that identify a re-assurance rapist’s attack:

Power Assertive Rapists

These rapists are males who believe they have rights: they have a high level of self-esteem, are normally successful in certain walks of life and believe they are entitled to get what they want. For them there is no such word as ‘No’ and care little if they get this response. These are individuals who believe they get what they want when they want it.

“He is entitled to do whatever he wants to women. They're to be used for his gratification. His fantasies are minimal.” Former FBI Interviewer Roy Hazelwood (Profiler in the FBI Behavioural Science Unit).

As one reassurance rapist states, “I bound and gagged and tied up my victims and made them do something they didn't want to do, which was exactly the way I felt in my life...they can't refuse me. They can't reject me. They're going to have no say in the matter. I'm in charge now."

It is unlikely that such a person will be able to be talked out of what they are going to do and they’re not averse to using violence so any physical action/defense has to be committed. Their level of force is measured to a level that gets their victim to do what they want and they will up their level of violence according to the level of resistance given. This is not a fight they are prepared to lose, as it does not adhere to the alpha male view that they have of themselves. Your first priority should be escape, even if the attack takes place in your home. Your mentality of fighting should be one of ‘stun and run’ i.e. your strikes etc are to distract and give you time to escape rather than to damage your assailant.

Rapists interviewed in the NCAVC study state that around only 25% of victims offered any physical resistance and that most individuals backed down when verbally threatened. A rapist of this nature usually doesn’t have to use force – and won’t if necessary – on a victim, the threat of it is usually enough. This does not mean the rape itself won’t be a brutal or rough affair, just that overall violence is measured (unlike an anger-rapist) to the amount of resistance offered.

Power-assertive rapists are not looking to kill and their violence is controlled unlike an anger rapists. This doesn’t mean you won’t get hurt if you choose to defend yourself but that it is unlikely that you will be killed though in any physical struggle this is always a possibility. Also if it is an individual who you know/recognise and has a lot too lose it is possible that they will see murder as the only option to keep the situation quiet. This however is unlikely as these rapes are usually planned/considered with the rapist leaving himself an easy exit/get out.

They normally approach using a ‘con’ method e.g. they will convince you to share a taxi with them, they will turn up at party with your friends etc (they will hide their true intentions from you, till they are in a position/location to attack). The easiest way to deal with these individuals is to identify them at an early stage in their ‘con’ and not allow them to get you alone.

One of the main identifiable differences between a power assertive rapist and an anger rapist is that for power assertive rapists the sexual act is very much central to the attack where with an anger rapist the sexual aspect is very much secondary. The power assertive rapist wants you to know, that he knows what he is doing to you, that he is getting satisfaction from the way he treats you whereas as an anger-rapist just wants to vent frustration.

Some rapists will start out displaying the traits of a ‘Power Assertive’ rapist and develop into an ‘Anger Excitation’ rapist i.e. someone who gets excited by another’s pain etc (generally a sadist). An example of this could be someone who initially uses a rope tied round the neck as a means of controlling his victims, which later develops from a means of control to a torture device as its use is extended to asphyxiation.

Summary:

Anger Excitation Rapists

Central to the majority of rapes is the idea of masturbatory rape fantasies (whether anger-rapists engage in this type of activity is debateable but common-sense would suggest that the fantasy of control and anger release has been rehearsed in this manner, even if not meant as a rehearsal/plan for a future rape).

Rapists use the fantasies to fuel their attacks and none more so than the anger-excitation rapist as Dr J. Reid Malloy says in his book, ‘Violent Attachments’, "In virtually all cases of sexual sadism, including sexual homicide rehearsal fantasy is a prerequisite."

Anger-Excitation Rapists are sadists, who get their pleasure from inflicting pain on an individual. Most people’s views of sadists are that they are individuals who are not able to understand, empathise or feel other people’s pain. On the contrary these are people who are finely attuned to the pain experienced by others and when in control of said pain are able to finely tune adjustments to it so as to elicit a greater level of personal satisfaction.

"A sexual sadist," says Hazelwood (FBI Behavioural Science Unit), "is an individual who is aroused by the suffering of another person. It is not the infliction of pain that's arousing, it's the victim's suffering. He may use pain - physical or psychological - as a tool to elicit the suffering, but it's the suffering that's most important to him. One thing that's confused with sexual sadism is cruelty committed during a crime.”

This last point is a critical distinction between these types of rapists and others. Anger rapists commit cruel acts but they don’t ‘feed’ of the suffering, their acts are self-centred and don’t require the victims involvement and participation in any way. Power Reassurance Rapists are keen to eliminate suffering from the victim’s experience, wishing to see the rape as pleasurable for the victim. A Power Assertive Rapist uses violence at a necessary level, as a tool, to achieve sexual dominance and may get pleasure from inflicting pain but the degree of personal suffering by the victim is immaterial. Only the sadist (anger excitation rapist) listens to the victims suffering and responds/adjusts accordingly.

In clinical studies of these individuals, Anna C. Salter discovered that these individuals often gained a greater sexual thrill (measured by the extent of penile erection), from violence in the absence of sexual acts than they did from violence where sexual acts were involved. This would indicate that these rapists use sexual acts purely as a tool to increase suffering. This makes them the type of rapist most likely to kill e.g. they may reach a point in their torture, where the ‘highs’ they experience just aren’t enough and killing the individual is the only was to get the level of relief and satisfaction that they require.

The other reason that they kill is to eliminate the victim from being able to testify. Sadists are well aware of how they are perceived by the outside world and that there are few if any mitigating factors they can bring to their defense. The difference between 15-20 years/life for the crimes of their rape versus life for an act of murder may seem a risk worth taking if it significantly reduces the possibility of capture.

These individuals rehearse and plan the rape in advance: they know what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it. This doesn’t just include how they will identify and gain access to a victim but also the sexual acts and torture that they will visit upon their victim. These acts may well have been physically rehearsed on a partner/wife etc before the rape itself.

These individuals often keep/make notes, videotapes, audio recordings etc of the act, which is ritualistic in nature. This may well include the rehearsal acts they have committed with partners. Their view of women is that they are all, ‘sluts’, ‘bitches’ etc who deserve to be punished and to suffer. Again it is this view of suffering that separates them from other rapists who may just see the need to punish.

These rapists are normally socially aware: good at deceiving people and good at discerning other individual’s weaknesses etc. With an ability to control and hide motives, these accomplished liars are masters of the ‘con’ approach and exhibit heightened predatory tendencies i.e. an excellent ability to spot the most vulnerable victim and move them to a location where they have total control.

N.B. a vulnerable victim does not necessarily a weak victim but one who is in a state of mind, location etc that identifies them as vulnerable.

The intensity and ‘creativity’ of these rapists acts increase over time as each act further fuels there fantasies. What may start out as a crude and relatively disorganized act becomes fine tuned over time, as the rapists learns from his mistakes and previous victim behaviour.

It is unlikely that once in a rape situation the opportunity to fight back will present itself. One of the characteristics of this type of rape is that the rapist normally has control of his environment as well as his victim. The rapist, will move/relocate his victim to a place where he can take his time. These individuals get their pleasure from suffering and this means that pleasure is determined by response not by the act itself and so the rape cannot be subject to time i.e. it is not over after ejaculation etc. If a rapist is in total control of the environment and has meticulously planned the rape the opportunities for fighting back become limited.

Identifying the rapist and restricting his ability to control the environment is fundamental, in all rapes, but possibly the only real defense against this type of rapist.

Summary:

Conclusion

It can be seen that different rapists act differently and commit different types of assault. For some the sexual acts are important whereas for others they be insignificant or secondary to the violence and sense of punishment. Although there may be common acts and that at a high level all rapes may seem to be similar it can be seen that there are very distinct differences in the motives that drive rapists and the satisfactions that they derive from their acts.

Understanding the individual, their motivations and the way they act will help us to develop strategies to identify them, avoid them and avoid situations where they are able to act. It will also help to inform us how we should act during such an assault.

This will be discussed in the next post.

Regards

Gershon

P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page

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Rape is not an assault that is motivated by sex but one that use/involve a sexual act as a form of expression for another set of emotional drivers. The attacker may believe that they are carrying out the attack to satisfy a sexual urge however they are actually motivated by a need/desire to express control over a victim.

Groth, in his book, 'Men Who Rape – The Psychology Of The Offender' (one of the definitive works on the subject), refers to rape as a. 'Pseudo sexual Act'. He states that, '…careful clinical study of offenders reveals that rape is in fact serving primarily nonsexual needs. It is the sexual expression of power and anger.'

This means there is not a single profile of those people who carry out such assaults e.g. they are not simply sex starved individuals with high libidos who are unable to find people to sleep with etc but individuals with anger and power issues, that may be the result of a complex cocktail of social (and possibly biological) factors.

This also means that there is not a single or simple answer on how best to deal with a rapist, other than not being in a situation with one i.e. avoidance. When it's considered that one of the largest groups of rapists according to the findings from the 2002 British Crime Survey is partners and ex-partners (around 56% of all rapes), with acquaintances, dates and other intimates (around 37%) making up the next largest group, it can be seen that the majority of rapists are people that the victim has relatively frequent/intimate contact with. As total avoidance from an individual is not always possible, a woman will have to invest effort into making sure they avoid situations that could potentially lead to an attack. This is often more difficult to do than it seems. However this will be discussed later.

N.B. The country of origin of statistics pertaining to rape should not be judged as too significant e.g. a US reader, should not look at UK statistics and assume that these are only relevant for the UK and likewise a UK reader should not ignore the findings of US surveys etc. Rape is a fairly universal crime in both its types and causes.

The basic question that most women want answered is about what they should do when involved in a rape scenario is, 'should I fight or give in?' This is a question I’ll try to answer only after I've discussed: types of rape, the methods that rapists employ and the basic profiles of rapists themselves. An answer to this question can only be given to an educated audience who understand something about the nature of rape and who can apply the answer(s) within the correct context.

Firstly I want to look at the types of rapes that occur, doing this from the rapist's perspective. If our aim is to get a picture of what a rapist is and what he does, so that we can find solutions to deal with such assaults, we need to look at rape from the perpetrators viewpoint and not from the victims or ours.

Types Of Attack

The act of rape can occur either: spontaneously (55-61% of rapes), as something planned (15-22%) or as an opportunistic act e.g. a by-product of other criminal activity (22-24%). Figures come from a study done between 1984 and 1986 by FBI agents working for the NCAVC (National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime), involving 41 men responsible for raping 837 victims.

Spontaneous Rape

When I talk about ‘spontaneous’ rape, I am not saying that a man who is not predisposed in anyway towards raping women suddenly out of the blue decides to assault someone, rather that due to a particular state of mind and the situation they find themselves in they are prompted/triggered to rape. Many compulsive rapists who plan their assaults carefully may attempt to describe/justify their assaults this way e.g. something that the victim did caused them to ‘flip’ and so there is a 'shared' responsibility rather than admit that the act was planned and pre-meditated. However there are individuals who don't plan/intend to rape and find themselves in situations where they are motivated/inclined to do so. This is what is referred to as spontaneous rape.

Groth quotes one offender he talked to as saying, 'I was looking for people to talk to, and these women were willing to talk to me. But during the course of sitting and talking something would happen inside of me, the anger would erupt.'

This is not an excuse or defense for rapes that occur in this way e.g. it was the victims and the situations fault not the individual, and as will be seen men who rape in this manner have implicitly directed/prepared their minds towards assaulting in this way: they have the necessary emotions and conditions in place, that are just waiting to be triggered. It is not the victim of such an assault who is to blame for triggering the rapist, rather that they were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Planned Rapes

Sometimes rapes that seem spontaneous are actually planned even if they are not well planned. Certain date rapes, may fall into this category i.e. the rapist did not set out on the date explicitly intending to rape but he was setting out to be involved in a sexual act regardless of the compliance of the female he was with. This by my definition, despite how a defense lawyer might argue it, constitutes an intention to rape. There might have been no planned abduction, no planned use of force etc but they were all tools the rapist was prepared to use i.e. there was a willingness to rape.

Some rapists may put themselves in a vicinity/location where they know there is the possibility of a) finding a victim and b) being close to a location where they can commit the rape safely, without detection. These men are intending to rape and put themselves into situations where they can achieve this goal.

Other rapes are meticulously planned and are the result of rape fantasies. These fantasies are not to be confused with occasional or isolated ones that certain men may have of committing a rape, or subduing/dominating a woman, these are obsessive fantasies that the rapists plays over in his head over and over again. Anna C. Salter (a researcher and lecturer on sex offenders and their victims), states that, 'Often these fantasies start very early and continue for years before the assaults themselves begin' (Predators, Paedophiles, Rapists, And Other Sex Offenders – Anna C. Salter PHD).

The rape becomes the physical expression of the fantasy. For some rapists the fantasy is even more important that the actual rape and they use the experience of raping to further fuel and create new fantasies.

These rapes are normally carefully planned affairs, with a large degree of thought going in to how to get access to a victim (maybe even stalking, watching them or observing them for awhile), how to get them to a suitable location/environment and how to make sure they comply to the demands made of them.

This is one of the problems with rapists and the prison system i.e. you can't lock up a fantasy. In prison, rapists have time, to both create and develop fantasies and plan the manner in which they are going to commit them. One of the offenders that Anna C. Salter interviewed stated, 'for the first five years that I was locked up, I masturbated to a lot of rape fantasies. I knew why I had went wrong, and once they let me out, I was going to do it right.' I do not want to get into a discussion on how to treat sexual offenders and indeed if they can be treated but I think it is worth illustrating that given time a rapist will develop his fantasies and improve the way he carries them out.

Opportunistic Rapes

The difference between spontaneous rapes and opportunistic rapes is that in an opportunistic rape, the individual is engaged in another criminal/anti-social act, which offers an opportunity to rape: he has neither planned it nor is he surprised by his desire to rape (a characteristic of a spontaneous rape). It is very likely that he has enjoyed rape fantasies before and although not at the point where he was consciously planning to rape, presented with an opportunity to do so, he is more than willing to take it.

As one 'opportunistic' rapist, Anna C. Salter interviewed recalls about a burglary he committed:

'Somewhere back here I was thinking what if someone's home one of these times, what am I going to do? And this time somebody was home. It happened to be a female. So I grabbed her. We wrestled around…somewhere during the over-powering I guess the feeling of "Here I am in total control of this person," overpowering, I don't know. I got sexually turned on and that's when I raped the woman."

This is not to say, that every burglar that is encountered is going to commit rape. It transpires that the main motive driving the rapist to steal was not really for financial gain but to enjoy the sense of power and control that being in someone else house provided – for most burglars this in an added high rather than the motive itself. This particular individual quoted, it transpires was pre-disposed to rape out of his desires for control etc.

It can also be argued that some date rapes are opportunistic in nature, in that an individual who may not have gone out with an intention of having a sexual encounter but becomes aroused due to the nature of the opportunity and his victim. The difference I believe is that although not planned in detail a date rapist has gone out or during the course of events decided that he is going to engage in a sexual encounter whatever happens. An opportunistic rapist has not considered anything sexual till the moment occurs however neither is the act totally spontaneous, as the rapist has in some way mentally prepared himself for the opportunity.

Understanding the way in which rapes are instigated can help in: a) avoiding situations where the potential to encounter such individuals occur, b) understanding the way in which rapists work, which will help to identify them and c) working out the best plan of action if engaged in such an encounter.

By combining the mode by which a rapists works i.e. if they rape spontaneously, in a planned manner or are purely opportunistic, with their profile, it is possible to gain a fuller picture of who and what to be aware of and how to identify and act to avoid them.

Regards

Gershon

P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page

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To be successful in de-escalating violent situations it is necessary to understand the motive or motives of the aggressor(s). De-escalation is about achieving a non-physical resolution to a verbal conflict that is heading in the direction of an unwanted fight. To do this, to achieve a resolution it is important to understand why an individual is acting aggressively.

There are five main reasons why people act aggressively: a) misplaced fear, b) behavioural confusion, c) self triggered aggression; d) 3rd party triggered aggression and e) calculated aggression.

Misplaced Fear

People sometimes see monsters where there aren’t any: they can experience situations where they believe they face danger, when in fact they are perfectly safe. Their responses to such perceived threats might be ones characterised by aggression. Rather than backing of from what they see as a threat, their fear causes them to move forward and engage it even when their fear is misplaced and the threat is not real.

Sometimes people mistake me for a threat: what they see and hear is a stocky, skin-headed, Glaswegian making bad jokes and read it as: an aggressive, angry Scotsman making insults as a prelude to a vicious attack with a broken Tennants Lager bottle. A totally incorrect reading of both the situation and myself but that can none the less provoke an aggressive response in some individuals.

Somebody who is aggressive due to misplaced fear needs to be brought down in an understanding, non-threatening and face-saving manner. Calling the person a fool and to ‘get real’ and understand that you don’t mean them any harm is either: a) going to fall on deaf ears or b) give the person a ‘new’ reason for being aggressive.

My basic premise is that I have to accept that either who I am or what I’ve said or done, look threatening: I have to ‘agree’ with the person I’m dealing with however preposterous what they’re saying and/or believing is.

In de-escalating a person I follow these basic rules: a) I don’t instruct them e.g. I don’t tell them to calm down, b) I don’t question them e.g. I don’t tell them they’re wrong, mistaken etc and c) I don’t insult them e.g. tell them they’re a paranoid fool (even though they may be).

People motivated by fear lead aggression don’t want to fight: they’re looking for an excuse not to. You’ve just got to give them that ‘excuse’: a way for them to back down that doesn’t create new ‘fears’ or act as wind to fan their existing flames.

I remember on one occasion when I was at a metro station in Newcastle, just after Scotland had qualified for the 1998 World Cup, talking to someone who had stopped me for directions about their chances of getting past the group stage (virtually nil). During the conversation, I remember the man I was talking to getting very aggressive, even though we were both saying the same thing and were in total agreement. He started telling me that he wasn’t afraid of anyone and that he was happy to take on anyone that wanted to have a go at him. At some point in the conversation he had decided that I was a threat that was best dealt with by meeting it head on whereas all I was actually interested in was talking football.

If ‘reason’ hadn’t left the house it would be easy to appeal to this and say, ‘look we were just having a chat about football and it seems like things have turned a bit nasty.’ However if I did this I’d implicitly be: a) instructing him i.e. stop being nasty and b) questioning him i.e. his view/understanding of what is happening.

Instead I agreed with him, I stated that: nobody should be afraid of anyone and that I could see that when it actually came down to it he was someone that could take care of himself and that it was good we could both have a civilised chat about something like football when some people seem to use it as an excuse for violence. Acting like I hadn’t noticed he was directing aggression my way, allowed him a face-saving way back into a conversation with a person he now knew wasn’t primarily motivated by violence.

I didn’t instruct him, I didn’t question him and I didn’t insult him, I just let him know that his fear was misplaced: that despite looking like a football hooligan (his possible fear?) I wasn’t.

Behavioural Confusion

Aggression can be an individual’s response to a situation in which they feel out of control e.g. they are in a situation they don’t understand or have misread. Because they don’t comprehend what is going on, they are unable to select an appropriate behaviour and so become aggressive. This does not mean that they are stupid just that they don’t know how to act in a particular situation: unsure of what’s demanded on them they go into a self-protection mode that sees them, sometimes literally, ‘come out fighting’.

This type of aggression is not primarily caused by a false or imagined fear as the person is unable to identify the threat or actually understand that they believe there is a threat: they are just unsure of the situation and choose to deal with it using aggressive behaviour.

In itself this confusion will not lead to physical violence however because they have not been able to meet the situation with a particular way of behaving, their actions can become volatile and unpredictable and they can become physical as further means of expressing their frustration at the situation.

They are not actively looking for a fight and they have no reason to engage in one but they can easily find themselves in one.

It may be that this state causes them to actively go looking for a fight as a means of coping with their frustration at the inability to act appropriately i.e. this is the trigger that causes them to go looking for a fight (self-triggered aggression).

This type of aggression can be dealt with mainly by avoidance i.e. staying away from the person. They have not identified and target for their aggression and may not do so. They are in effect a powder keg waiting to go off and as long as the fuse isn’t lit they won’t have to be dealt with.

Self Triggered Aggression

There are individuals who are more than capable of triggering themselves into aggressive behaviour: people who want and go looking for a fight. These people are different to those whose aggression is caused by behavioural confusion in that they actively look to fight rather than having their aggression triggered by a situation.

It may be that self-triggered aggressive people become aggressive in certain situations however the importance of these situations is that they act as a stimulus to bring out inherent aggression and anger. These individuals live their lives with their aggression always only millimetres from erupting.

The central locus of a self-triggered aggressive person is their need to demonstrate control: they need to intimidate and have confirmed that they are the alpha in any situation. They maybe satisfied at times with a verbal acknowledgement but at other times they will need to physically demonstrate their ability to control by acting physically.

There is not a particular injustice that they are looking to right (as individuals who demonstrate 3rd party aggression are trying to do), they are just trying to convince themselves, by convincing others, that they are the top-dog who is in total-control. On their own they are an insignificant mess but when they can intimidate or beat into a pulp someone else they gain a feeling of self-worth: a fleeting emotional high. Mostly, the high that is gained is unsatisfying, which leads to further acts of violent.

Rapists, Sadists and Violent Psychopaths are all examples of types of individuals who express self triggered aggression (this type of aggression doesn’t define them as such but is characteristic of their behaviour). This is not to say that all individuals who are aggressive in this manner can be classified within one of these groups however it is worth noting that they display this type of aggressive behaviour. This group is perhaps the most complicated group to deal with as they are either directly looking for targets to express their violent aggression on physically or they are quite prepared to use physical force if their subject doesn’t acknowledge them correctly.

They key thing to remember with these types of individuals is that they want to express/act out their control: some will be happy for you to be the sole audience of their display and these individuals tend to be but not exclusively, your sadist, rapist, psychopath group whilst most will want to demonstrate their power to a third party or parties.

Most of these individuals go about their business in a social setting and usually one, which they are familiar with or want to become known in. Their aggression is as much a display to themselves and others as it is to you.

Many will need to develop their aggression within the situation so they can build themselves up to the point where they are ready to fight. This is where their display of aggression is directed towards themselves. By not letting them achieve this you can start to quench their fire. If you can remove the audience then you also remove some of the energy/recognition that such a person feeds of. You need to make a response that is similar to the police at an accident scene, ‘nothing to see here folks, please move along.’ Your act must be devoid of emotion with no content to fan your aggressor’s flames or those of the audience.

You should recognise quickly whether the audience is made up of your aggressor’s friends and will back him up/help him or are individuals indifferent to him/her. If you are in a situation where you could be dealing with multiple attackers it is best to try and exit the situation as quickly as possible. Calmly, apologise: your words should hold what your aggressor wants to here but your delivery of them should be confident and unhurried i.e. you don’t want to display your fear but you do want to say the right things.

You need always to be prepared to fight these aggressive types because they are always prepared to fight you. They are not looking for ways to back down; they are only looking for ways to demonstrate their power and control.

With rapists and sadists etc because their violence contains/is motivated by other factors as well as that of control it is sometimes possible to talk them down once they have exposed their violent intentions – depending on their state of mind at the time of the attack - but in fact it is far easier to deal with them before they get to this stage i.e. during the time when they are trying to ‘interview’ you.

3rd Party Triggered Aggression

There are individuals who have no intention of getting into a fight: they don’t look for trouble but someone or something just sets them off e.g. you might have stared to long at their girlfriend/boyfriend for too long, you may have accidentally knocked into them etc. As far as they’re concerned you’ve caused them an injustice in some way and they’re prepared to get physical about it. The key here is that they are prepared to get physical not that they necessarily want to.

What can be confusing here is that individuals who self-trigger the aggression may look for these perceived injustices as a means to justify their aggression i.e. they were looking for a fight, you’ve just given them an excuse. To identify the difference between the two, you need to ascertain the importance of the event that triggered the aggression. If your aggressor only mentions the act e.g. staring at his girlfriend then the trigger for them is the event and their response is that of 3rd party triggered aggression. If they start to bring in other details e.g. coming into MY pub, thinking that YOU can do this to ME and get away with it etc then they are naturally aggressive individuals who have self-triggered themselves into the state.

If the aggression is really linked to the event then your aggressor needs to feel that he hasn’t lost control of the situation e.g. agree with him that you are clumsy for spilling his pint, ask if getting him a drink would go some way to sorting this out (‘we’re both reasonable people’ etc) and that, that’s only fair. For me the price of a drink is a small price to pay for avoiding a fight during a night out. If none of this is working then the person has either: a) triggered his own violence or has b) passed the point of being calmed down.

You should now either change approach from de-escalation to verbal commands e.g. ‘Sit down, be quiet and listen...’ or pre-emptively strike.

In all situations where de-escalation isn’t working you need to drop that line of approach and either try and verbally take command of the situation or pre-empt the fight by starting it for them.

Calculated Aggression

This is when aggression is used as a tool to achieve something. A good example of this is the aggression that a mugger displays when demanding your knife, phone, wallet etc at knifepoint. Calculated aggression is self-triggered but it has a very well defined particular goal that it has to meet e.g. it’s not about demonstrating power, but using power to achieve an end, such as a rape or a robbery.

Calculated aggression falls into two camps: a) taking something from you e.g. phone, wallet etc and/or b) getting something out of you e.g. sex (as in a rape) compliance (as in taking part in a criminal act etc).

The thing to recognise here as that the threat of physical violence is used as a tool. Its end is not to intimidate, punish or right an injustice but to meet a need, to gain something. A mugger, who makes a threat in order to intimidate someone into handing over a wallet or mobile phone, is making the threat primarily in order to get something, not to feel good about them self or prove their alpha status.

They may get a ‘high’ from the experience and feel good because of it and if in a group they may use the situation to assert their primacy but the use of aggression has as its main purpose that of getting someone to give them something e.g. a possession or themselves.

Take an example of someone being mugged: a stranger approaches them and whilst sticking a knife against their throat demands that they hand over their wallet; If they don’t their throat will be slashed. Their are three ways this encounter can develop: 1) the target can hand over their wallet and their attacker will leave, 2) the target can hand over their wallet and their attacker will slash their throat anyway and 3) the target can refuse to hand over the wallet, their throat will be slashed and the attacker will take the wallet. This is seeing the situation from the attackers perspective NOT the victims.

Many self-defense systems and instructors miss looking at things from the attackers viewpoint: most look at attacks and threats purely from the defender/victim angle e.g. if someone does this, you do this etc. By understanding the direction the attacker is coming from I can develop responses that are more appropriate to the situation.

As far as the mugger is concerned the encounter ends with him/her walking away with the wallet: this is the demand they have made. They may slash or they may not, that may not be certain to them, what is, is that they get the wallet. The last thing I should say, in such a situation, is that I don’t possess a wallet or any valuables etc and/or they’re not having them. As far as the mugger is concerned, this is a trigger to slash. Even if I have no intention of actually giving over my wallet because I believe I can disarm my attacker or escape the situation, I will still let my aggressor believe that I am ready to comply – this allows me to do things in my own time, not theirs.

My general rule is that I will comply with demands e.g. if someone wants my wallet they can have it and only act if compliance has not nullified the threat e.g. after handing my wallet over the person is still holding the blade at my throat.

The one act of compliance I will not do is to move location. If an aggressor asks me to come with them, I won’t. If an attacker needs me to move to another location, then the one I’m in is not suitable for what they’re intending to do. I might be in danger not moving but I’ll be in a lot more danger if I go with them.

As with in all aggressive situations I need to be prepared to act at any moment but by understanding my aggressor’s end game e.g. that they want my wallet, I can choose responses and take directions that leave me with the maximum number of options for a non-physical resolution.

Conclusion

Understanding the causes of aggression allow us to make appropriate responses, which are able to direct individuals away from a path that ultimately leads to physical violence. By viewing a situation from the aggressor’s perspective, rather than just from our own, we can make better-informed decisions about how to handle ourselves. Even though we may recognise almost immediately that our response needs to be a physical one by understanding the attacker mentality and motivation we will be able to time our response better and allow it to enjoy a maximum effect.

Regards

Gershon

P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page

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Most people don’t know how to handle a violent confrontation: one where an aggressive individual is screaming and shouting threats and indicating that they are going to make it physical at any moment. In truth, most people don’t know how to handle non-violent confrontations although they don’t realise this.

Most people experience confrontations within the workplace and at home: places where in most cases, certain social conventions are adhered to e.g. overtly aggressive and threatening behaviour is not acceptable in an office – that’s not to say it doesn’t go on – and generally conflicts of interest at home are dealt with without the thought of physical intimidation. I accept that for some people this is not the case however the point I am making is that our experiences of dealing with confrontation are in situations where certain rules and conventions exist; rules and conventions that protect us from the day-to-day conflicts and confrontations we have, escalating into physically violent situations.

Because of this we get a false sense of our ability to handle confrontation and believe that should we have to deal with an unreasonable and aggressive individual on the street or in a pub, we’d be able to ‘wing it’ with the skills we’ve picked up by resolving similar situations in the workplace etc. As such we have no plan in place that instructs and directs us in how we should behave and act, along with the correct courses of action that we should take.

It is generally accepted that those who have a plan have a better chance of achieving their goals than those who don’t. Basically, without a plan, you are driven by the situation you are in: you cannot impose any order on it and must react and create solutions as things change. In a confrontation that is turning violent there is little time to work things out on the fly instead you need to know what your options are, what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. You need a plan with some simple decisions worked into it, which direct you towards certain and well understood courses of action. This is what having a self-defense strategy is all about.

I have discussed before how decision-making is badly affected when carried out under high stress. To try and formulate a successful plan of action when facing a potentially violent individual is prone to disaster and a disaster where violence is involved can be a real disaster. Having a strategy of how to act and what to do already laid out means that many of the time consuming activities associated with decision-making e.g. weighing up the pros and cons of certain choices, have been removed. This makes you far more agile in the way you are able to handle the situation.

Creating a self-defense strategy is a simply deciding beforehand what you would do in certain situations. The first step is to try and categorise potentially violent situations e.g. identifying an aggressor(s), engaging with one visible aggressor, engaging with multiple visible aggressors etc.

This is a fairly generic list of certain types of potentially violent situations. In the first type, you need to develop a plan of what to do if you see someone or a group of individuals who could be intending violence. You are not yet engaged with them in conversation and they have not yet identified you as a target BUT they could and the likelihood is they will (this is an awareness level of ‘Orange’).

In the second instance you are engaged in conversation/communication with one individual who is behaving in an aggressive manner towards you and in the third instance rather than it just being one person it is several (in such situations you should have an awareness level of ‘Red’).

In any potentially violent situation you have three basic options: 1) escape i.e. exit the situation, 2) de-escalate i.e. try and diffuse the situation, working out a non-violent solution to the confrontation and 3) attack i.e. make pre-emptive attack on your aggressor. Obviously if they have already attacked you, you only have one choice which is to defend and destroy.

Obviously your options are dictated not just by the category of the situation e.g. are you facing one person or many but the social setting. If you are alone on a street, then you may well feel you can respond differently to how you would with friends in a social setting such as a pub e.g. you may consider escape not to be a suitable option when with friends (you dash of whilst they finish their drinks). This means you add into your strategy factors such as: 1) socially indifferent settings, 2) socially important settings etc.

A socially indifferent setting would be one where I didn’t care how others perceived me e.g. I’m walking on a relatively busy street by myself when I’m stopped by a group of youths who aggressively ask me to, ‘lend them some money’. The audience to this encounter are passers by, people I am socially indifferent to. In such a case running away may be my first choice. A socially important setting may be one where I’m with friends in a pub or club when a group of youths approach and aggressively ask me to, ‘lend them some money’. In such a situation I may feel running away is not an option.

So I now have a selection of potentially aggressive situations e.g. engaging with one visible aggressor, engaging with multiple visible aggressors etc, a selection of actions to take e.g. escape, de-escalation etc and a selection of social settings e.g. socially indifferent settings, socially important settings etc. I now need to start to create ‘triggers’, which will tie these all together.

N.B. These categorisations are examples only; it may be that you feel you need to identify a broader spectrum of social settings e.g. semi-important social settings etc or that you need to identify more potentially aggressive situations e.g. engaging with a known visible aggressor i.e. an aggressor who you know socially, such as a friend or acquaintance. My only advice is don’t get overly complicated or detailed. The fewer, simpler and more identifiable your categorisations are the easier it will be to apply your strategy.

A ‘trigger’ is simply an action by your aggressor(s), which will prompt you to make a response/take an action. This should be an automatic behaviour that you don’t question. In deciding the action/response in your strategy you have considered the consequences etc of it beforehand.

An example of a trigger may be this: 1) aggressive situation – engaging with one visible aggressor, 2) social setting – socially important and 3) action taken – de-escalation. This corresponds to the following situation: an individual is having a drink with friends when someone comes up and starts accusing said individual of staring at his girlfriend. This individual attempts to de-escalate the situation. As he’s doing so his aggressor steps into the space he’s created (I’ve previously discussed creating distance) and pokes him in the chest. This action acts as a ‘trigger’ and a pre-emptive eye strike is made. The ‘trigger’ is simply any physical contact. It could be that there are two triggers e.g. the first response is to step back when physical contact is made and if physical contact is repeated then a pre-emptive strike is made.

The idea is to decide what actions of an aggressor ‘trigger’ what responses. This way you don’t have to spend time interpreting a situation as it happens and try and make decisions in the spur of the moment. Instead the actions/behaviour of your aggressor dictate pre-determined/decided responses.

The decision making process has been carried out in advance, instead of during the encounter and what is left if the need to act upon whatever decision is taken using your aggressor to trigger your choice. This way all actions can be undertaken without consideration and evaluation of consequences: the most time consuming and potentially debilitating part of the process.

Your strategy should extend beyond the pre-conflict and conflict stages of violent confrontations, to give you actions in terms of avoidance of such situations as well e.g. determining how you are going to get to and from places, what you will do when you believe you are being followed, when someone unknown calls at your door etc. By deciding your behaviour in advance and sticking to it, you will negate many of the techniques that predators use to try and reduce your levels of awareness e.g. their ability to use deception will start to become unstuck.

Many predators, who mask their motives, will use techniques to get you to go against what your common sense tells you and the majority are extremely successful at this. By having a strategy in place that dictates your behaviour you have in many ways formalised your common-sense, making it more tangible and real and hence less likely to be ignored.

Creating a self-defense strategy is a simple process that should initially take no more than a couple of hours to do. Once done you should re-visit and revise it so that you become happy and more familiar with it. Keep it simple and recognise in it that there are times when the only solutions are physical ones.

Regards

Gershon

P.S. as always feel free to comment on anything using the contact page

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Most of us like to think that we know what’s going on around us: that we are aware of potential dangers and possible threats to us. Most people are so convinced of their ability to identify and avoid these things, that when I ask individuals if they are interested in learning self-defense, the most common reason for a negative reply is their faith in this ability. This is doubly true for women than for men, though women often also express the belief that to try and defend themselves physically against a man is futile (I don’t want to discuss the gender-bias of these responses here but just note them for interest).

However to identify a threat or danger we must have a certain level of awareness about us and if we are truly honest a good 90% of our time we’re taking little account of our surroundings. Most of the time we drift on automatic pilot hoping that whatever danger is going to confront us will be kind enough to shout loudly when it gets within 100 yards of us.

Sometimes, even when we are spacing out, our attention is drawn to something and yet we dismiss it quickly going back to our thoughts.

We are not aware people. The only times we heighten our awareness is when we encounter locations/situations that scream out to us, ‘danger!’ e.g. unlit subways, solitary tube/subway stations late at night, deserted parks in the early hours. Our awareness is not really awareness it’s mild paranoia: possibly a ‘healthy’ form of paranoia but not really awareness in the truest sense. The reason I say paranoia is that the thoughts that accompany the experience of walking through an unlit subway, late at night, normally take the form of imagining, ‘what would happen if...’ rather than, ‘what should I be looking out for...’ etc.

It is important to distinguish between paranoia and awareness as many people get confused between the two and believe that to heighten awareness involves ‘actively’ looking for potential dangers and imagining nightmarish scenarios and looking for situations where such might occur, which is not the case.

Cultivating awareness is at first a conscious process: it’s about re-defining your ‘model’ of the world. Most of us have a default/everyday view of the world, based on experience, which doesn’t include: muggings, street fights and violent assaults. As such we don’t really expect these things to happen to us and as we don ‘t expect them, we don’t look out for them. Although we may not be looking out for muggers and violent individuals, you can be sure they will be looking out for potential victims.

Many victims of violent muggings are surprised when they find out that those carrying out the assault say things such as, ‘we watched him go by several times before we made the assault’ etc. the flip side of this is that often victims have several potential opportunities to identify a threat but either don’t or chose to ignore it. I have heard people who start bar-fig