“I’ll tell you what really happened that night—what the court never heard.” Michael* leans forward in his chair; instinctively I lean back, away from him. We’re sitting in a conference room in the Los Angeles office of the California Department of Corrections, and although our interview is being supervised by the therapist Michael now sees every two weeks as a condition of his parole, I can’t help feeling nervous. After all, besides being a handsome, charming, 43-year-old building contractor and father of two children—one of them a teenaged daughter—Michael is also a convicted rapist.
“I’m down by the beach, trolling around on my bicycle,” Michael begins, then stops to ask if I know what he means by “trolling.” “It’s a fishing term,” he explains. “You’re out on your boat, you get to a good spot, you let out the lines and drag around some lures until you get hooked up. For me it meant cruising the boardwalk, looking for an opportunity: a woman who’s by herself, locked out of her car, fighting with her boyfriend, whatever. Women are most vulnerable, you know,” Michael confides with an intimate smile, “when they’re going through a break-up.”
He resumes his narration. “It’s nearly midnight. I’m in a hurry to line something up for the evening.” By ‘something,’ I know, Michael means sex—and not necessarily the consensual kind. Until a five-year stint in prison put a stop to his ‘trolling,’ Michael spent many of his nights coercing women into having sex with him. “I’d already had a couple of possible hits on the boardwalk,” he continues. “One who looked good enough to go back to; another one I talked to, who had a house right on the beach. So I go into a bar on the boardwalk to have a beer and consider my options. I see a guy and a girl arguing. I’m thinking to myself, ‘There’s an opportunity here’.”
Michael’s story seems well-rehearsed, and no wonder: he had plenty of time in prison to reflect on it. “The girl storms out of the bar,” he goes on. “I ride my bike ahead of her and sit down on a wall, waiting. I can tell she’s a little drunk—she’s got a pretty good wobble in her walk. There’s all kinds of guys hanging out on their balconies, whistling at her, trying to talk to her as she goes by. When she spots me I decide to throw away the preliminaries, go directly for the kill. No spending money on her, no small talk, just ‘Hey baby, what’s happening?’ A lot of times I’ve scored that way, you know.” Michael smiles again, his blue eyes locked on mine.
“I ask her, ‘How about a little kiss?’ She says yes. But her eyes are saying no.” Michael pauses, glancing deliberately at Dr. Choy, his therapist. Since his release from Folsom State Prison a few months ago, Dr. Choy’s reports to Michael’s parole officer help determine whether Michael remains a free man or returns to jail. “I should have stopped right then,” Michael says and Dr. Choy nods approvingly. “But instead I grabbed her and kissed her. Her dress was so short, it was showing her whole butt. I’m not using that as an excuse, but I must say I was attracted to it. She was young, she was innocent, she was sad. I’m thinking ‘quick swoop…’”
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His very own mother taught
His very own mother taught him from an early age that rape was justified in some cases, even if it involved a little girl, that it was a crime with no consequences, and that they could all live a happy life with a rapist, now they wonder WHAT made him a rapist?
That woman is responsible for raising a boy who though women deserve to be treated as objects, she ignored her own daughter’s needs and saw her as a mean to get financial stability and a “man” by her side.
His stepfather AND his mother deserve to be in jail too.
What makes a rapist ...
What makes a rapist ... testosterone.
Same thing that makes for gang rapists, sex slavery thugs, the 2 million U.S. males currently in prison, as well as all those neighborhood guys on your state sex offender list.
This is a load of b*llsh*t
This is a load of b*llsh*t folks. "Don't drink. Don't go out at night. Don't go to the bar. Don't have sex. Don't do the drugs".... What are women supposed to do, hide in their kitchen and live like their great-grandmothers? Sure why don't we just roll back 40-odd great years of progress for women just because some guys can't control their d*cks... Live your life. No regrets. Bad things will happen if you go out in the world, sure. But better to go out and live than be a prisoner. Just be prepared, trust your instincts, and take reasonable precautions. Lastly as a man with two little sisters, I feel that "men"(and I use the term loosely) like Michael should be taken out in a field and shot behind one ear. Once a rapist, always a rapist.
Dr Choy, you`re being played.
Dr Choy, you`re being played. `Michael` is stroking you, he`s telling you everything he`s sure that you need to hear.
`Michael` hasn`t changed, he`ll be much harder to catch next time and there will be a NEXT time.
There is a correlation
There is a correlation between prior abuse and identity formation where sex functions as an identity attractor for this disfunctionality. The perpetrator focuses on behavior that mediates control - i.e. extreme emotional distress coupled with preconceived notions and careless trust by the victim that increase vulnerability. While the rapist expresses the focused behavior of a predator, he ultimately seeks to reinforce his own identity suggesting there is an underlying emotional conflict that is being expressed through reaction formation. The victim is defined through projection to embody the predator's guilt and self-loathing in order to justify the violence. Eventually repeat behavior produces an habitual response making repeat offenses a very high probability. With this in mind it unlikely that the described perpetrator would rehabilitate in an open environment suggesting a closed identity system would be suitable for this subject - i.e. an environment where there are no women or children that may be considered monastic or hermit like. Failing that a repeat laspe into crime would occur with in 4 standard deviations if the subject where reintroduced into an enabled environment. Returning to the scenes of old crimes unsupervised reestablishes the preexisting connection that emotionally defined the original crime. A recovery therefore requires creating a detachment to the original euphoric feelings of empowerment, their locals, and the substitution and refocus of these identity attractors into positive and culturally reinforced behaviors. The passion expressed as aggression toward women must be refocused into a productive activity. This requires a period of exposure to the underlying trigger in order to desensitize the subject through mortification and abstenance until the trigger eventually produces habitual ambivalence followed by then establishing an emotional bond of a positive and beneficial behavioral nature to replace the old disfunction. This bond must project unity between the subject and women so that the subject no longer has an over compensated boundary.
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