Understanding Sexual Violence: A Study of Convicted Rapists

Abstract

Learning to Rape Denying Rape In the ten years that I have been working on this project, I have accumulated a debt of gratitude to a long list of individuals and institutions. The National Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape at the National Institute of Mental Health funded the research on convicted rapists. I especially want to thank the exceptional staff of women at the National Center with whom I worked during those years and to acknowledge their feminist foresight. The research could not have been done without the generous cooperation of the Virginia Department of Corrections, the staffs of the seven prisons in which the research took place, and, of course, the men who volunteered to be interviewed. In different ways, I am grateful and indebted to them all. Joseph Marolla and I collaborated on the development of the NIMH grant, and on the data gathering, analysis, and early writing. His insight and sociological imagination are evident throughout this manuscript, but the interpretations and opinions expressed herein are my own. I am grateful for the love and support of my family and the encouragement of colleagues at Virginia Commonwealth University. The interest and enthusiasm of my students, too numerous to mention, has been especially important, and, in particular, I am grateful to Diane Berry and Lloyd (Chip) Byrd for their contributions to this project. Over the years a number of individuals have read parts of the manuscript and made valuable suggestions. I particularly want to thank