The hidden face of vicious sexual crime

By Jan Corbett

They were introduced in an Auckland pub one Saturday afternoon. He knew some of her friends. She was 18; he was 48.

Later, he offered her a ride home in his van and she accepted.

With rising panic she soon realised they were not driving towards home, but heading into the country.

She yelled, she swore, she begged to be taken home but he kept driving, stopping eventually near a deserted beach where he pulled her across the seat, held a knife to her throat and raped her.

Stories like that are typical of the 2000 or so sexual violence cases passing through our courts this year.

Close to 10 per cent of all violent crime is sexually motivated. Since the 1980s convictions for sex offences have trebled.

Rape Crisis spokeswoman Julie McGowan thinks this is partly because women now feel more comfortable about reporting rape.

Nevertheless, the majority of women turning to Rape Crisis have never been to the police and never intend to go.

"Unfortunately rape is one of those crimes you can get away with," says Julie McGowan, "because it's a crime that's hidden."

For her just-completed PhD thesis, Victoria University psychology lecturer Devon Polaschek studied 25 Pakeha men jailed for rape.

The rapists divided into three categories:

* Those who pursued sex with strangers and had trouble realising the woman had never consented.

* Those who were trying to solve interpersonal problems with, say, an ex-wife or girlfriend and finished up raping her.

* Those who set out to do harm.

At the Mason Clinic, psychiatrist Dr Steve Allnutt sees an even more acute class of rapist. He, too, divides them into three groups.

Picture any violent criminal and you also have a picture of one type of rapist. Call him anti-social or a psychopath, he will be committing all sorts of violent crime and may throw in a rape on a whim.

"These are people who have no regard for other people," says Dr Allnutt. "They will sexually offend because they feel like it. They take sex from victims just like they might take the string of pearls."

The next group is more difficult to spot because its members are just as likely to be lawyers, teachers or chief executives. Known by psychiatrists as paraphiliacs, we are more likely to call them paedophiles or sadomasochists. They are driven by their recurrent sexual fantasies.

They are not necessarily violent, but they do use psychological abuse, coercion and manipulation.

Last is the relatively minor proportion of sexual crime committed by men who have lost the normal social inhibitions, either because they have suffered a head injury, a mental illness or are blind drunk.

Explaining the other two groups still has the professionals puzzled. But there are theories, says Dr Allnutt.

One is the environment the men grew up in, combined with their own temperament.

They may have been raised in homes where women and children were viewed merely as sexual objects. Or they may have grown up without any attachment to male role models, driving them to adopt the most macho "hero" from television or the cinema screen. Either that, or they were sexually abused themselves.

Around 30 per cent of sex offenders were sexually abused as children but, warns Dr Allnutt, "if that was the cause we would have more female sex offenders."