What's behind the dramatic rise in rapes?

A Chicago writer recalls the horror of a sadistic rape she experienced as a college student after she ended a relationship. "I broke up with him because I just couldn't get over the gut feeling that something just wasn't right with him," she says, shivering at the recollection. "I had been dating him for a year, but it just wasn't working out. He was jealous, possessive, very insecure--and that was always a problem in our relationship. But I never thought he'd turn into a brutal rapist."

After she ended the relationship, the man begged to see her "one last time." He then forced her into a hotel room, tied her up, and savagely beat and raped her. He also repeatedly put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. It was not loaded.

The next day, he begged for forgiveness.

"He was a very, very sick man," the writer says. "I knew he was emotionally unbalanced, but I just didn't realize the extent of it."

A New York publicist for a major record company also was raped as a student. While walking to night registration at her high school with an acquaintance who said he was also going to register, he attacked her in a deserted stairwell. "Throughout the whole thing he just stared at me with a smirk on his face, like he was laughing at me," she recalls. "It's funny how that smirk almost bothered me more than anything else, because it was like he was saying, 'Ha, I have control over you!'"

Due to shame and fear of being blamed, these two women told no one about their attacks. They are representative of the majority of victims--many of them students--who are raped by acquaintances and do not report the assaults to the police or seek counseling.

Dr. Gail E. Wyatt, a professor of medical psychology at UCLA who has studied rape victims, says African-American women are the least likely to disclose sexual assaults on them. In testimony before a congressional committee on rape, Dr. Wyatt said that most rape victims experience physical and psychological problems for which they rarely receive professional help. She says that even years later some rape victims report feeling depressed, avoiding sex and having sexual problems in general.

Dr. Wyatt and lt. Britton both encourage women to report rape and seek counseling. "You should not sit home and suffer in silence," says Lt. Britton. "The first step to recovery is to report the crime and try to bring the person to justice."

"Reporting rape is an empowering experience," says Dr. Wyatt. "To be treated with respect, to be believed--even if the perpetrator is never caught, the victim feels validated."

Dr. Wyatt says she reminds rape victims that Black women were raped for hundreds of years and had no recourse. "Now we have more control over our lives, and we must break the cycle of silence around rape," she says.

In addition, she and others who work with rape victims emphasize that the social ills that foster sexual assaults must be corrected. "Tolerance for sex and violence is out of control in our communities," says Dr. Wyatt. She urges Black women and men both to speak out against sex and violence in the media, and parents to screen the information their children are exposed to in movies, television, music and publications. Programs to identify and counsel men at risk of becoming rapists also are needed.