The Rape Index: Statistics Speak for Themselves
In the words of Harper’s Magazine editor Roger Hodge, the magazine’s monthly Index is “a statistical poem.” He presumeably meant that it allows the reader to experience it and come to his or her own conclusions.
Today, instead of explaining a position, I offer a ‘statistical poem’ about rape. Each statistic is preceeded by the month and year that it ran in Harper’s. Find sources here.
12/84–Percentage of college men who say they might commit rape if there were no chance of being caught: 35
3/85—Percentage of married women in the United States who say they have been raped by their husbands: 14
States in which marital rape is not a crime: 27
1/86—Percentage of female college students who say they have been raped: 16
Percentage of those who say the rapist was someone they were dating: 57
4/87—Number of Americans 15 years of age or younger who were charged with rape in 1985: 2,645
4/88—Percentage of all rapes in 1985 in which the victim and assailant were of the same race: 87
Percentage of all robberies: 65 
7/88—Percentage of 13- to 15-year-old boys who say that it is acceptable for a man to rape his wife: 86
Who say that it is acceptable for a man to rape his date if he has spent “a lot of money” on her: 24
8/89—Percentage increase, since 1986, in the number of boys under 13 arrested for rape in New York City: 333
8/89—Chances that an American woman will be the victim of a rape or an attempted rape in her lifetime: 1 in 12
2/90—Percentage of Catholic members of the House who voted last fall to federally fund abortions for rape victims: 37
8/90—Ratio of reported rape victims with incomes of less than $3,000 to those with incomes of more than $15,000: 6:1
1/91—Percentage of male college students who say that “some women look as though they’re just asking to be raped”: 84
12/96
—Number of people sentenced under California’s three-strikes law for murder or rape: 65
Number sentenced for petty theft or drug possession: 5,900
8/96—Estimated number of abortions performed on victims of rape or incest each year: 15,000
Number performed on born-again or evangelical Christians: 250,000
6/97—Number of Latin American countries in which a rapist is exonerated if the victim accepts his marriage proposal: 14
6/97—Chance that a Florida rape victim’s account will be believed by hospital medical personnel: 1 in 2
10/98—Estimated number of Catholic priests accused of sexual assault in the U.S. since 1978: 3,000
10/98—Estimated amount U.S. Roman Catholic dioceses have paid to victims of sexual assault since 1980: $800,000,000
3/98—Percentage change in murder, rape, and robbery cases in New York City since the election of Rudolph Giuliani: -44
7/99—Chances that a U.S. Catholic hospital does not provide emergency contraception to rape victims: 4 in 5
7/99—Number of male witnesses that Pakistan requires for a rape prosecution: 4
1/03—Chances that a Rwandan woman raped during the 1994 genocide is now HIV-positive: 2 in 3
Posted: October 2nd, 2009 under abortion, rape, rape case, rape culture, rape trial, rape victim, rapist, sexual assault.
Tags: abortion, born-again Christians, california, Catholic Church, college, emergency contraception, evangelical Christians, Florida, genocide, harper's, HIV, incest, marriage, medical professionals, New York, Pakistan, poetry, race, rape, Rudy Giuliani, rwanda, sex, sexual assault, sexual violence, sexuality, social class, socioeconomic class, statistics, three strikes
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Time October 7, 2009 at 12:11 am
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