Prison Rape: A Silent Epidemic
Article by "KR"
So taboo a subject is prisoner on prisoner rape, that the systemic crime of male rape in U.S. prisons is nowhere even officially acknowledged, let alone included in any official rape statistics by any reporting agency, governmental or private. Male sexual assault in U.S. prisons is a silent and deadly subject “inside” and a taboo subject “outside.” Urged by prison activists like the late Stephen Donaldson, Human Rights Watch began a study of male sexual abuse in US prisons in 1996.
Although faced with shame and self-contempt, well over 1,000 inmates in 37 state prisons responded to a 1996 Human Rights Watch announcement posted in Prison Legal News and in Prison Life Magazine. No Escape, Male Rape in US Prisons (published by Human Rights Watch, April 2001), is a report informed throughout by these male rape survivors’ compelling first-hand descriptions. Besides letters and interviews with prisoners, Human Rights Watch obtained information from prison officials, prison experts, prisoners’ attorneys, prisoners’ rights organizations and prisoners’ families
“Fight, fuck or pay protection” is the age-old advice given male inmates faced with rape and sexual coercion in U.S. prisons. With a prison and jail population now over 2 million it is conservatively estimated that over 300,000 males are sexually abused each year in U.S. prisons, compared to an estimated 135,000 female sexual assaults occurring annually in the U.S.(from “ Sexual Assault in Prison, the Numbers are Far From Funny” published in Touchstone Vol IX, No 5, Nov/Dec 1999). In addition, while female sexual assaults occurring in the free world are most commonly single occurrences that end and then are frequently reported, each of the estimated 300,000 male prisoners who are sexually assaulted usually remain accessible to their attacker/s. Because they have no escape from their attacker/s many are re-assaulted numerous times and, due to the nature of male rape in prisons, the assaults are almost never prosecuted.
While a woman who is raped is no longer routinely blamed for having “asked for it,” rape jokes about “Big Bubba,” (a supposedly sex-starved inmate who, tradition says, preys upon weak young “cellies”) remain all too common. In the jokes, the terrified cellie’s “fate worse than death” is made a cause for derision, seen as proof he lost his “manhood” by not standing up to Big Bubba like a “man.” Since both rapist and victim may share the same internalized beliefs about “manhood,” the fact of being physically raped may introduce in the victim devastating shame and self doubt as to whether he was ever, really, a man. This can cause tremendous anxiety. Male rape victims are not only demeaned by popular culture but doubt their “manhood” because, on a purely mechanical level, male rape victims may experience physiological arousal during rape. Not understanding that it is a wholly involuntary, mechanical reaction caused not by desire but by the physical assault itself, and that it is a normal physical reaction for males in the situation, the victim may believe his reaction “proves” he was always (unbeknownst even to himself) one of a stigmatized group he himself always thought of as “less than.”
As one Colorado inmate told Human Rights Watch: “If truth be known, it shames me to even talk of this. I fear it places a stigma on me being homosexual or being an easy target for others,” JD, Colorado.
“I was too embarrassed to tell . . . the government acts as if a man is supposed to come right out and boldly say ‘I’ve been raped.’ You know if that is degrading for a woman, how much more for a man,” RB, Kansas.
For gay men, this prejudice that homosexuality is in and of itself a “spoiled identity” (and not a legitimate sexual orientation), makes imprisonment especially difficult, since: “Gays are targeted . . . the general assumption is that since we are gay, we don’t mind being raped, the staff pretty much thinks the same thing,” PE, Illinois.
“The memory I have of my arrival is yells, mating calls and whistling at me as I walked to my cell at 2:30 a.m.” ES, Mississippi.
“Money will buy anything here and I do mean anything . . . All open homosexuals are preyed upon and if they don’t choose up, they get chosen,” MP, Mississippi.
And, again, a letter to Human Right’s Watch from a sexual assault survivor: “I was brutally attacked by staff and taken to segregation though I had only wanted to avoid the same and worse by locking up with my cell mate. There is no supervision after lock down. I was given a conduct report. I explained to the hearing officer what the issue was. He told me that off the record he suggests I find a man I would/could willingly have sex with to prevent these things from happening. I’ve requested protective custody only to be denied. It is not available here. He said there was nowhere to run to, and it would be best for me to accept things . . . I probably have AIDS now. I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking too hard on all this...I’ve laid down without a physical fight to be sodomized. To prevent so much damage in struggles, ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for,” AH, Indiana.
Due to his own internalized beliefs regarding manhood, the heterosexual inmate who is raped may be more ready to blame himself and think that the fact that he “didn’t prevent” his assault meant that he secretly wanted it. As a result of this the victim (in addition to being physically injured by the rape), is shamed at the natural reactions of his own body, mentally traumatized and often marked as the object of further sexual abuse by the whole prison population. By the same token, the rapist/s are absolved because, as the old sexist “joke” goes, “you can’t rape the willing.”
“Sometimes I feel that it was my fault and it drives me crazy to think about it . . . I am mostly scared of what I might do when I get out of here. Very suicidal. I just mean that I wish I was dead at times and most of the times...these incidents are not turned in by the inmates who are raped or assaulted. They are afraid of retaliation from both the inmates, and the prison system,” CB, Washington.
With male rape especially, in or out of prison, not only the rapist/s but society perpetuates the belief that it is the victim’s fault. According to myth, a real man should never forgive himself for laying down. Just as, before, according to myth, a real woman should have died rather than let herself be raped.
The prison rape victim may or may not contract AIDS but he will probably self mutilate, attempt suicide, fear sleep, experience night terrors, have panic attacks or flashbacks, feel overwhelming anger, have “the shakes,” be unable to swallow food, etc. All are perfectly normal reactions usually experienced by male rape trauma survivors.
And while the sexual preferences of the male victim are supposedly revealed and his new “female” identity and status established by the rape; the attacker/s’ heterosexuality is also considered established and re-enforced by the attack:“It’s fixed where if you’re raped the only way (you can escape being a punk is if) you rape someone else. Yes I know that’s fully screwed, but that’s how your head is twisted. After it’s over you may be disgusted with yourself, but you realize you’re not powerless and that you can deliver as well as receive pain. Then it’s up to you to decide whether you enjoy it or not. Most do, I don’t. It’s sick and depraved,” WM, Texas.
The communities and wives and children to which these inmate brothers, sons, husbands and fathers return can expect to have to deal with an increase in domestic violence, pre-emptive anger and other signs of post traumatic stress. They can also expect to deal with increased levels of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Just as the sexual assault of women has little to do with sex, and everything to do with power, so male sexual assault in prison has little to do with sex but has long been an integral part of every prison’s power structure.
“It seem that young men, gays, first-timers, are used as sacrificial lambs. The reason is to use (them) as a way to keep the gangs and killers from turning on the system which created prison the Hell that it is. These (lambs) are turning into everything their abusers are,” RG, California.
One of the most tragic and violent cases to come to the attention of Human Rights watch was that of Randy Payne, a twenty-three year old incarcerated in a Texas maximum security prison. Within a week of entering the prison in August 1994, Payne was attacked by a group of some twenty inmates. The inmates demanded sex and money, but Payne refused. He was beaten for almost two hours; guards later said they had not noticed anything until they found his bloody body in the day room. He died of head injuries a few days later. Thus, healthy fear of retaliation necessitates inmate silence on the subject of rape in US Prisons. This same fear creates an atmosphere that forms prisoners into men able to survive almost anything—except their own return to freedom.
“The guards just turn their backs. Their mentality is that the tougher, colder, and more cruel and inhuman a place is, the less chance a person will return. This is untrue. The more negative experiences a person goes through, the more he turns into a violent, cruel, mean, heartless individual. I know this to be a fact.” RL, NewYork.
“I believe prison rape occurs because the administration does not care . . . As of this time, I have almost 14 years in prison and have never heard of a prison rape case being prosecuted in court . . . I’m quite sure if a man committed rape in prison and got 5 or 10 years time, prison rape would decline.” LL, Ohio.
Clearly, there are steps that can be taken to protect prisoners from assault. A prisoner in Florida offered the following suggestions to Human Rights Watch:
How to eradicate rape?
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A very strict and thorough classifying system that would segregate known predators from potential victims automatically;
Unrelenting and automatic criminal prosecution with maximum sentences imposed, with no exceptions;
More security. Rapes occur because the lack of observation make it possible. Prisons have too few guards and too many blind spots;
Mandatory classes for known predators with extra gain time upon successful completion;
Mandatory training for employees on how to recognize the signs of sexual victimization and how to respond to allegations of rape or threats of rape as well as viewing video tapes of victims classes, to become more sensitive to the matter.
KM, Florida
In a day and age when rape kits are in common use by law enforcement officers everywhere in the free world and when DNA testing is readily used to identify, prosecute and sentence men to long prison terms, one can only speculate as to why law enforcement is so lax in keeping the peace and securing justice inside of prisons.
As No Escape, Male Rape in US Prisons states: “The question of prisoner upon prisoner sexual abuse can no longer be ignored. Male rape in prison can be vicious and brutal. Some of its’ victims contract HIV; all suffer psychological harm. Rape is not an inevitable consequence of prison life, but it is a predictable one if little is done to prevent and punish it.”
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2001 issue of Justice Matters.
