As the bafflingly tenacious power of religion proves, humans like stories that help them make sense of the world, even if the stories themselves make not a jot of sense. The belief that life is part of a divine plan in which one's fate will be what one deserves will always hold more allure than the idea that life is just a series of random incidents with no guarantee of a happy ending, no matter how good a person you are.

This inability of humankind to bear very much reality explains how one clearly ridiculous story still has a purchase on the public imagination: that rape has something to do with desirability.

The terrible story of Delroy Grant, the serial sex attacker who was given life imprisonment last week after terrorising at least 203 elderly people, offered much jaw-dropping horror for newspapers to chew over: the police blunders that let Grant continue his attacks; the unimaginable trauma he inflicted on his victims; the fact that many of them died before Grant was brought to justice. But these facts weren't enough for some papers and they focused on something else, something that seemed to confirm to them Grant's depravity at least as much as his actions: that he chose to rape the elderly. London's Evening Standard, for one, felt that this was so extraordinary that it merited its own little article in the middle of its double-spread report of the case, expressing "bafflement" at a "family man's sexual attraction to the elderly".

Now, one might think that Grant's victims had suffered enough without the British press gasping that it's a marvel anyone would want to have sex with them, even a rapist, and especially a seemingly normal "family man". But this response is borne out of the still all-too prevalent belief – sometimes subconscious, sometimes less so – that sexual attacks are the expression of untrammelled desire and, ergo, the victim in some way has to be desirable, which brings us back to ye olde hoary chestnut of the victim being in some way at fault.

One doesn't need to look too far for examples of this attitude. In fact, one could look to New Delhi where, according to a survey conducted last year, almost a third of women have been physically harassed by men. This, according to Ranjana Kumari, a leading women's rights advocate, speaking to the New York Times, is because of the "tension between the people who are traditional in their mindset and the city that is changing rapidly". Confirming Kumari's diagnosis, the mother of one man recently accused of gang-raping a young woman told the same newspaper, "If these girls will roam around like this, then the boys will make mistakes."

The New York Times itself fell into this trap earlier this month when reporting the story about 18 men who were charged with gang-raping an 11-year-old girl in an abandoned trailer home. The little girl, the paper noted, "dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground . . ." HANGING OUT with boys?! Well, the little slut was asking for it.

It's easy to dismiss this mentality as being limited to those whose view of women tends to the prehistoric end of the gender-relations spectrum. I did, until a few weeks ago when I had what I would describe as a minor stalker issue – minor, although by the third day, the increasingly weird hourly texts and late-night doorbell ringing really had begun to lose their charm.

I told as many people as possible about it, particularly people who see me most days, just to be safe. I told them the full story of how I'd met this person, his phone number and how many times he had emailed to tell me he'd made another painting of my face. Everyone was very sympathetic, but five times out of 10, their first question was, "So did you sleep with him?" Now, I could take it as a compliment that 50% of the seemingly sensible people who know me think that my sexual skills are such that I could cause a man to become mentally ill. But this would require extra-strength blinkers to stop me from seeing the obvious truth that this non-compliment contains within the hard nugget of misogyny – namely, that women who are sexually harassed have brought it on themselves, either through their looks or behaviour.

It seems extraordinary in a week when another woman, Eman al-Obeidi, told journalists in Libya that she had been raped and beaten by members of Gaddafi's militia that one needs to say that sexual attacks have nothing to do with desire, but are about the abuse of power, sadism and mental illness. They have nothing to do with the looks of the victim, contrary to what Hollywood movies suggest, in which rape victims are always attractive and usually blond. (Al-Obeidi told journalists, before Gaddafi's forces dragged her away screaming, that she had been raped by 15 men "and they defecated and urinated on me". I'm guessing she did not feel flattered.)

This is why Delroy Grant's targeting of the elderly was, while shockingly cruel, not perverted in the way some papers seemed to think: old people are vulnerable, therefore irresistible to someone who gets off on torturing the helpless. Rape and sexual harassment are not compliments doled out only to the beautiful and alluring. They are an extreme form of bullying, and they can, tragically, happen to anyone.