Males who have been raped find themselves condemned to silence for being ‘less men’ and ridiculed as ‘homosexuals’.





In the Democratic Republic of Congo rape is a weapon of war that is more effective than a gun. It leaves its victims traumatised, demoralised and powerless. The central African country has a sad success as leader in sexual violence, with 1,100 women attacked every day according to the American Journal of Public Health.

But it is difficult to imagine that men are also victims of rape. The same study reveals that almost the same percentage of men as women are living with the wound of having been sexually abused during the war.

The Journal of the American Medical Association specifies that in 2010 22% of men in the east of the country admitted to suffering sexual violence, a figure not much less than the 30% for women.

Sex as a means of domination can be brutal in these situations of armed conflict, but it would be a serious error to believe that men elsewhere are free from it, not even in first world countries.

Francesco Zanardi travelled the 600 Km. from his home to the Vatican to protest in the name of children who, like himself, suffered the calvary of being abused by its priests. The law of silence which reigns in the Catholic Church, he says, makes it much more difficult for the victims to get justice.

In Mexico, Sebastián was regularly raped by his cousin when he was a child, after being forced to watch him having sex with different women, according to the story in the newspaper El Universal. He is just one more person among those who remain in the shadows for years, confused and trying to understand that indeed men can also be victims.

“You can’t tell your mother, ok? My cousin was 17, I was 4.”

“You are a boy, you can’t refuse a girl like me”.

“He was a policeman. He did whatever he wanted. He laughed while I was crying. I was 10”.

“If you tell your parents we are going to give you a beating”: my two best ‘friends’ when I was 8.

These are the words that have stayed engraved in the memories of some of the victims in the US who posed for photographer Grace Brown in her blog Project Unbreakable.

Invisible in the UK

Stories like these cross frontiers and the UK also has its share of them. Specifically, according to figures estimated by the Home Office, 72,000 each year.

Although in the case of sexual violence the figures don’t accurately represent the great number of cases which due to fear are never reported. Official statistics give a total of 406,000 cases of sexual abuse between 2012 and 2013, of which a man was the victim in 18.5% of cases.

The figures confirm that in our society women continue being the main victims, due to the stereotype according to which women are vulnerable and reduced to objects of masculine desire.

However, although to a lesser extent, the phenomenon exists, and as in the case of women, the aggressors are fundamentally men. This is what the organisation Male Survivors Trust finds, and also states that 98% of the rapists are heterosexual.

The same group exposes the myth that only homosexuals are victims of this violence. Anyone, whatever their sexuality, can find themselves in potentially dangerous situations.

But on its website this group warns the LGBT community that “there always exists the chance that, by taking any risk in meeting a sexual partner, you might end up being a victim of rape for being gay or bisexual”.

But therapists who help these men are sure that sexual orientation has nothing to do with the risk, because sexual abuse is a question of power and violence, not of sexuality.

Breaking the silence

After having been victims as children or as adults, very few men dare to talk about their experiences, and even fewer take their cases to court. A study by the Baroness Stern Foundation in 2011 found that out of the total number of victims only 11% went to the police, a figure which falls to between 4 and 6% among men.

The same report showed that the great majority of male victims don’t want to talk about their experience because “men are supposed to be able to defend themselves against an attacker”.

The informants agreed that they did not report the crime for fear of being ridiculed, or that no-one would believe them. The other pressure that faces them is the fear of being seen as homosexuals or ‘less like men’, and even as potential child abusers.

All these stereotypes are without foundation, derived from a society in which virility is a sign of power and the belief that anyone who can’t demonstrate their strength is weak.

Professor Kim Etherington of the University of Bristol puts it like this: “Men learn from a very young age that they must be ‘strong’ and ‘be in control’.

Being masculine means being sexually potent, competitive with other men in the field of sex, and dominant in their sexual relations. Being raped or abused puts all these preconceived ideas in doubt”.

Despite that, those who take the step of going to court with a case of sexual abuse obtain a judgement in their favour in 91% of cases (according to the latest figures available, for 2011), much higher than the 60% figure for women. In rape cases (distinguished legally by the fact of penetration), some 45% of men saw their attacker found guilty compared to 39.7% of women.

Infantile trauma

The other face of this violence is the sexual abuse of children. Its victims suffer at very young ages, when the scar it leaves is indelible. A study by the NSPCC pointed to a figure of 1 in 6 children and 11% of adolescents aged between 16 and 18 as being victims of rape or other sexual abuse each year. This figure is equivalent to 1.5 million British adults who were victims in their childhood.

“When you are young you find out things about rape, but you think that it only happens to girls and women. I thought “Why me?” I just had the feeling that that would not happen to me”.

These are the words of a 20-year-old who was routinely abused by his uncle between the ages of 10 and 14. After an adolescence full of conflicts, he shared his experiences with the organisation Mankind.

“I had a lot of anger and I got involved in a lot of fights”, recalls Mickey. At 17 he began taking drugs, taking part in robberies, and tried to kill himself.

He is one example of how episodes of abuse leave their mark on the personalities of victims. They suffer high levels of anxiety, depression and unsocial behaviour. Support groups such as Mankind and Survivors UK help them to come to terms with their past, which is often blocked in their memories, and through doing so to improve their present and the future.

But if help is not given promptly, they can reach an advanced age without having been able to live their lives fully because their ghosts have dragged them down. Some 13% of those investigated by Baroness Stern accept that the psychological damage was permanent.

“I would be a very different person if they had not abused me. It began with my family and my friends, which is very unfair because it isn’t your fault”. This is what another of Mankind’s patients said after 48 hours of silence. He was the victim of a woman neighbour between the ages of 4 and 7.

Indeed, if there is a great taboo about sexual violence against men, it is also true that women can be aggressors. According to the experience of these organisations, mothers, sisters, nannies and friends of the family may also use sex to brutally impose their authority on young boys.

Doctor Bunting, author of the book Females who Sexually Offend against Children warns that “there is no safer gender, only aggressors. Women who attack children sexually are capable of terrible, evil and disgusting things, just like men”.

(Translated by Graham Douglas – Email: catalysistranslations@outlook.com)