2011-08-02

The rape of men | Global development | The Observer

The rape of men

Sexual violence is one of the most horrific weapons of war, an instrument of terror used against women. Yet huge numbers of men are also victims. In this harrowing report, Will Storr travels to Uganda to meet traumatised survivors, and reveals how male rape is endemic in many of the world's conflicts

male-rape-victim-uganda
Dying of shame: a Congolese rape victim, currently resident in Uganda. This man’s wife has left him, as she was unable to accept what happened. He attempted suicide at the end of last year. Photograph: Will Storr for the Observer

Of all the secrets of war, there is one that is so well kept that it exists mostly as a rumour. It is usually denied by the perpetrator and his victim. Governments, aid agencies and human rights defenders at the UN barely acknowledge its possibility. Yet every now and then someone gathers the courage to tell of it. This is just what happened on an ordinary afternoon in the office of a kind and careful counsellor in Kampala, Uganda. For four years Eunice Owiny had been employed by Makerere University's Refugee Law Project (RLP) to help displaced people from all over Africa work through their traumas. This particular case, though, was a puzzle. A female client was having marital difficulties. "My husband can't have sex," she complained. "He feels very bad about this. I'm sure there's something he's keeping from me."

Owiny invited the husband in. For a while they got nowhere. Then Owiny asked the wife to leave. The man then murmured cryptically: "It happened to me." Owiny frowned. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old sanitary pad. "Mama Eunice," he said. "I am in pain. I have to use this."

Laying the pus-covered pad on the desk in front of him, he gave up his secret. During his escape from the civil war in neighbouring Congo, he had been separated from his wife and taken by rebels. His captors raped him, three times a day, every day for three years. And he wasn't the only one. He watched as man after man was taken and raped. The wounds of one were so grievous that he died in the cell in front of him.

"That was hard for me to take," Owiny tells me today. "There are certain things you just don't believe can happen to a man, you get me? But I know now that sexual violence against men is a huge problem. Everybody has heard the women's stories. But nobody has heard the men's."

It's not just in East Africa that these stories remain unheard. One of the few academics to have looked into the issue in any detail is Lara Stemple, of the University of California's Health and Human Rights Law Project. Her study Male Rape and Human Rights notes incidents of male sexual violence as a weapon of wartime or political aggression in countries such as Chile, Greece, Croatia, Iran, Kuwait, the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. Twenty-one per cent of Sri Lankan males who were seen at a London torture treatment centre reported sexual abuse while in detention. In El Salvador, 76% of male political prisoners surveyed in the 1980s described at least one incidence of sexual torture. A study of 6,000 concentration-camp inmates in Sarajevo found that 80% of men reported having been raped.

I've come to Kampala to hear the stories of the few brave men who have agreed to speak to me: a rare opportunity to find out about a controversial and deeply taboo issue. In Uganda, survivors are at risk of arrest by police, as they are likely to assume that they're gay – a crime in this country and in 38 of the 53 African nations. They will probably be ostracised by friends, rejected by family and turned away by the UN and the myriad international NGOs that are equipped, trained and ready to help women. They are wounded, isolated and in danger. In the words of Owiny: "They are despised."

But they are willing to talk, thanks largely to the RLP's British director, Dr Chris Dolan. Dolan first heard of wartime sexual violence against men in the late 1990s while researching his PhD in northern Uganda, and he sensed that the problem might be dramatically underestimated. Keen to gain a fuller grasp of its depth and nature, he put up posters throughout Kampala in June 2009 announcing a "workshop" on the issue in a local school. On the day, 150 men arrived. In a burst of candour, one attendee admitted: "It's happened to all of us here." It soon became known among Uganda's 200,000-strong refugee population that the RLP were helping men who had been raped during conflict. Slowly, more victims began to come forward.

I meet Jean Paul on the hot, dusty roof of the RLP's HQ in Old Kampala. He wears a scarlet high-buttoned shirt and holds himself with his neck lowered, his eyes cast towards the ground, as if in apology for his impressive height. He has a prominent upper lip that shakes continually – a nervous condition that makes him appear as if he's on the verge of tears.

Jean Paul was at university in Congo, studying electronic engineering, when his father – a wealthy businessman – was accused by the army of aiding the enemy and shot dead. Jean Paul fled in January 2009, only to be abducted by rebels. Along with six other men and six women he was marched to a forest in the Virunga National Park.

Later that day, the rebels and their prisoners met up with their cohorts who were camped out in the woods. Small camp fires could be seen here and there between the shadowy ranks of trees. While the women were sent off to prepare food and coffee, 12 armed fighters surrounded the men. From his place on the ground, Jean Paul looked up to see the commander leaning over them. In his 50s, he was bald, fat and in military uniform. He wore a red bandana around his neck and had strings of leaves tied around his elbows.

"You are all spies," the commander said. "I will show you how we punish spies." He pointed to Jean Paul. "Remove your clothes and take a position like a Muslim man."

Jean Paul thought he was joking. He shook his head and said: "I cannot do these things."

The commander called a rebel over. Jean Paul could see that he was only about nine years old. He was told, "Beat this man and remove this clothes." The boy attacked him with his gun butt. Eventually, Jean Paul begged: "Okay, okay. I will take off my clothes." Once naked, two rebels held him in a kneeling position with his head pushed towards the earth.

At this point, Jean Paul breaks off. The shaking in his lip more pronounced than ever, he lowers his head a little further and says: "I am sorry for the things I am going to say now." The commander put his left hand on the back of his skull and used his right to beat him on the backside "like a horse". Singing a witch doctor song, and with everybody watching, the commander then began. The moment he started, Jean Paul vomited.

Eleven rebels waited in a queue and raped Jean Paul in turn. When he was too exhausted to hold himself up, the next attacker would wrap his arm under Jean Paul's hips and lift him by the stomach. He bled freely: "Many, many, many bleeding," he says, "I could feel it like water." Each of the male prisoners was raped 11 times that night and every night that followed.

On the ninth day, they were looking for firewood when Jean Paul spotted a huge tree with roots that formed a small grotto of shadows. Seizing his moment, he crawled in and watched, trembling, as the rebel guards searched for him. After five hours of watching their feet as they hunted for him, he listened as they came up with a plan: they would let off a round of gunfire and tell the commander that Jean Paul had been killed. Eventually he emerged, weak from his ordeal and his diet of only two bananas per day during his captivity. Dressed only in his underpants, he crawled through the undergrowth "slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, like a snake" back into town.

chris-dolan-refugee-law-project "The organisations working on sexual violence don't talk about it:" Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project. Photograph: Will Storr for the Observer

Today, despite his hospital treatment, Jean Paul still bleeds when he walks. Like many victims, the wounds are such that he's supposed to restrict his diet to soft foods such as bananas, which are expensive, and Jean Paul can only afford maize and millet. His brother keeps asking what's wrong with him. "I don't want to tell him," says Jean Paul. "I fear he will say: 'Now, my brother is not a man.'"

It is for this reason that both perpetrator and victim enter a conspiracy of silence and why male survivors often find, once their story is discovered, that they lose the support and comfort of those around them. In the patriarchal societies found in many developing countries, gender roles are strictly defined.

"In Africa no man is allowed to be vulnerable," says RLP's gender officer Salome Atim. "You have to be masculine, strong. You should never break down or cry. A man must be a leader and provide for the whole family. When he fails to reach that set standard, society perceives that there is something wrong."

Often, she says, wives who discover their husbands have been raped decide to leave them. "They ask me: 'So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife?' They ask, 'If he can be raped, who is protecting me?' There's one family I have been working closely with in which the husband has been raped twice. When his wife discovered this, she went home, packed her belongings, picked up their child and left. Of course that brought down this man's heart."

Back at RLP I'm told about the other ways in which their clients have been made to suffer. Men aren't simply raped, they are forced to penetrate holes in banana trees that run with acidic sap, to sit with their genitals over a fire, to drag rocks tied to their penis, to give oral sex to queues of soldiers, to be penetrated with screwdrivers and sticks. Atim has now seen so many male survivors that, frequently, she can spot them the moment they sit down. "They tend to lean forward and will often sit on one buttock," she tells me. "When they cough, they grab their lower regions. At times, they will stand up and there's blood on the chair. And they often have some kind of smell."

Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence. As for Atim, she says: "Our staff are overwhelmed by the cases we've got, but in terms of actual numbers? This is the tip of the iceberg."

Later on I speak with Dr Angella Ntinda, who treats referrals from the RLP. She tells me: "Eight out of 10 patients from RLP will be talking about some sort of sexual abuse."

"Eight out of 10 men?" I clarify.

"No. Men and women," she says.

"What about men?"

"I think all the men."

I am aghast.

"All of them?" I say.

"Yes," she says. "All the men."

The research by Lara Stemple at the University of California doesn't only show that male sexual violence is a component of wars all over the world, it also suggests that international aid organisations are failing male victims. Her study cites a review of 4,076 NGOs that have addressed wartime sexual violence. Only 3% of them mentioned the experience of men in their literature. "Typically," Stemple says, "as a passing reference."

congolese rape victim “One man was told: ‘We have a programme for vulnerable women but not men”: a Congolese rape victim. Photograph: Will Storr for the Observer

On my last night I arrive at the house of Chris Dolan. We're high on a hill, watching the sun go down over the neighbourhoods of Salama Road and Luwafu, with Lake Victoria in the far distance. As the air turns from blue to mauve to black, a muddled galaxy of white, green and orange bulbs flickers on; a pointillist accident spilled over distant valleys and hills. A magnificent hubbub rises from it all. Babies screaming, children playing, cicadas, chickens, songbirds, cows, televisions and, floating above it all, the call to prayer at a distant mosque.

Stemple's findings on the failure of aid agencies is no surprise to Dolan. "The organisations working on sexual and gender-based violence don't talk about it," he says. "It's systematically silenced. If you're very, very lucky they'll give it a tangential mention at the end of a report. You might get five seconds of: 'Oh and men can also be the victims of sexual violence.' But there's no data, no discussion."

As part of an attempt to correct this, the RLP produced a documentary in 2010 called Gender Against Men. When it was screened, Dolan says that attempts were made to stop him. "Were these attempts by people in well-known, international aid agencies?" I ask.

"Yes," he replies. "There's a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there's a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you're going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that's taken them a long time to bake." Dolan points to a November 2006 UN report that followed an international conference on sexual violence in this area of East Africa.

"I know for a fact that the people behind the report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," he says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female. He also recalls a man whose case was "particularly bad" and was referred to the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR. "They told him: 'We have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.'"

It reminds me of a scene described by Eunice Owiny: "There is a married couple," she said. "The man has been raped, the woman has been raped. Disclosure is easy for the woman. She gets the medical treatment, she gets the attention, she's supported by so many organisations. But the man is inside, dying."

"In a nutshell, that's exactly what happens," Dolan agrees. "Part of the activism around women's rights is: 'Let's prove that women are as good as men.' But the other side is you should look at the fact that men can be weak and vulnerable."

Margot Wallström, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict, insists in a statement that the UNHCR extends its services to refugees of both genders. But she concedes that the "great stigma" men face suggests that the real number of survivors is higher than that reported. Wallström says the focus remains on women because they are "overwhelmingly" the victims. Nevertheless, she adds, "we do know of many cases of men and boys being raped."

But when I contact Stemple by email, she describes a "constant drum beat that women are the rape victims" and a milieu in which men are treated as a "monolithic perpetrator class".

"International human rights law leaves out men in nearly all instruments designed to address sexual violence," she continues. "The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution. Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates 'female' with 'victim', thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability."

Considering Dolan's finding that "female rape is significantly underreported and male rape almost never", I ask Stemple if, following her research, she believes it might be a hitherto unimagined part of all wars. "No one knows, but I do think it's safe to say that it's likely that it's been a part of many wars throughout history and that taboo has played a part in the silence."

As I leave Uganda, there's a detail of a story that I can't forget. Before receiving help from the RLP, one man went to see his local doctor. He told him he had been raped four times, that he was injured and depressed and his wife had threatened to leave him. The doctor gave him a Panadol.

Survivors' names have been changed and identities hidden for their protection. The Refugee Law Project is a partner organisation of Christian Aid (christianaid.org.uk)

  • Male Congolese rape victim, currently resident in Kampala

    Male rape: a weapon of war - audio slideshow

    Sexual violence is frequently an instrument of terror used against women in armed conflict. Yet men are also victims – and their stories rarely heard. Photographer and writer Will Storr travelled to Uganda with Christian Aid to meet traumatised victims of male rape

Comments in chronological order (Total 209 comments)

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  • This symbol indicates that that person is a contributorContributor

  • pplastichelmet

    17 July 2011 3:25AM

    Excellent article that deserves wider debate.

    I agree it's excellent.

    I'm aware of the irony in what I'm saying (and doing), but I'm surprised this one has been turned over to comments. Think it should just be read and absorbed, not turned into a depressingly inevitable playground for faceless wags, trolls and weekend politicos, as the Guardian comments sections has increasingly become.

    In the current climate, an article like this should fully remind us of the importance of fearless, exporative journalism.

    A

  • EveryonesGotOne

    17 July 2011 4:03AM

    Painful reading, and a real facepalm moment. How did anyone with two neurons to rub together ever think this was NOT going on? Or did they just prefer to ignore it, because it is so much more politically difficult?

  • Batley

    17 July 2011 4:43AM

    I must be missing neurons because I had no idea of the scale of this. The most shocking article I have read in years.

  • HongKongCalling

    17 July 2011 5:02AM

    Valuable article, totally shocking. I'm left astounded by the barbarity of people to each other.

    The global scale of this, and its systematic nature, are brutal.

  • aidanwaffle

    17 July 2011 5:15AM

    Her study Male Rape and Human Rights notes incidents of male sexual violence as a weapon of wartime or political aggression in countries such as Chile, Greece, Croatia, Iran, Kuwait, the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. Twenty-one per cent of Sri Lankan males who were seen at a London torture treatment centre reported sexual abuse while in detention. In El Salvador, 76% of male political prisoners surveyed in the 1980s described at least one incidence of sexual torture. A study of 6,000 concentration-camp inmates in Sarajevo found that 80% of men reported having been raped.

    More reportage needed on this.

  • Waltz

    17 July 2011 6:04AM

    I don't know what's more shocking - the prevalence of rape and sexual violence, or the fact that so many male victims are ostracised by their own families and communities.

  • Waltz

    17 July 2011 6:24AM

    @ maffphew -

    What does this mean? This article isn't about homosexuality whatsoever.

    Actually in some key ways, it is - or rather, about the fear and loathing of homosexuality. Male rape is a much more potent weapon of war in societies where homosexuality is considered beyond the pale, and those same attitudes to homosexuality also shape how families and communities respond to victims of male rape.

  • redddalek

    17 July 2011 6:39AM

    You don't need to be in war zone to be raped and ostracised . Try telling anyone even in the gay community you've been raped and see the reaction.
    The male mind is very limited in what it wants to comprehend when threatened. And the Women are only doing what most men would do if their partners where raped.

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 7:58AM

    Excellent article, so many good points about the "invulnerability" of men.

    Feminists, take note of the zero sum game mentality!

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 8:02AM

    Or did they just prefer to ignore it, because it is so much more politically difficult?

    ^^ this, I believe.

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 8:23AM

    Sorry for flurry of comments ;)

    And the Women are only doing what most men would do if their partners where raped.

    That's not really true. The expectations placed on men are different, so the reaction is different.

    From the article:

    "In Africa no man is allowed to be vulnerable," says RLP's gender officer Salome Atim. "You have to be masculine, strong. You should never break down or cry. A man must be a leader and provide for the whole family. When he fails to reach that set standard, society perceives that there is something wrong."

    Often, she says, wives who discover their husbands have been raped decide to leave them. "They ask me: 'So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife?' They ask, 'If he can be raped, who is protecting me?' There's one family I have been working closely with in which the husband has been raped twice. When his wife discovered this, she went home, packed her belongings, picked up their child and left. Of course that brought down this man's heart."

  • DanElson

    17 July 2011 8:37AM

    This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.

  • Murehwa

    17 July 2011 8:37AM

    I think we, as men, were never conditioned for being victims of rape. In as much as male rape is not a new phenomenon, especially in the Congo war zone, there is still the stigma associated with diminished manhood inflicted by rape. Women suffer the same, but they have the help and the law protects them and punishes the perpetrators.
    The main problem of the whole issue is the denial, especially by those who have the power to influence discourse, that a man can be a real victim of rape. As long as a man is still viewed as a MAN, then we have a problem. In the African context, a MAN, is supposed to be all macho as the article says. This means men don't cry, men do not get beaten up by women, men are supposed to be the providers and protectors of women, men do't get raped etc. So when the victimhood that is supossed to be sufferd exclusively by women happens to a man, it is hard to imagine what society will do to that man. That is why we have no protection for these man.
    My proposal is to confront the UN and other organisations that have the power and nudge them in the direction in which these men can get help. We need to get Bono, Bob Geldof, Oprah, David Beckham and the rest of the celebrity circus to help push for the protection of the male victim. I suggest celebrities because the ordinary refugee on the streets of Kampala is a nobody that deserves not to be listened to as this article suggests.

    By the way, what is the war about? Who is sponsering it? Why cant they settle their differences over a game of football or something other than raping and killing?

  • Murehwa

    17 July 2011 8:41AM

    By the way, in Zimbabwe, there have been reports of men being raped by groups of women. This has been going on for a few years now. So yes, men are becoming more vulnerable. The question, how many men are not coming up to report these cases because they are MEN?

  • Rosie123

    17 July 2011 8:41AM

    I think we always knew male raped happened in conflict situations. I had no idea the extent, the levels of associated cruelty and the almost total lack of support/ackowledgement. So what happens now? Who helps and supports recovery?
    I can't see it being stopped (the perpetrators are so illusive), so what can be done to help the victims?
    That's the dilemma for us isn't it? We know these things but what can we do? To walk away seems wrong. To read this as a well written article, then turn the page only devalues the suffering of these men still more.
    So, apart from RLP, what agencies offer support and how?

  • DanElson

    17 July 2011 8:49AM

    This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.

  • gilstra

    17 July 2011 8:55AM

    To come clean, I have not read the entire article, will do later. 'Male' rape, as you call it, is nothing new. Rape of any discription is appalling, and whether in the name of anything. The interesting question to me now is why is 'male' rape suddenly making the headlines? About 20 or 25 years ago I (male) was raped by three men in Athens. Do you think there was a way then that I could have gone to a Greek police station and report it? - No, I probably would have been subjected to the same shame and humiliation in that same police station. But now you get it out and dust it down, because it appears that BLACK people do it to each other. Shame on you.

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 9:17AM

    @gilstra

    I understand why you're angry about the silence that generally reigns on this topic, but I don't think it's coming out into the open because "black people do it to each other"

    Maybe it's a sign we're making some progress as a species?

    The article, as you will see when you read it, calls bullshit on a lot of the aid agency (and Guardian) assertions that "women are the only victims, men exist only as aggressors".

    I'm quite surprised that the Guardian had the guts to publish this. Thank you.

  • denpa

    17 July 2011 9:37AM

    How come such expressions of shock at these new revelations. Is male rape really such an alien thing that we can only speak of it when perpetrated by Serbs or by Africans?

    Men are being raped in prisons in our Western democracies and these conditions are common knowledge and the basis of humor on television, films and novels. Our society seems to think it is funny to comment to an accused or convicted criminal that he will be gang raped in the showers. In one film starring Denzel Washington, he tells a confessed terrorist to bring KY to his prison. Male rape in prisons is endemic in our prisons and accepted by our so-called enlightened democratic societies. The rape and sexual molestation of male children has been documented in youth detentions centers in California and Texas. Does anyone doubt it is more generally practiced?

  • lugave

    17 July 2011 9:37AM

    This has been going on for a long time. That it has not been acknowledged is not surprising. The reason it happens is simple, rape is about power, whether perpetrated on men or women, and it is meant to break up community and social bonds, to prevent them coming together and put up any form of resistance by the victims.

  • metropolis10

    17 July 2011 9:39AM

    This article is an eye-opener and how we must not base gender biases in any situation.
    Thank you!

  • enyaheaddress

    17 July 2011 9:48AM

    "In a nutshell, that's exactly what happens," Dolan agrees. "Part of the activism around women's rights is: 'Let's prove that women are as good as men.' But the other side is you should look at the fact that men can be weak and vulnerable."

    This is a shocking account and after seeing the story on the front page of the site i actually did not want to read it. I just read it now. I understand and applaud Doland for his efforts but is he buying into some of the language of stereotyping by describing the men as 'weak'. They have been raped. This has nothing to do with weakness or strength. Otherwise his efforts and this article are much needed and impressive.

  • emily22

    17 July 2011 9:48AM

    I was going to say I hope that one day we can live in a world where anyone who's a victim of something so awful would have support regardless of their gender, race or location but if I'm wishing for things it would be that we lived in a world where terrible things like this didn't happen at all. Really good article, shocking that more agencies aren't trying to help break the silence.

  • enyaheaddress

    17 July 2011 10:00AM

    Sorry why is this appalling act being referred to by CIFers as 'male rape'????


    Surely it is just 'rape' not a special, different, less or more horrific act than what has been acknowlegded for centuries as happening to women. Men are victims of rape, in prison showers across every country in the world, in childrens homes and now it is being highlighted that it is prevalent in the theatre of war. I have read accounts of men being raped as a matter of course as soon as they were kidnapped during the 'Dirty War' in Argentina.

    What is shocking to me is that their family then shuns them and there is no agency to help them. How does calling it 'male rape' help?

  • Waltz

    17 July 2011 10:15AM

    @ enya -

    I understand and applaud Doland for his efforts but is he buying into some of the language of stereotyping by describing the men as 'weak'. They have been raped. This has nothing to do with weakness or strength.

    Totally agree, and I don't like these terms when applied to women who are raped either. Rape is certainly about overpowering but rapists use strategies that can render anyone they choose a victim, regardless of the their target's strength. Surprise attacks, weapons, or gang rape where the victim is simply outnumbered are all tactics that have nothing to do with the strength or weakness of the victim and everything to do with the rapist engineering circumstances that favour them. Attackers are always at an advantage because their targets cannot be on guard for every eventuality 24/7.

    This idea that victims should somehow have been able to fight off their attackers pervades a lot of the discourse about both male and female victims (the latter less so in Western countries, but still a widespread attitude in some parts of the world where a woman is held to have brought dishonour upon herself by "failing" to fight off her assailant).

  • Urjokingright

    17 July 2011 10:39AM

    The attitudes of these NGOs to victims of male rape reflect wider attitudes in Western societies towards men. In the UK, for example, eight times more public money is spent on female-specific health problems as compared to male-specific ones like testicular cancer. Very little help exists for male victims of rape or domestic violence. Domestic violence awareness raising campaigns always portray men as the perpertrators of DV never victims of it. Men in the UK are 2 to 3 times more likely to be imprisoned than comparable female offenders etc etc. These NGOs are only expressing the misandrist attitudes of the cultures they are rooted in.

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 10:39AM

    I understand and applaud Doland for his efforts but is he buying into some of the language of stereotyping by describing the men as 'weak'. They have been raped. This has nothing to do with weakness or strength.

    Well I don't think we can really discuss male victims of rape (or indeed the act) without discussing the ideas of weakness and vulnerability.

    Is that what motivates some men to rape other men- to show them a power difference? To make them feel truly vulnerable?

    Is this why male victims feel unable to speak up (society's expectation that they should always be strong, and if they aren't, they should at least be silent about it).

    This latter point is why the aid agency / feminist / media attempts to hush this up are all the more disgusting- they're trying to silence people who are being silenced from every other angle too.

    I particularly like this paragraph:

    "In a nutshell, that's exactly what happens," Dolan agrees. "Part of the activism around women's rights is: 'Let's prove that women are as good as men.' But the other side is you should look at the fact that men can be weak and vulnerable."

  • freespeechoneeach

    17 July 2011 10:54AM

    Good article, breaking an extreme taboo.

    Readers may like to look here now for alternative views on rape.
    Like

    "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat." Hillary Clinton, First Ladies' Conference on Domestic Violence in San Salvador, El Salvador on Nov. 17, 1998

    So long as any man can be raped with impunity, no man is free.

  • CarlSlee

    17 July 2011 11:02AM

    The issue of 'not hearing' the plight of male rape victims is not limited to africa or wartime events. I worked for a while for two organisations in Yorkshire; Rape Crisis, which at the time was primarily concerned with female survivors of sexual violence and Survivors(Hull), a charity dealing with male rape and sexual abuse. Both organisation struggled to find adequate financial support but the manager of the male charity would often work alone and spend her own money in order to keep it above water. The female charity had plenty of voluntary counsellors and comfortable premises. I am not in any way suggesting that Rape Crisis was any less deserving but there was definately a bias when it came to support and getting councils and other agencies to support the men.

  • IndependentBrain

    17 July 2011 11:05AM

    I am in shock. I did not realise that in a continent that is so full of anti-gay views and homosexual hatred that the raping of men would be at this shocking level.

    Africans need to discard their ignorance and address this.

    Rape is vile, disturbing and evil. One of the worst weapons of war. How can we be making much progress when we turn away half of the victims?

    Of course, as a woman, I am delighted that women's rights are being pushed and that vulnerable women can seek help.

    But ensuring rights for women does not mean ignoring the rights of men, whether they are weak, strong, soft, tough.

  • crabbers

    17 July 2011 11:11AM

    Much needed insight and well written article. Thankyou. What I dont understand is that in Africa, where 38 nations consider homosexuality a crime and the victim is ostracised, how do men who commit these sexually based crimes view it? how can they physically bring themsleves to rape another man...its seems like some hideous hyprocrisy, that the victim is viewed as being possibly gay, but the perpetrator isnt? Surely this is something that needs to be investigated too?

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 11:16AM

    Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat." Hillary Clinton, First Ladies' Conference on Domestic Violence in San Salvador, El Salvador on Nov. 17, 1998

    That bullshit always annoys me- any group can be the primary victim of anything if you're creative enough with your definitions...

    Your husband and son were tortured and killed and you're the primary victim? Maybe if there had been better protection for your husband and son you wouldn't be a victim at all.

    Totally self-serving (but short-sighted) agenda.

  • freespeechoneeach

    17 July 2011 11:17AM

    I pledge I will
    *Demand an end to sex discrimination in rape crisis support.
    *Boycott any business whose advertsing makes violence against men a joke.
    *Draw attention to every overt instance of misandry which I encounter in all media and other public discourse.
    *Support the global development of men's consciousness, men's studies, and men's advocacy.
    *Protect, nurture and grow awareness of my own subjugation within misandric contempory culture.

  • requisitename

    17 July 2011 11:22AM

    Why the hostility toward feminists in some of the readers' comments? Are feminists to blame for male rape (as well as every other evil in society these days)? I doubt any feminist reading the article feels anything but revulsion with regard to the rapists (who were not feminists - just in case you were confused) and I'm quite sure all of us feel nothing but sympathy for the victims. Blame the perpetrators.

  • SoAnnoyed

    17 July 2011 11:26AM

    Bravo Guardian for printing this.

    I'd like to see a lot more articles on this issue. I'd also like to see a lot more on rape in prisons.

    It's time we recognised the old feminist view of 'female = victim' and 'male = predator' is actually counterproductive.

    If this issue were openly discussed in the way that - at long last - the rape of women is openly discussed, I think we would find the issue of rape moving up the agenda. Surely that could only be a good thing for everyone?

  • HERMlover

    17 July 2011 11:26AM

    An eye opener and important article that needs to be followed up. There are many questions raised by this article which are left unaddressed, such as HIV and the mind of the rapist. For example, how do these presumably heterosexually identified men rationalize their actions? How prevalent and unreported is male rape in all wars? Past and present? How prevalent is it in western industrialized nations?

    I believe that it is our sexist culture that is to blame, a culture which values all qualities they consider masculine-like violence and toughness-and denigrates and devalues everyone and everything else.

    Lest we think that male rape is something inherently African let us remember than 81% of sexual abuse victims by Catholic priests were male.

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 11:30AM

    @requisitename

    You ask:

    Why the hostility toward feminists in some of the readers' comments?

    Yet on another another thread you ask :

    Really - should society allow men to comment on crimes of sexual violence?


    This kind of silencing is a part of much feminist "reasoning" as well as a part of why so many of these men are suffering in silence. Can you not see why it is offensive?

  • Urjokingright

    17 July 2011 11:31AM

    requisitename, you ask - Why the hostility toward feminists in some of the readers' comments?
    Feminists are indeed not responsible for male rape. They have however significantly contributed to a mindset that men can only be perpetrators never victims. Some radical feminists in the 80s for example were deeply hostile to the idea that men or women in lesbian relationships could be victims of DV - presumably because it conflicted with their theories about men as an oppressor-class whilst at the same time detracting from the notion that women are the natural holders of the moral high ground.

  • requisitename

    17 July 2011 11:46AM

    daddycoo1 - you're absolutely right. I should have written "Should society allow men to comment on crimes of sexual violence against women?" I was thinking of all the offensive, twisting the knife, outrageous justifications for sexual violence against women we've had to put up with throughout the years. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to re-iterate my point:

    The judge who told the jury that the 7 year old female rape victim was "no angel", directing the jury to go easy on the rapist who had presumably been given the 'come on'.

    The judge who gave the rapist the lenient sentence for being considerate and using a condom (I wonder if the judge stopped to think that the rapist might have been protecting himself from an STD? After all, he didn't know his victim from Adam.)

    The Canadian police man who rose to the top (doubtlessly resenting any 'date rape' victim whose statement he had to go through the motions of taking throughout the years) and told an audience of women that they can't come crying to him if they get assaulted whilst wearing fashionable clothing.

    I could go on with these examples. All night. Honest. And isn't that a shame?

  • possumn

    17 July 2011 11:53AM

    A feminist argument has been that rape is not about sex, but about power.

    This excellent article supports that.

    Let's hope there is greater media exposure of this crime and violence against men.

  • daddycoo1

    17 July 2011 11:54AM

    @requisitename

    Why didn't you write that then? Because you equate "sexual violence" with "sexual violence against women".

    And the feminist insistence on that message is the reason feminists might get some stick on this thread.

    Does that make sense to you?

    I could go on with these examples. All night. Honest.


    Oh, i should have mentioned diverting any mention of male victims back to the "permitted" topic of female victims.

    There, I think you've answered your own initial question ;)

  • nansikom

    17 July 2011 11:59AM

    An excellent and much needed article. I second pplastichelmet's comment: this is what investigative journalism is all about. Much more publicity is needed about rape as a weapon of war, violence and physical abuse - against both men and women.

    Generally a very good thread follows. denpa is completely correct. We should not be in the least bit surprised at these revelations. Rape is never about sex - it's about power and control and demeaning the victim - male or female - by abusing them. This happens all over the world in many situations where the abuser wants to humiliate and break the victim - war, prison, muggings and physical violence - just read some of the comments on the thread as well. denpa - male rape in prison is so common in South Africa where I live that it become the focus of a well-known advert against drink-driving.

    As the artile highlights, on of the biggest problems is that rape is seen as so shameful by many male victims that they suffer in silence. This 'secondary impact' of rape has rightly been given strong attention in the case of female rape but also needs to be highlighted for men, who often find it much more difficult to talk about their humiliation.

    One minor criticism of the article. Rape of men in warfare is in fact well documented historically that it even crops up in Wikipedia. Just google 'rape of men warfare history' and you'll find many references.

  • requisitename

    17 July 2011 12:06PM

    As I recall, the article on which I was commenting concerned the sickening, misogynous lecture that female students had to sit through by the Canadian policeman which inspired the recent 'slut walk' phenomenon. It concerned sexual violence against women - the article wasn't about sexual violence against men. Otherwise I would have written about sexual violence against men. Are you following me?

    When I read this article I felt nothing but sympathy and anger. Sympathy for the man whose story much of the article revolves around and anger at the sadists who perpetrated these crimes. I was going to make this reaction the focus of my post (indeed I did include it in my first post, ultimately), but then, whilst reading the readers' comments I noticed that feminists started copping the blame and I thought "I must put these paranoid, mean spirited jerks right!". Which I did.

  • Artemis24

    17 July 2011 12:11PM

    'By the way, what is the war about? Who is sponsering it?'

    The wars in Africa are being fought for mineral rights.

    The minerals we need to make components for mobile phones, laptops, handheld devices etc. We buy into the desire for the latest kit, upgrading perfectly functional 'phones for the latest model. Africa is raped for its resources and people fight for control of the resources, use violence against each other, including rape.

    Who, then, are the perpetrators? And where does the buck stop ...?

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