Just Not Something You Thought Was Worth Paying Attention To Was It?
They caught a serial rapist who was preying on guys in the Houston area. I’d seen this story some weeks ago while they were still looking for him and found it disturbing enough to be on the lookout for any follow-ups. Today there was…well…first the good news…
Texas Police Arrest Suspect in Male Rape
BAYTOWN, Texas — A man arrested on suspicion of rape may be a suspect in the rapes of several men in the Houston area over the past year, police said Wednesday.
The man, whose identity was not released, faces charges of kidnapping and sexual assault in a case from May, said Baytown police Capt. Roger Clifford. He said police were withholding the identity until other victims are able to see the suspect in a lineup.
Police for months have been investigating five cases in which young men were surprised at or near their homes by a gunman demanding money. The last reported attack was in November.
One of the victims pointed investigators to the man, Clifford said.
The suspect was arrested late Tuesday after DNA tests linked him to the victim in a May attack, Clifford said.
…and now the bad…
The investigation was complicated, in part because profilers don’t have a basic standard for investigating male-on-male rapes, Clifford said.
No fooling? And why would that be? Let me guess. Because male on male rape is a homo thing and so it’s really not worthy of police attention. And especially not the attention of the Texas police. Am I close?
I can’t find the reference now, but a book I was reading some years back, I think it was a Randy Shilts book, either And The Band Played On or Conduct Unbecoming, contained a brief scene of a young gay man who’d gone to get medical attention after being sexually assualted by gay bashers, and after he confided in the doctor what happened to him, the doctor simply looked up at him and said "Well, you’re a homosexual aren’t you?" The attitude was, and in a lot of places still is, that if you’re gay and you’re violently assaulted, well it’s your fault for being gay in the first place isn’t it. That’s why they don’t have clue one in Texas about how to profile serial male on male rapists. For decades nobody gave a flying fuck. Assuming they do even nowadays.
February 9th, 2007 at 7:40 am
OK, this might be naive, but maybe it’s also because male on male rape doesn’t happen as much, and there isn’t a large enough body of data to *set up* a basic standard.
Or, of course, it’s possibly that such rapes are underreported for reasons indicated in your post, but I just wanted to throw that in there. Profilers’ profiles are built on statistical data. If this is the first male serial rapist they have to deal with, it’s no surprise they don’t have the tools for it.