The Rape Monologue: Why Journalists Need to Stop Using “Accuser” Language

[Image description: Neo-Classical public building with reproduction of the Statue of Liberty in front of it.

As a criminal defense attorney, I learned that rapists are a monotonous bunch, often unmemorable as individuals. The one I recall most distinctly is Gregory What’s-His-Name, whose appeal from a jury trial conviction had languished for two years because his male court-appointed counsel was disgusted by him.

Short and stout, pasty-white when he wasn’t turning red from rage, with stubby worms of fingers, and fat cheeks, Gregory, like all rapists I’d met, claimed she wanted me. The jury that convicted him in the 1990’s didn’t believe that, though; they believed the testimony of the rape victim.

All rapists I’ve ever spoken with — even the men who raped unconscious women and the pedophiles who raped infants — repeated some variation on the monologue: she wanted me, she led me on. This has been the rapist’s monologue since time began.

Monologue equals control. It makes the rapist the only credible speaker, and rape culture has encouraged the monologue as the only accurate depiction of reality. In today’s media, rape victims are set apart from other crime victims by the term “accuser,” the latest version of the monologue, the new “prosecutrix.”

Differences exist, of course, between crimes. In a rape prosecution, a defendant’s testimony about the…