In 1997-98, 17 per cent of rape victims calling the Rape Crisis Centre in Dublin were male, an increase of seven per cent on 1996-97. Yet the rape of males by males is so stigmatised that our culture seems to deny that it exists outside prisons and perhaps the military, making male rape victims feel even more alienated and misunderstood. This is the story of one young Irish victim, who we'll call Andrew, and his attempts to come to terms with the trauma.
Andrew's life seemed to be going perfectly. He was excelling at university and confidently believed that he would achieve his aim of an honours degree, followed by a post-graduate course and a PhD. He had also found a girlfriend and was experiencing the pleasure and intensity of that first real love affair, but when the relationship broke up, Andrew over-reacted and found himself in the midst of a full-blown emotional crisis. "Final exams were coming and the pressure of it all made everything go into nova," he says.
Andrew managed to hold himself together long enough to scrape by with an honours degree, although he did not do as well as he had wanted to. "I had always been extremely bright, even a bit arrogant, and was always able to cope with lots of things going on at once. But all of a sudden my behaviour and my future were spiralling out of control," he says.
He began behaving uncharacteristically, shocking friends and family. He hated everything and everyone and his personality became tortured, cynical and careless - whereas a short time before he had been ambitious, committed and careful.
"I wasn't me anymore - I was acting out me," he says. "So I isolated myself from more and more people as a result of my behaviour until I had no friends left by the end of the summer. I was heartbroken."
What had broken his heart? One night, while away in Europe, he confided in a friend and the cause of his pain came pouring out.
The rape had been as unpredictable as it was brutal. A man who Andrew believed was his friend took advantage of his physical vulnerability while he was "under the influence" in the early hours of the morning, after a night of partying. The rapist happened to be gay, although before the rape this fact had seemed inconsequential. "I'm open-minded. He was gay. So what?" says Andrew.
It hadn't occurred to him that he could be vulnerable to a sexual assault; while most woman are accustomed to constantly assessing the safety of situations, Andrew - like most men - believed that he was invincible.
During the rape, Andrew cried and asked his friend "why? why are you doing this?" He was a virgin, and had never expected his first sexual experience to be like this. When it was over, Andrew was so stunned that he almost immediately blocked the trauma from his conscious mind. Alice Kubler-Ross theorised that the first stage in grief is denial - a model which rape counsellors use in helping clients. "It's stronger than denial. It's like you can't see it at all," Andrew says now. When the truth began to seep out, so too came haunting and corrosive questions. "Was I gay? Did I have mental problems? Could I ever again be the person I was before the rape?" Andrew wondered. As he struggled with self-hatred, he became so detached from himself that he had the sensation of watching himself doing things, without feeling anything.
While still in Europe, he learned that his grandmother had died and he had a nervous breakdown. Two days later he summoned up the courage to phone his mother and tell her that he had been raped. She insisted that he return immediately to Dublin and his recovery began. "Once you get rid of all the emotion, you feel drained and tired. Learning to live is like learning to walk again," he says.
A psychiatrist reassured Andrew that he was not mentally ill and that what he needed was rape counselling. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre was greatly supportive, but Andrew felt that the centre's feminist ethos did not truly encompass his own experience. "I believe that the experience of rape is genderneutral. Rape is not just a feminist issue," he says. "It can happen to a man or a woman. I think that we need to recognise that fact. A man and a woman basically react in the same way to being raped."
Many female rape victims reading this article might be surprised to find themselves agreeing with him.
Workshops for male victims of rape are to be introduced shortly at the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, says Olive Braiden, director of the centre. Andrew, however, would like to help establish an independent group of male and female rape victims who could share their experiences.
"At this point, in addition to counselling, what I need is somebody else - male or female - who has been through the experience of rape and can say to me, `you're okay, you'll make it. I've made it and you will too'. "
He hopes that a support system could be arranged in tandem with counsellors in which rape victims could contact each other regardless of gender.
"We should be able to talk about this openly. I shouldn't have to feel that there's a stigma preventing me from sharing my pain. The reality is that I do feel ashamed and I do feel dirty," he says.
He thinks it will be a long, long time before he will be able to have an intimate relationship. He realises now that he had always taken for granted that his sexuality was personal and sacred. In one callous act, this most precious part of him was stolen. "The suffering never ends in a way, but the one redeeming thing is that when you suffer so much pain you do get a chance to see things as few other people do," he says. "The level of emotional pain enables you to see the world anew. That's a beautiful thing in a way."
For information on The Rape Crisis Centre's weekend workshops, call 1 800 778 888. "Andrew" can be contacted c/o Siobhan Fearin at USIT, 19 Aston Quay, Dublin 2.