I received this in an e-mail today from a female friend of mine. It sounds sensible to me, what do you think?

Metropolitan Police Issued
This Newsletter October 2004 MUST BE READ

Through a Rapist’s Eyes

A group of rapists and date rapists in prison were interviewed on what they look for in a potential victim and here are some interesting facts:

1 The first thing men look for in a potential victim is hairstyle. They are most likely to go after a woman with a ponytail or other hairstyle that can be easily be grabbed. They are also likely to go after a woman with long hair. Woman with short hair are not common targets.

2 The second thing men look for is clothing. They will look for woman whose clothing is easy to remove quickly. Many of them carry scissors around to cut clothing.

3 They also look for women on their mobile phone, searching through their purse or doing other activities while walking, because they are off guard and can be easily overpowered.

4 The time of day men are most likely to attack and rape a woman is in the early morning, between 05.00 and 08.30 am.

5 The thing about these men is that they are looking to grab a woman quickly mover her to a second location where they don’t have to worry about getting caught.

6 Only 2% said they carried weapons because rape carries a 3 – 5 year sentence, but rape with a weapon is 15 – 20 years.

7 If you put up any kind of a fight at all, they get discouraged because it only takes a minute or two for them to realise that going after you isn’t worth it because it will be time-consuming.

8 These men said they would not pick on women who have umbrellas, or other similar objects that can be used from a distance, in their hands. Keys are not a deterrent because you have to get really close to the attacker to use them as a weapon. So, the idea is to convince these guys you’re not worth it.

9 Several defence mechanisms he taught us are: if someone is following behind you on a street or in a garage or with you in a lift or stairwell, look them in the face and ask them a question, like “what time is it?” or make general small talk, “I can’t believe it is so cold out here, we’re in for a bad winter”. Now you’ve seen their face and could identify them in a line-up, you lose appeal as a target.

10 If someone is coming toward you, hold out your hands in front of you and yell “stop” or “STAY BACK”. Most of the rapists talked to said they’d leave a woman alone if she yelled or showed that she would not be afraid to fight back. Again, they are looking for an EASY target.

FORWARD THIS TO EVERY WOMAN YOU KNOW!
IT’S SIMPLE STUFF BUT IT COULD SAVE LIVES.

Very good advise that!!!

Looks like bloody good advice to me. I'll be forwarding this to any and all females on my email list. :thumbsup:

Thanks for this - simple guidelines to follow. I'll make sure my female friends see this.

Any email that ends with something like 'Forward this to everyone you know' is a chain email and should be deleted.

The advice does sound genuine, but can anyone confirm the source?

Originally posted by Cyclone
Any email that ends with something like 'Forward this to everyone you know' is a chain email and should be deleted.

The advice does sound genuine, but can anyone confirm the source?

Who cares about the source- its good advice that women should know?

here we go, 2 minutes research reveals this as a variation on a popular hoax email first sited in the wild 2001.

details on it here (http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/rape.htm)

So, now email back your friends and tell them that you just wasted their time (if you forwarded it)
And email back your friend who sent it to you and tell them to stop being so damned gullible.

Originally posted by scottf
Who cares about the source- its good advice that women should know?

No, it appears to be made up rubbish that may well get someone into more trouble. The nature of any decent hoax is to sound reasonable.

I agree with the forwarding thing, chain mail is bad news, but, I feel this one has some value. It makes sense.
I had a quick look to source this document and found it all over the net.
No idea about the origin but it still sounds sensible to me.

Agreed, I don't like chain mails and they're usually a load of old cobblers but this one seemed to make sense to me in some respects. Whether it's made up or not alot of it seems like common sense and it pays to be vigilant these days.

You're not telling me that none of this is good advice for avoiding being attacked? :confused:

Originally posted by Zebra
I agree with the forwarding thing, chain mail is bad news, but, I feel this one has some value. It makes sense.
I had a quick look to source this document and found it all over the net.
No idea about the origin but it still sounds sensible to me.

basically though, it's a hoax. Rapists are probably not at all interested in hair style, they probably don't attack early in the morning, the stuff about umbrellas is most likely nonesense and talking to strangers isn't good advice for children or women who are worried that someone is acting strangely.

The things might sound reasonable at first glance, but they are not based on any sort of real study, they have just been made up and so are of no value and may potentially be counter productive.

Originally posted by Pauly
Agreed, I don't like chain mails and they're usually a load of old cobblers but this one seemed to make sense to me in some respects. Whether it's made up or not alot of it seems like common sense and it pays to be vigilant these days.

You're not telling me that none of this is good advice for avoiding being attacked? :confused:

check out the link I provided. The hoax is listed on Snopes and has been around for 4 years. By forwarding it you just waste peoples time and bandwidth.

a rather long winded rebuttal from snopes for those who can't or won't follow the link

Origins: This
bit of codswallop began its Internet life in January 2000 as an enthusiastic e-mail penned by an employee at the St. Louis office of the public relations firm Weber Shandwick. The writer was among a group enrolled in a self-defense class taught by David Portnoy, an instructor who claims to have trained with actors Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Portnoy refuses to give information about what he teaches in his classes or details of where he gained the information he passes along, preferring instead to sell it. (He demanded a $1,000 interview fee from a Denver Post reporter). If, however, this Weber Shandwick employee's e-mail describing what he teaches is accurate, Portnoy should be characterized as a fear merchant vending false information to those anxious to feel safe.

If rapists choose their victims based on hairstyle and length of tresses, it's news to those in law enforcement; they've never noticed this trend. Rape victims have short hair, long hair, and no hair. They're also young and old, short and tall, fat and skinny, femininely dressed or looking like they just fell off the tractor, and all points in between.

Likewise, the claim that rapists go after women wearing overalls because "the straps can be easily cut" is pure hogwash, as anyone who has ever tried to cut up an old pair can attest. Overalls are made of some of the most resilient fabrics known to mankind (denim and canvas, usually), and cutting these straps is made almost impossible because the fabric is doubled over and seamed at that point in the garment. If there's a pair of scissors that can snip through this, I've yet to wield them.

Rape is also not always about getting sex quickly. Often it's an act of rage or punishment directed at a vulnerable person for perceived injustices done to the attacker by others. Getting a woman out of her clothes quickly isn't a factor in these rapes; terrorizing her and inflicting bodily harm is.

If we take points one and two together, we're to believe rapists arm themselves with scissors for cutting overall straps (instead of just easing them off the shoulders or — heaven forbid! — undoing the fasteners) yet fail to think to equip themselves with rolls of duct tape to keep their victims subdued, preferring instead to grab hold of their hair and hang on.

According to Denver Police Sgt. John Burbach, most rapes occur in the evening hours and into early morning, ending before dawn, not "between 5 and 8:30 a.m." as claimed in the e-mail. Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice fully support him in this claim: The DOJ says "Approximately two-thirds of rapes/sexual assaults occurred at night — 6 p.m. to 6 a.m."

As for the tidbit "The number one place women are abducted from/attacked at is grocery store parking lots. Number two is office parking lots/garages. Number three is public restrooms," Kathie Kramer, public relations coordinator at the Denver Rape Assistance and Awareness Program (RAAP) says, "Statistics in studies I've found don't support this idea about grocery stores or parking lots being especially unsafe." Location is important in a violent sexual assault, but there's nothing inherently dangerous about parking lots or public restrooms; what matters is their isolation. Areas heavily frequented by foot traffic are far less likely to be chosen by a rapist. Likewise, badly-lit, less-frequented places will be favored for this type of attack.

The e-mail claims that only 2% of rapists (one out of every fifty) carries a weapon. That figure is seriously out of whack: 1995 U.S. Department of Justice statistics show that weapons were used in 30% of all rapes, meaning the chances that your rapist will be armed is just a little less than one in three. Battling an armed attacker while unarmed yourself is rarely a wise course of action to take, and misstatements such as the 2% figure could well incite an attacked woman to thrust herself into that dynamic because she figures her chances are far better than they actually are.

"If you put up any kind of a fight at all, they get discouraged because it only takes a minute or two for them to realize that going after you isn't worth it because it will be time-consuming." That's great advice, provided you get the right rapist. And you've no way of knowing until it's too late.

As comforting as it might be to believe there's only one sort of baddie out there and if you understand his mind you can stay safe, that just isn't the case. There is no one set of right answers, and e-mails of this ilk potentially put us at even greater risk by suggesting that there is.

Around 1980, Nicholas Groth, director of Forensic Mental Health Associates, established a typology of rapists. Groth arrived at his conclusions by distilling his observations of more than 3,000 sex offenders over the course of 25 years of practice. (Most of his patients, Groth points out, were not sexually deprived at the time they committed rape, thereby exploding that most common of rape myths: that men rape because they're unable to get sex any other way.)

In a general sense, rapists fall into three motivational types: anger, power, and sadism. In anger assaults, the rapist is getting even for "some wrong he feels has been done to him, by life, by his victim at the time. He's in a frame of rage and attacks someone sexually." The anger rape is usually unpremeditated and impulsive, but the impulse drives the rapist into excessive force: the victim is punched, choked, and kicked into submission. Most such offenders derive little pleasure from the act, says Groth, but "they want to degrade their victims, and sex is something bad, dirty, the worst thing you could do to someone. That reflects a lot of our values in society."

An anger rapist could be discouraged by a potential victim who yells at him or puts up a physical struggle, thanks to the unpremeditated nature of the attack. Because the aggressor may not yet have fully decided to pursue this course of action, resistance may well change his mind. Here, even a half-hearted attempt might prove to be all it takes to end the assault. On the other hand, the rage the attacker is feeling might well be further fed by active resistance — this could be taken as yet another instance of one more person trying to deny him something he wants.

Power rape, according to Groth, is a form of compensation, committed usually by men who feel unsure of their competence. Rape gives them a sense of mastery and control. Power rapists usually hunt for victims or seize opportunities that present themselves unbidden. A power rapist is unlikely to be discouraged by resistance because his whole self image is wrapped up in his attempt to prove mastery. A woman who chooses to fight one of these had better do a darned good job of it, because she could well end up fighting for her life.

Groth defines his third type, sadistic rape, as eroticized aggression perpetrated by those whom the very act of forcible sex excites in ways that consensual sex can't. "If the anger components of aggression are eroticized," he explains, "then you see sadistic acts, such as deliberate sexual torture, using an instrument to rape the victim." A sadistic rapist is interested in inflicting pain and lasting harm. Any countering aggression on the part of the victim could well add to the attacker's enjoyment of the experience, prompting him to further acts of depravity in an effort to provoke further resistance.

The question of to fight back or not is an age-old one, and there's no one right answer. Granted, one particular rapist might be sent running bloody-nosed by a swift right hook, but try that on another one and a horrific experience could be transformed into a fatal one. Resistance advice of the type being circulated in the e-mail in question creates the false impression that escaping unscathed from the clutches of a rapist is only a matter of knowing which self-defence tricks to employ. Reality, however, is far different. Not all rapists can be overcome.

Does this then mean self-defence classes are a waste of time? Hardly. But they're also not the surefire protection they're too often touted to be, any more than a can of mace confers upon its wielder guaranteed safe passage through whatever mean streets and dark alleys lie in her path. Also, physical skills are only as good as recent training — someone who hasn't practiced a move in the three months since she took a course is only a tadge better prepared to fend off an attacker than someone who never had any training at all. Worst of all, such training can lead those who have aced their courses to develop a dangerous complacency about their own safety, inducing them into a state of overconfidence wherein awareness of their surroundings becomes a lost art, buried under the certainty that now bad things can't happen to them.

Complacency kills.

As always, the best defence to an attempted rape is not to be there when it happens — either avoid potentially dangerous situations (none of this "Oh, it's only a few blocks; I'll just walk" at 3 a.m.) or run like hell if you find yourself in one. Escaping your attacker is a far wiser course of action to strive for than attempting to do battle with him. Forget about his needing a good beating followed by a lengthy jail term; your first priority has to be your own safety. Leave the Wonder Woman stuff for Linda Carter and make like a track star vying for a gold medal in the 100m.

The e-mail did contain one bit of valuable advice: Stay aware of your surroundings. Not only is it important to see trouble coming before it gets to you and avoid it, but an alert stance can help discourage a would-be attacker. Those looking to prey upon others — whether their aim is robbery, rape, or mayhem — generally choose as victims those who appear preoccupied or tentative in preference to those who exude a sense of purpose. Or, as I was told long ago, "Always look like you know exactly where you're going and move like you're expected to be there at exactly a certain time." Mooning about aimlessly can make you a statistic.

So, to sum up, is avoiding a rape a matter of wearing your hair short and eschewing overalls? Hardly. And anyone who attempts to characterize it as such ought to be whomped over someone's knee.

Would agree with Cyclone here - came across this one a couple of years back.

It is plausible, though, and no one should feel bad about passing it on in good faith.

Unless there are any objections, I'll close this one now?

Joe

This might be better advice for avoiding rape and sexual assault.

http://members.aardvark.net.au/~korman/rape/safety.html

Like cyclone says - if you get an email exhorting you to pass it on, then check snopes (www.snopes.com) before reposting it to anyone.

Read the snopes article on precisely how counter productive the advice can be especially that bit about pony tails.

Like all the best email 'hoaxes' it contains a mix of sound advice (to give it credibility) and a load of old toot. (Supposedly one way to minimize rape is to shave your head....)