... the number of rapes that are actually prosecuted is a tiny fraction of the number committed in any year. Between two-third’s and three quarters of all rapes are never reported to the criminal justice system, and among those that are reported, attrition at various levels dramatically reduces the number of actual prosecutions. Ultimately, only a tiny handful of rapists ever serve time for rape, a shocking outcome given that we view rape as close kin to murder in the taxonomy of various crimes...
A necessary read is Understanding the Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence by David Lisak, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, circa March, 2011, from which I cribbed the above quote.
Along with the alarming news that there is far more sexual violence than apparent, is the disclosure that rape appears to be largely a serial crime:
... Perhaps the most sobering data that have emerged from the study of incarcerated rapists are the sheer numbers of victims attacked by the average rapist. Most rapists who are prosecuted are convicted on a single count of rape. However, when researchers have granted immunity to offenders in exchange for a truthful accounting of their sex offending history the reality of rape emerges. In one study, the average number of victim s for each rapist was seven, and in another study it was 11.
A similar picture has emerged from research emanating from intensive sex offender management programs. Offenders tend to have very lengthy offending careers, beginning in adolescence and often spanning several decades. By the time they are captured – if they are captured – they have often victimized scores or even hundred’s of individuals...
How are these monsters created? Is it nature? Or nurture?
I'll grant that there may be some possibility that men are more sexually aggressive than women as it now appears. We don't have significant stats on that to convince me absolutely.
I am far more disposed to the consideration of cultural and religious factors as a backdrop for sexual violence. Consider the motivations attributed to rapists as opposed to non-rapists:
... Many of the motivational factors that were identified in incarcerated rapists have been shown to apply equally to undetected rapists. When compared to men who do not rape, these undetected rapists are measurably more angry at women, more motivated by the need to dominate and control women, more impulsive and disinhibited in their behavior, more hyper-masculine in their beliefs and attitudes, less empathic and more antisocial. ..
Well. Republicans are that. Consider their ongoing War Against Women. Consider their adoring worship of anti-social Ayn Rand.
Also, patriarchal religions like to portray men as unable to self-govern their passions, that all morality lies in the hands of women who must modestly cover themselves in order not to excite the passions of uncontrollable men.