Campaign Against Rape
Women dance to the theme song of the "One Billion Rising" campaign in New York City's Washington Square Park as the clock strikes 2:14EST on Valentines Day February 14, 2013. "One Billion Rising" is a campaign aimed to call an end to violence against women and girls. This date marks the 15th Anniversary of when V-Day was founded by award-winning playwright Eve Ensler and the One Billion Rising campaign is based on the statistic that 1 in 3 women will be beaten or raped in her lifetime according to organizers. Reuters

Researchers have used a Reddit thread tape about rape to study the psychology of rapists. The thread, called “ask a rapist,” provides a platform for rapists to narrate their experiences anonymously.

Though the thread was later removed following an online uproar, the researchers from the Georgia State University used the comments to examine how rapists abdicate responsibility and pin the blame of their act of sexual violence on their victims, reports the Independent.

The study, published in the Psychology of Violence, was based on 68 of the original 12,000 posts. The researchers took the comments from the first two days, assuming them to be genuine and less likely to have been influenced by the media attention that the thread had received.

The Reddit thread began in July 2012 when a commenter posted, "Reddit's had a few threads about sexual assault victims, but are there any redditors from the other side of the story? What were your motivations? Do you regret it?"

The thread had triggered an outcry, with many people believing it enabled rapists to achieve a certain amount of catharsis by creating their own version of the events.

Meanwhile, the researchers hope their study will help in rape prevention efforts.

“Our goal is to use these novel data to further inform research and prevention efforts, making recommendations for policy and clinical efforts such as clinical intervention with perpetrators to decrease cognitive distortions of blame,” said the researchers, according to the American Psychological Association.

Rape is a global problem, and many organisations are aiming to control sexual crime. Norway is now offering formal instructions to inform refugees that rape is wrong, according to Hotair.com. Meanwhile, India has amended its juvenile offender law to ensure stringent punishment for rape as a reaction to the Delhi gang rape case of 2012, reports the Wall Street Journal.

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