Understanding The Violence of Rape
By
Bill Cottringer

“Liberty without love is destruction; love without liberty is despair.” ~Thomas Troward.

Earlier in my career as a prison administrator, when I was just beginning my learning curve on understanding the hard core problems of life in general and crime in particular, I was quite open to radical solutions to extreme problems. For example, dealing with the violence of rape therapeutically.

While wearing my other hat as the prison psychologist in Victoria, Australia, I tried a such a radical approach to dealing with the horrific and permanently scaring crime of rape. During my prison career I had always thought rape to be the worst possible crime because the victim had to take the trauma of the unforgettable personal violence and painful intrusion to her grave. Not only that, but the crime of rape has such an unfair stigma that it adds a second level of pain in spreading shame and blame about the shame and blame. That is unnecessary unfairness that can’t be thought or felt away.

At any rate, I experimented with the unthinkable danger—bringing rapist and victim together for a therapeutically-guided, assertive confrontation. In looking back, I really wasn’t at the level of understanding I am now to make sense of the good results I got from this potentially volatile, very risky approach. But now, after years of living and understanding all the main bleeding in life, I am at a point to share my deep understanding of the violence of rape. I hope this will mean something to the brave people out there who have either been through this unthinkable experience or those who are trying to use their counseling skills to intervene for successful outcomes.

Now go back and reread the opening quote. I just read it a few days ago in a book written way back in 1913 by Thomas Troward called Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning. For me, I have always been a fan of trying to understand the deep metaphorical meanings of troublesome mysteries of living and this quote uncovers a very core understanding of all major derailments, including the violence of rape.

If we dissect the words of this quote, things will become clearer. First of all, I believe one could make a very reasonable case for us all to have one main purpose and drive in life, which we all put our own private spins on, getting much different results. This fundamental motive is to learn, grow and improve in our ability to use our freedom responsibly in the pursuit of loving and being loved. The problem comes into play with how we define these two key words love and liberty. There are probably as many different definitions and interpretations as there are people.

Let’s consider this simple explanation in reverse order:

Liberty = Using our gift of free will to discover the rules of being successful in life and making the right choices to be successful in getting what we want most of all, including the things we believe will collectively result in that ultimate sense of satisfaction of “winning” the grand prize.

Love = What we really want most of all; but what it is, isn’t really clear because it shows up in so many different forms, or at least we have created so many words to try and understand it better.

Only when we truly understand these two words, can we unleash the real power that we have to be successful in getting anything and everything we want (as promised by the ‘Law of Attraction’ in ‘The Secret’), instead of misusing and abusing it in destructive ways, getting everything else that the rules of the game of life pre-established (Karma). And the only way to understand these two words is to see how they have to work together to produce the profound meaning of the quote above by Thomas Troward.

We will never begin to understand and deal with serious problems like the violence of rape until we learn to step outside of the creative thinking process we are part of and can’t see because we are too close to it. We are all seeking wholeness—especially between our minds, bodies and spirits—but the road to that place first involves taking things apart to better understand them so we can make the best choices. This is the justification of meting out harsh punishments to criminals, because they deserve it at that level of understanding and that is the only way to stop it. Of course, criminal justice professionals should not think that such punishment is of any value to deterring or treating this extreme behavior.

However, this part of the journey involves the “dualism” that leads us to believe in completely separate realities between all the “opposites” we have divided in life—all the good and bads, right and wrongs, love and hate, freedom and control and all the other this and that’s that are “warring” against each other in our minds and hearts.

Sooner or later though, we have to put things back together that we split apart, in reconciling how two opposite appearing things are really different sides of the same coin. This is how our minds evolve in grasping the real truth of what we encounter, so it is a good idea to try and understanding how we think and how we arrive at the accuracy of what we think is or isn’t so. But it is very difficult to talk about this all in any practical or meaningful way, hence the common misunderstanding. And if I were to openly claim that such a things as evil rape was just misguided love with the reckless use of liberty, I would be stoned.

The real problem with understanding the violence of rape is that we have the opinion that there are very real extremes in good and evil and when someone does something we think is evil, we ascribe that evilness to the whole person. That makes it impossible to understand or cure.

In understanding human motivation to its fullest, the usual conclusion is that we are all wanting to use our freedom to get all the things—happiness, power, security, recognition, acceptance, material comforts, and success—that will ultimately satisfy us in having the one thing anything “good” brings, that being the single driving force in the universe, growth-creating love energy.

From this reasoning, we can see that liberty without love that results in awful destruction, is really just uninvolved, incomplete liberty and love. From there we have to separate our thoughts and feelings away from the people doing or receiving the destruction and take a closer look at the conditions that shaped the dreadful chain of events—the conditions that lead to a despairing sense of lacking power, acceptance and love leading to such an extreme destructive misuse of freedom to get those things illegitimately and harmfully, leaving a wake of destruction behind.

These conditions are what we need to understand and correct for the better so we can all have what we really want—love and liberty in concert. And only then can we begin to become successful in understanding why that one rule leads to the discovery of the other rules of life to be successful in landing in the Land of Abundance.

There is an infinite surplus of love and freedom to go around many times over, and that is the challenge before us—understanding why some people either don’t have it or don’t see that they do, and helping them get it. The best start is to listen to the stories on both sides of the fence of ‘liberty without love,’ and the devastating impact it has on us all, without judgment of the person telling the story. This takes a higher consciousness than we are used to calling on, so you have to dig deeply inside to find that level of empathy and understanding. But it is the only way to begin to make sense out of any type of violence.

Author's Bio: 

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Belleview, WA. And also a business and personal success coach, sport psychologist, photographer and writer living in the mountains of North Bend. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, The Bow-Wow Secrets, Do What Matters Most, “P” Point Management, and Reality Repair coming shortly. He can be contacted with comments or questions at 425 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net