DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997                TAG: 9704110790

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   84 lines

OVEREMPHASIZING FALSE RAPE CLAIMS HURTS REAL VICTIMS

I knew as she hugged me and said she would call if she needed me - knew that she meant it even - that I'd never hear from her again.

We stood outside the emergency room, a chilly wind cutting through us. I was cursing the office dress code that had me wearing a silk blouse and a skirt, looking like the executive I wasn't, just one more thing separating us. She was wearing the sweats her loving, angry and confused husband had brought when he was called from his workplace to come to the hospital. His wife had been raped while she was out walking the dog that morning.

I held her hand through the examination that was half for her health and half to gather evidence against the man who, as far as I know, never was caught. She couldn't remember his face. Too painful. She could only remember his hairline around a blank white space.

She worried that her husband wouldn't love her anymore. That he would feel like she had cheated on him. She wanted me to tell him what happened, because she couldn't. She thought it would be more official coming from a rape crisis counselor, that he'd be able to hear it better.

She wanted me to explain to him what I had explained to her: that it wasn't her fault. That even though she felt like a mess, crazy even, well, something messy and crazy had happened to her and that was the normal way to feel. She'd get through it. It would take a long time, but she would.

She almost believed me, really wanted to believe me. I think she did believe the tremendous respect for her that was in my eyes. The way she bore up under the pain of the flashbacks that rocked her body during the exam.

It was her dog that caused her to doubt herself. See, she was sure her dog would attack anyone who tried to hurt her. Even though this man knocked her down, dragged her into a vacant lot and raped her, her dog did not attack. She wondered if she didn't send strong enough signals to the dog that she was being hurt. She wondered if in her dog's eyes nothing was wrong. She wondered if maybe she had fought harder then the dog would have known to attack.

She wondered if it was her fault.

That's what gets me every time.

No matter what the circumstance, rape victims find a way to blame themselves. In a world where not enough people take responsibility for their actions, where they're not held accountable, rape victims hold themselves accountable for actions that they had no control over.

It's convenient for the rest of us because we often try to find a way to blame them too. We find something in their actions, in their lives that we never would have done. We wouldn't have gone on that date, we wouldn't have had that drink, we wouldn't have been working alone late. We'll even find something about the woman out walking her dog (Why was she out alone for in that rough part of town - never mind that it was her neighborhood?), and she'll help us. She'll see the incident through her dog's eyes, if need be, to find the reproach in her actions.

This is the day-in-day-out reality of rape, which is why I let out a weary sigh when I read about the recruits at the Aberdeen Proving Ground who allege that Army officials tried to force them to say they were raped when they weren't.

It's a complicated story, and I hope those women receive a full hearing so we can get to the truth of the matter. But stories like that serve as fodder for the false belief that lying about rape is common. And the media has an unnerving habit of playing up the false-accusation stories - as if the most horrifying thing about rape is to be falsely accused of it.

False accusations are horrifying, but they're not common. Not nearly as common as rape.

I can cite the FBI statistics which say that rape has the lowest false-report rate of any crime - people are more likely to lie about being robbed - but many people still go with their gut feeling that it's a common event, something women do if they've had a bad date and are bitter. The alternative is to believe that all these rapes are actually happening and that the world is a violent, uncontrollable, unjust place at times.

Better to believe in weak, spiteful women.

I guess I'd be more patient with this delusion if it weren't for the strong women I know who have been raped and who not only have to deal with the pain of that, but the pain of seeing a world around them that doesn't want to hear about it, much less believe it.

I think of the woman I met in the emergency room that day years ago, how it broke my heart seeing her go. She didn't know what she was facing. She smiled at me with actual hope in her eyes.

I felt in a way that I had misled her. I knew that because the first person she talked to after being raped was me, she was thinking she was going out into a world of me's.

And I knew she wasn't. MEMO: Ms. Young, a staff writer, worked as a rape-crisis counselor in

New Jersey and New Hampshire.

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