Brenda gave birth the last week of her junior year. She wanted to name her daughter after her paternal grandmother, but her father said, "I don't want my mother's name on that baby." She said, "I wanted her to have a crowning name that she wouldn't be ashamed of. I went through the Bible, and Rebecca means 'captivating,' and that just clicked." When Brenda's father saw the baby, he had a change of heart and wrote Brenda a card that said, "Thank you for giving me my first granddaughter." "I don't want my mother's name on that baby." She said, "I wanted her to have a crowning name that she wouldn't be ashamed of. I went through the Bible, and Rebecca means 'captivating,' and that just clicked." When Brenda's father saw the baby, he had a change of heart and wrote Brenda a card that said, "Thank you for giving me my first granddaughter."

Brenda slid into a postpartum depression. "Partly I guess it was biology," she said, "but partly it was that all my friends were off having a fun summer vacation and I was home with this baby." Her family doctor encouraged her to seek counseling. Even with a woman psychiatrist, it took Brenda a couple of months to describe the rape itself, upon which the therapist asked, "At any point, did it feel good? Did you enjoy it?" Brenda walked out and has never seen a therapist again. Vicente was a car mechanic and Lourdes was a nurse; Brenda's ambition was to be a doctor, but with an infant at home she couldn't reach so far. "So I volunteered for the ambulance corps," she said. "I would go into the training class dragging my daughter and put her in one of those little portable playpens, and that's how I got my EMT." Brenda loved working the ambulance and eventually became a qualified paramedic.

I asked Brenda whether her anger at the rapists had ever coalesced around Rebecca. "Never that," she said. "I look at her, I see me; I don't see the other person at all. I wasn't going to take her life away before she was born, and I sure as hell wasn't going to take her life away afterwards." But she was trying to process the rape. She became promiscuous for a few years, until she met a guy named Chip Hofstadter, who owned a fish store in Queens. They married eight months later, when Rebecca was four, because Brenda needed a way out of her parents' apartment, and Chip was willing to be a father to Rebecca. They had two more children, and all three grew up believing that Chip was their father.

Brenda and Chip separated when Rebecca was fifteen, and one of Brenda's subsequent boyfriends raped Rebecca. Brenda decided it was time to tell Rebecca about her own rape. "It wasn't good for her to live with lies anymore," she explained to me. Rebecca was furious and grew increasingly rebellious. She became pregnant by her first boyfriend, and Brenda became a grandmother at thirty-five. Two years later, Rebecca had another child by another father. When Rebecca became pregnant with her third, by yet another man, Brenda took her for an abortion, saying, "You're ruining your life, and I can't let you do this. I'll probably burn in hell for it, but there comes a time when I have to step in." Rebecca eventually joined the air force.

When I first met Brenda, Rebecca was stationed in Iraq, and Brenda was raising Rebecca's two children. "My grandchildren are my heartbeat," Brenda said. "I didn't think that I could love like that, and I didn't love like that with my own children-maybe I was too young, maybe the rape. But when I felt that love, I had to let the rape go. I've asked myself, 'If I ever saw my attackers in the street, would I recognize them?' The shadowy faces I visualize could be anyone. I depersonalized it. The rape was there, but it was an act, not people. All I know is I have something that these people will never know. Never know that they have a beautiful daughter. Never know that they have beautiful grandchildren. They'll never know. But I do. And so, as it turns out, I'm the lucky one." Brenda said. "I didn't think that I could love like that, and I didn't love like that with my own children-maybe I was too young, maybe the rape. But when I felt that love, I had to let the rape go. I've asked myself, 'If I ever saw my attackers in the street, would I recognize them?' The shadowy faces I visualize could be anyone. I depersonalized it. The rape was there, but it was an act, not people. All I know is I have something that these people will never know. Never know that they have a beautiful daughter. Never know that they have beautiful grandchildren. They'll never know. But I do. And so, as it turns out, I'm the lucky one."

American abortion law from the colonial period through the mid-nineteenth century was predicated on the English common-law principle that life begins with quickening-the moment when the expectant woman feels the fetus moving inside her, usually at four to five months. In 1857, the newly formed American Medical Association began a crusade against abortion even prior to quickening, and laws passed in 1860 and 1880 made abortion illegal at any stage unless the mother's life was at risk. In 1904, the journal of the AMA concluded that "pregnancy is rare after real rape," and that, regardless, the fetus's rights trumped the mother's as "the enormity of the crime of rape does not justify murder."

The 1930s saw a rise in illegal abortions as the Great Depression made large families harder to sustain. Many women died as a result of backroom operations by untrained practitioners. In 1936, Frederick J. Taussig, an influential physician, sought to make abortion available to women who "deserved" it without aiding those who might "abuse" the right, worrying that abortions for unmarried women or widows would result in a "lowering of the moral tone." He proposed a law, never implemented but highly influential, that would permit abortions for rape victims, mentally retarded women, girls under sixteen, and any "poorly nourished woman with a large family whose external conditions make the pregnancy and the subsequent care of the child a serious burden." In 1938, a physician was put on trial in England for performing an abortion on a fourteen-year-old rape victim, and his acquittal reflected a populist movement to liberalize the right to abortion, especially for rape victims. The trial was widely covered in the United States and led to open discussion of abortion.

In 1939, the first US Hospital Abortion Committee was formed to determine case-by-case eligibility, and by the 1950s, such committees were ubiquitous. They approved only "therapeutic" abortions: those intended to preserve the mother's health or to avoid the birth of a child with significant disabilities. Increasingly, however, they accepted the recommendations of psychiatrists who stated that a patient's pregnancy was endangering her mental health. Well-connected women could obtain psychiatric diagnoses fairly easily, but rape victims who could not pay a psychiatrist to vouch for their mental frailty had to show that they were nearly deranged. Some were diagnosed as licentious and had to consent to sterilization. So, contrary to Taussig's proposal, abortions became the province of the privileged. Here is a typical caseworker report about a woman raped in the postwar era: "She became a passive object and could not say 'no.' Here we see a girl who having lost parental love, continues to search for love and her primary motivation became centered in getting her dependent needs met." The clear implication is that mentally stable women do not get raped. with significant disabilities. Increasingly, however, they accepted the recommendations of psychiatrists who stated that a patient's pregnancy was endangering her mental health. Well-connected women could obtain psychiatric diagnoses fairly easily, but rape victims who could not pay a psychiatrist to vouch for their mental frailty had to show that they were nearly deranged. Some were diagnosed as licentious and had to consent to sterilization. So, contrary to Taussig's proposal, abortions became the province of the privileged. Here is a typical caseworker report about a woman raped in the postwar era: "She became a passive object and could not say 'no.' Here we see a girl who having lost parental love, continues to search for love and her primary motivation became centered in getting her dependent needs met." The clear implication is that mentally stable women do not get raped.

In 1959, the American Law Institute (ALI) proposed legalizing abortion if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, the fetus had severe abnormalities, or the mother's health was at risk. In 1960, Illinois made abortion legal in cases of rape, and over the next decade, a dozen states passed laws based on the ALI model. Nonetheless, the standard treatment in most states for unwed women who had been raped was to send them to maternity homes, where they were encouraged to surrender their children for adoption. They were told this would be better for the baby than a life of shame with an unwed mother. Women who wanted to abort were considered murderous; women who wanted to keep their children, selfish. Coerced relinquishments were common. Rickie Solinger, who has studied these surrenders, describes Kathleen Leahy Koch, date-raped in 1969, who complained that she was treated like a criminal, saying, "I was just someone who had to have a baby for some worthy family. It was completely dehumanizing." Another woman, Kay Ball, raped and pregnant in 1971, attempted suicide after surrendering her baby; she said, "I was so ashamed and beaten down emotionally and mentally that I just wanted to end it all."

In 1973, the Supreme Court affirmed a woman's right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade. In 1976, the Hyde Amendment cut off Medicaid funding for abortion except when the mother's health was at risk, and not until 1993 was a further exception made for women pregnant through rape or incest. Since 1973, the issue of rape has arisen in every legislative attempt to curtail or strengthen the freedoms established under Roe v. Wade Roe v. Wade. While abortion of fetuses with disabilities is often constructed as saving the putative child from suffering, the rape exception is held to be about saving the mother. By the late 1980s, polls showed that while half of Americans opposed abortions for most women, only a small percentage opposed abortion for rape and incest victims. A number of abortion bans without rape exceptions were struck down. In 1990, Idaho governor Cecil D. Andrus, who opposed abortion in most contexts, vetoed a ban because under it a rape survivor seeking an abortion "ceases to be the victim and becomes a criminal." In some instances, abortion opponents have agreed to rape exceptions on grounds that the pregnant women are "innocent"-unlike those who become pregnant because of their untrammeled passions. of abortion bans without rape exceptions were struck down. In 1990, Idaho governor Cecil D. Andrus, who opposed abortion in most contexts, vetoed a ban because under it a rape survivor seeking an abortion "ceases to be the victim and becomes a criminal." In some instances, abortion opponents have agreed to rape exceptions on grounds that the pregnant women are "innocent"-unlike those who become pregnant because of their untrammeled passions.

The antiabortion movement argues that an unborn child is innocent even in cases of rape. One advocate wrote, "It would be wrong to deprive the child of his unalienable right to life and the due process of the law because of the sins of his father. Two wrongs do not make a right." The mother of a rape-conceived child said, "My child is not the exception that can be tossed away. There would be no one who could look her in the eyes and believe that she doesn't deserve life due to the choice of a man we never even knew." Some believe that pregnancy is a manifestation of God's will, quoting Jeremiah 1:5, which says, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you." This passage is taken to mean that life exists even before conception. Many hard-line antiabortion activists claim to support the best interests of the mother, taking the position that there can be no feeling of empowerment in a decision to abort. J. C. Willke, founder of the International Right to Life Federation, said, "The woman has been subjected to an ugly trauma. Should we now ask her to be a party to a second violent act-that of abortion?" Rebecca Kiessling's pamphlet "Conceived in Rape: A Story of Hope" includes the assertion, "I am not a product of rape, but a child of God." A blogger wrote in sarcastic response, "Rape isn't abuse! It is another form of the immaculate conception!"

As with all contentious public issues, both sides look to selective statistics and dramatic personal stories to bolster their positions. The crucial difference is that the pro-choice movement is not, as Willke suggests, "asking" a woman to abort, but the "right-to-life" movement is attempting to force all pregnant rape victims to carry their fetuses to term. The British psychoanalyst Joan Raphael-Leff writes that a rape-conceived fetus may remain "an internal foreigner, barely tolerated or in constant danger of expulsion, and the baby will emerge part-stranger, likely to be ostracized or punished." One rape survivor, in testimony before the Louisiana Senate Committee on Health and Welfare, likened her son to "a living, breathing torture mechanism that replayed in my mind over and over the rape." Another described mothering a rape-conceived son as "entrapment beyond description" and felt that "the child was cursed from birth"; her son manifested severe psychological challenges and was ultimately removed from the family by social services. psychological challenges and was ultimately removed from the family by social services.

Joan Kemp sees abortion as a solution "imposed by a society that places too much importance on male lineage and not enough on the value of each human being." In that regard, she categorizes the pro-choice movement as antifeminist. Some women who become pregnant after rape refer to the ensuing childbirth as a "second rape"; antiabortion feminists refer to the abortions that such women may choose to have as the "second rape." For some women, an abortion might be more traumatic than bearing a rape-conceived child. The pseudonymous Denise Kalasky writes of how she was put under involuntary anesthesia for the abortion of the pregnancy that began when her father raped her, so her parents could keep their reputations intact. Here, the abortion clearly constitutes another assault characterized by lack of choice.

Among those who would block the right of rape victims to choice, none is more determined than David C. Reardon, founder of the Elliott Institute. There is no eponymous Elliott; the institute's website explains that the name was selected to sound official and impartial. Starting in the early 1980s, some pro-life advocates opposed abortion even for rape victims on the basis that it could lead to a condition they named "postabortion syndrome," characterized by depression, regret, and suicidality-a condition formulated as evidence that the Supreme Court had been wrong, in Roe v. Wade, Roe v. Wade, when it averred that abortion was a safe procedure. The ultimate goal of the Elliott Institute is to generate legislation that would allow a woman to seek civil damages against a physician who has "damaged her mental health" by providing her with an elective abortion. On the topic of impregnated survivors of rape and incest, Reardon states in his book when it averred that abortion was a safe procedure. The ultimate goal of the Elliott Institute is to generate legislation that would allow a woman to seek civil damages against a physician who has "damaged her mental health" by providing her with an elective abortion. On the topic of impregnated survivors of rape and incest, Reardon states in his book Victims and Victors, Victims and Victors, "Many women report that their abortions felt like a degrading form of 'medical rape.' Abortion involves a painful intrusion into a woman's sexual organs by a masked stranger." He and other antiabortion partisans often quote the essay "Pregnancy and Sexual Assault" by Sandra K. Mahkorn, who suggests that the emotional and psychological burdens of pregnancy resulting from rape "can be lessened with proper support." Another activist, George E. Maloof, writes, "Incestuous pregnancy offers a ray of generosity to the world, a new life. To snuff it out by abortion is to compound the sexual child abuse with physical child abuse. We may expect a suicide to follow abortion as the quick and easy way to solving personal problems." "Many women report that their abortions felt like a degrading form of 'medical rape.' Abortion involves a painful intrusion into a woman's sexual organs by a masked stranger." He and other antiabortion partisans often quote the essay "Pregnancy and Sexual Assault" by Sandra K. Mahkorn, who suggests that the emotional and psychological burdens of pregnancy resulting from rape "can be lessened with proper support." Another activist, George E. Maloof, writes, "Incestuous pregnancy offers a ray of generosity to the world, a new life. To snuff it out by abortion is to compound the sexual child abuse with physical child abuse. We may expect a suicide to follow abortion as the quick and easy way to solving personal problems."

Younger women and girls, who don't have a clear idea of their own future, often decide to continue or end a rape-related pregnancy in rebellion against or compliance with the wishes of parents and other elders. Other women are in denial: one-third of pregnancies resulting from rape are not discovered until the second trimester. Any delay in detection or action reduces women's options, but many women are still recovering from being raped when they are called on to make up their minds whether to carry through their pregnancy. No matter which choice is ultimately made, pregnancy after rape can lead to depression, anxiety, insomnia, and PTSD. Rape is a permanent damage; it leaves not scars, but open wounds. As one woman I interviewed said, "You can abort the child, but not the experience." rebellion against or compliance with the wishes of parents and other elders. Other women are in denial: one-third of pregnancies resulting from rape are not discovered until the second trimester. Any delay in detection or action reduces women's options, but many women are still recovering from being raped when they are called on to make up their minds whether to carry through their pregnancy. No matter which choice is ultimately made, pregnancy after rape can lead to depression, anxiety, insomnia, and PTSD. Rape is a permanent damage; it leaves not scars, but open wounds. As one woman I interviewed said, "You can abort the child, but not the experience."

The philosopher Susan Brison, herself a rape survivor, has said, "Trauma not only haunts the conscious and unconscious mind, but also remains in the body, in each of the senses, ready to resurface whenever something triggers a reliving of the traumatic event." A pregnancy literalizes this condition by staying in the body until abortion or delivery. In describing the problems of treating raped women, Croatian psychiatry professor Vera Folnegovi-malc said, "We frequently encounter a loss of vital instincts or even a death wish. Suicidal thoughts are evident above all."

Melinda Stephenson knew from childhood that she wanted to go into deaf education. Her father was deaf and her mother, hearing; as a hearing child, fluent in Sign, she served as her father's translator. He had completed only fifth grade, and her mother had graduated from high school; Melinda was determined to go to college. In her native Indiana, Ball State University was the only college that gave degrees in deaf education, so that's where Melinda went. In her sophomore year, she lived off-campus and commuted via the university-run shuttle service. The shuttles were driven by students, and Melinda occasionally chatted with them, including one, Ricky, who was a childhood-education major.

One evening on her way home, Melinda noticed a car idling in front of her building. She assumed it was someone dropping off her roommate, who usually returned from volleyball practice about that time, so she left the door unlocked. When she heard it close, she turned and saw Ricky. "He shoved me on the bed and said, 'If you scream, I will kill you.' I remember looking at my clock. It was eight forty-seven." The phone was ringing-she found out later that her mother was calling-but he cut the cord. "I was banging on the wall, I was kicking him, but then he showed me a knife, and I wanted to live. He left at eleven twenty-three."

Melinda sat on her bed without moving until five thirty the next morning, when she finally asked a friend to take her to the hospital. The nurse expressed doubt that it had been a rape and did not offer emergency contraception. She did, however, summon the police, and Melinda made a report; the police asked if she wanted to press charges, and she said she couldn't. Melinda finished the fall semester with plummeting grades and dropped out halfway through the spring semester, paralyzed by anxiety. "I was petrified to leave my apartment," she recalled. The nurse expressed doubt that it had been a rape and did not offer emergency contraception. She did, however, summon the police, and Melinda made a report; the police asked if she wanted to press charges, and she said she couldn't. Melinda finished the fall semester with plummeting grades and dropped out halfway through the spring semester, paralyzed by anxiety. "I was petrified to leave my apartment," she recalled.

She moved back in with her parents and enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College, although it had no deaf-education program. When she realized she was pregnant and told her mother, it was already too late for an abortion; Melinda couldn't bear the thought of relinquishing the baby anyway. "I had to change and adapt, or be stuck in fear," she explained. "So I changed and I adapted." Many of the adaptations were painful. Anxious and deeply depressed, she was hospitalized twice-once on suicide watch. She was offered a job in deaf education out of state, but was terrified to live on her own.

When her son, Marcus, was born, Melinda's parents refused to treat him as their grandchild. "We have a secured area in the living room where we stay," Melinda explained. When her father is home, Marcus has to stay within five feet of her. "Marcus went to touch the TV the other day," she said, "and my dad went to hit him, and I yelled, 'You touch him, and you'll never see me again.'" When her sister adopted a daughter, Melinda's parents would take the little girl to the park and go to Grandparents Day at her school. But when a coworker asked Melinda's mother how her grandson was doing, she said, "What grandson? I don't have a grandson."

After college, Melinda got a job with Head Start. By then, she had developed compulsions, could not tolerate having different foods touch, began cutting herself, and couldn't go to a new place on her own, even a Starbucks. "If you get into my bubble," she warned, "I get angry." A child at Head Start wore a stocking cap one day that was identical to Ricky's, and she took it out of his cubby and threw it away. "He was four years old! I've got to fix this," she said.

Melinda started seeing a therapist who was a rape survivor herself. At first, Melinda couldn't talk about what had happened. When she did, she insisted that the door be locked first. Her therapist suggested that Melinda send anonymous postcards to Ricky laying out her accusations, as a way of getting it off her chest. She sent one every other day, from different towns. Sometimes she would print them out on a computer, other times she'd paste together words she'd cut out of magazines or imitate a child's handwriting. She mailed some to his job, others to his home.

After six months of postcards, Ricky brought charges against her for stalking, so she was fired from Head Start, where employees cannot be the subject of a criminal investigation. "I've worked at a job for two years, I've never been in trouble, I've never been late, I've never missed a day, nothing. And you're going to fire me over a postcard?" she said. Ricky then announced that he was going to sue for custody, and Melinda broke down. She took Marcus to Child Protective Services (CPS) and announced that she was signing him over. Her therapist met her there and convinced her to take Marcus home, but her mother offered to drive her back to CPS if she changed her mind again.

Melinda found another job in a toddler day-care center. Her mental state remained fragile, and the line between Marcus and Ricky seemed blurred for her. "I feel like they're connected, and there's no one-or-the-other," she said. "He'll touch me and say something, and I'll think, 'That's your dad.' What if I go to hurt him, thinking he's his dad? I'm petrified. Marcus is the spitting image of my rapist." She got a glazed look. "There's some things that he does, and I'll think, 'Oh, I'm so proud of you.' And then he'll talk to me and suddenly I can't even acknowledge him. Without him, what's going to make me get up in the morning? I guess I'm much less likely to kill myself if I've got him."

Within a year, Melinda wrote to me that she'd been dating a man for eight months and they were expecting a child. "Marcus is excited about being a big brother," she continued. "I am happy, therapy is going in a good path, and the best part, my parents can't tell us what to do anymore." Two months later, she wrote, "The guy I had been dating decided that I wasn't for him. He is now living in Michigan with his new wife. I named my daughter Eliza. Sad news is she was born dead. My pregnancy with her was so different than with Marcus. With Eliza I made sure that everything I did was in the best interest of Eliza. Kinda odd, huh? Wanted to ignore Marcus and hope it would go away and I have him, and then I do everything I can to take care of myself and my Eliza and I lose her." Six months later, she gave up Marcus; he was placed with a foster family that was considering adopting him. "I see him as much as I want," Melinda wrote, "which is not as much as I should. He is getting everything that I could not provide. I am not allowed to spend time alone with him, and I think that is very smart. I struggle a lot with losing Eliza. For Eliza's birthday I am having a cookout with some friends. I am so excited to make her 'gunk' cake. It's a 9 x 11 yellow cake with peanut butter icing covered in birdseed with whatever writing I decide to put on it. I will be putting this cake on her grave so that the wildlife can enjoy her presence and life as all of us do every day." So Melinda struggled on, in love with a child who was dead, and unable to love the one who was alive. Rape engenders both rage and sadness, and even as it had made Marcus the object of Melinda's displaced fury, it had made Eliza the safer receptacle of her despair. of us do every day." So Melinda struggled on, in love with a child who was dead, and unable to love the one who was alive. Rape engenders both rage and sadness, and even as it had made Marcus the object of Melinda's displaced fury, it had made Eliza the safer receptacle of her despair.

Recent theorists have applied evolutionary theory to surmise that rape is primarily a reproductive strategy, the genes for which are likely to be selected. Jonathan and Tiffani Gottschall, who teach at Washington & Jefferson College, propose that rapists "target victims not only on the basis of age but based on a whole complement of physical and behavioral signals indicating a victim's capacity to become pregnant"-many of them the same signals that underlie nonrape attraction. Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, authors of A Natural History of Rape, A Natural History of Rape, argue that men who commit rape spread their seed far and wide, thus fulfilling the self-perpetuating drive of the selfish gene. argue that men who commit rape spread their seed far and wide, thus fulfilling the self-perpetuating drive of the selfish gene.

The idea that fantasies of forced reproduction often course through the minds of rapists accords with feminist theory. The scholar Catharine MacKinnon has emphasized this construct, writing, "Forced pregnancy is familiar, beginning in rape and proceeding through the denial of abortions; this occurred during slavery and still happens to women who cannot afford abortions." Susan Brownmiller has proposed that reproduction is the primary motive for many rapists. "Men began to rape women when they discovered that sexual intercourse led to pregnancy," she writes. In the developed world, rape may be an effective reproductive strategy within abusive relationships, but hardly otherwise: most victims do not become pregnant; most of those who do have abortions; and rapists are sometimes imprisoned, curtailing their reproductive potential. Mary P. Koss, a clinical psychologist at the Arizona College of Public Health who studies sexual violence, has said that rather than choosing between evolutionary and social explanations for rape, we must figure out how to integrate them.

Rapists are often repeat offenders; it is less well-known that women who have been raped before age eighteen are twice as likely as other women to be raped as adults. Sexual abuse perpetuates itself. The two statistics have an appalling symmetry. As aggression is rewarded in the rapist, the victim's ego becomes frayed and vulnerable. Then her understanding that the world is unsafe becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Growing up in Milwaukee, Lori Michaels had a friendly relationship with Fred Hughes, who lived across the street with his wife and three kids. When Lori was twelve, Fred started buying her candy and taking her for rides in his car. After he'd built up some trust, he took her to a garage, put a 9 mm gun to her head, and made her perform oral sex on him. It happened four times over a couple of months; then Fred and his family moved to Chicago. She never told anyone. her for rides in his car. After he'd built up some trust, he took her to a garage, put a 9 mm gun to her head, and made her perform oral sex on him. It happened four times over a couple of months; then Fred and his family moved to Chicago. She never told anyone.

When Lori was nineteen, Fred moved back to Milwaukee. Lori was staying with someone who knew him and sometimes she would wake up at night to find Fred in her room with his gun. He would take her back to the same garage, time and again for more than a year. Lori kept quiet about it; she feared what her mother, Clarabel, might say if she found out. One night her landlord's sister said, "Lori, Fred's been bragging about sleeping with you. Was that willingly?" Lori said it was not. "I didn't think so" came the response. "He did it to my daughter Ginger, too." Ginger was fourteen at the time. Ginger's mother called the police on Lori's behalf, and Lori took them to the garage. Ginger had already led them to the same place. "Who knows who else he was hitting up?" Lori remarked.

Not long afterward, Lori realized she was pregnant. She told her boyfriend, Bud, that either he or Fred could be the father. Fred was black, and Lori and Bud were white, so she figured she would find out when the child was born. When Clarabel got wind of what had happened, the harsh judgment Lori feared didn't materialize. "Are you going to get an abortion, put it up for adoption, keep it?" Clarabel asked. "If you keep the child, you can't take anything out on that child. And if you're not going to keep it, it's best to make a clean break and be done with it immediately." Clarabel listed the problems Lori would face, starting with racism if it was Fred's, and said it was hard work being a single mother. After a day of pondering, Lori told Clarabel she was going to keep the child, and her mother said, "I knew you would. I just wanted you to think before you made that choice."

Lori moved back home, but she sank into depression and slit her wrists when she was eight months pregnant. Bud found her and called 911. Lori insisted that the rape, not the pregnancy, had engendered her despair, that if she hadn't been pregnant, her suicide attempt would have been successful. "My son is what's kept me going," she said, echoing a frequent refrain among mothers of such children. That Lori had put up with years of rape without a suicide attempt and then made one during pregnancy called her logic into question. When the boy was born, he looked white. "And then when I went to change his diaper, his penis was black," Lori said. "So they told me, 'Mulatto babies come out white and their penises are black." Lori named him Bobby and took him home, where Clarabel did much of the caretaking.

Fred was prosecuted for his rapes of Lori and Ginger. Sentenced to two and a half years, he was released after two years for good behavior. Genetic analysis showed that Bobby was his son, and Fred requested custody, which he was not granted. Nevertheless, his wife repeatedly accosted Lori, demanding access to Bobby. Lori and Clarabel and Bobby eventually left Wisconsin and resettled in the Southwest. A few years later, Fred was in jail again, pending trial on charges that he had raped five girls and assaulted another so severely that she nearly died. The DA sought two life sentences plus fifteen years, but he filed paperwork incorrectly and the case was dismissed. Fred soon moved, and the system lost track of him. "Each time he rapes someone, it's more violent," Lori said. "And now he's free." two and a half years, he was released after two years for good behavior. Genetic analysis showed that Bobby was his son, and Fred requested custody, which he was not granted. Nevertheless, his wife repeatedly accosted Lori, demanding access to Bobby. Lori and Clarabel and Bobby eventually left Wisconsin and resettled in the Southwest. A few years later, Fred was in jail again, pending trial on charges that he had raped five girls and assaulted another so severely that she nearly died. The DA sought two life sentences plus fifteen years, but he filed paperwork incorrectly and the case was dismissed. Fred soon moved, and the system lost track of him. "Each time he rapes someone, it's more violent," Lori said. "And now he's free."

When I met Lori and her family in the trailer park where they were living, Bobby was twelve. Lori said she rarely thought about Fred when she looked at Bobby. "My sister calls Fred 'the sperm donor,'" she related. "I believe Bobby's my miracle boy." The rest of her family have also been accepting. "My whole family was racist, the older generation," Lori added, "but they treated Bobby very special. My great-grandma, she slipped once and called him a nigger. She looked at me and wanted to cry, and she never slipped again." Many of Lori's romantic relationships had been troubled, and Bobby had grown up defending his mother in violent domestic situations. Her work history has also been spotty-in part because she has Social Security income on grounds of PTSD, and if she earns too much money, she'll lose those benefits. So she's worked at Burger King and Taco Bell, but she runs out of steam quickly and finds it hard to deal with other people on the job. The family mostly lives on the income Clarabel earns at Walmart.

Clarabel had thought the right time to discuss Bobby's origins with him was when he began to ask questions. So when he was seven, Lori told him she had been raped by his father, who'd put a gun to her head. "I don't want to know him," Bobby told me. Good-looking, friendly, and rather self-possessed at twelve, Bobby is also high-strung and moody. He has been diagnosed with ADHD and other learning disabilities-possibly inherited from Fred, who was illiterate. One clinician suggested that he may be bipolar as well. He has run into problems with teachers and bounced from school to school. Bobby is the apple of his grandmother's eye. "Weekends or early in the morning," Clarabel said, "he comes and sits up on my bed, and I watch National Geographic and nature movies with him." Still, the emotional life of the family remains complicated. "I do a lot of hollering," Lori said. "I'm in anger management on Tuesday nights. We do family counseling, and I'm on meds till I get back on track." Bobby loses his temper with his friends and once threw a TV while fighting with his mother. "The counselor says he's not going to hit me," Lori said, "but he's seen so much violence." "The counselor says he's not going to hit me," Lori said, "but he's seen so much violence."

Three days after Lori threw out one of her boyfriends at five in the morning for calling Bobby a nigger, she met Ringo Smythe via an online chat room where she was telling a friend about it. "Promise me you won't take this guy back," Ringo wrote. She and Bobby met him at the carnival where he worked the games. Bobby begged his mom to give Ringo a try; when I met Lori, they had been together almost a year, the longest either of them had ever lasted in a romantic relationship.

Still, Lori worries, given Ringo's background. "I come from a convict family," Ringo said. "My dad met my mom in a whorehouse, and she did drugs. And I've seen a lot worse stuff on the carnival circuit, so it's pretty hard to freak me out with anything." Ringo broke off midstream, then asked me to hit him hard. "I don't feel no pain in my arm because my dad used my arm as an ashtray." He rolled up his sleeve to show white scars from his shoulder to his wrist.

Although Ringo professed not to believe in psychotherapy, he agreed to join the family counseling sessions at which he discussed marrying Lori and adopting Bobby. First, he had to track down the woman to whom he was still married so he could file for a divorce. Both Lori and Ringo were burdened by massive debts. Still, Ringo had made major changes since he and Lori met. "I can't stand the heat. I hate trailers. I hate cats," he said. "I'm here in Arizona in a trailer park with five cats." I asked if that was all for Lori, and he said, "Yeah, Lori and Bobby both." When I visited, he had taken a leave from the carnival so he wouldn't have to be separated from them and was working the graveyard shift at Target.

"I don't think about Fred a lot, but when Ringo does certain sexual things, I have flashbacks," Lori said. "I have bad days and good days. And sometimes the bad days last a week. But we do family things all the time. I would never think of going back to the past and changing anything-I'd have another kid, but not my Bobby. I got my boy."

"Where did I come from?" is one of the first urgent questions of childhood. A response that includes terror and powerlessness can undermine a child's feeling of safety. Many rape victims who bear children have to explain why they've had babies at an inappropriate age, in the absence of a stable romantic relationship, or despite lacking financial or emotional resources to provide care for the child. The extent to which a woman feels judged may determine the scope of her concealment or denial. Telling a secure child who isn't looking for answers the story of his or her conception can itself feel like an act of violence. Mothers who were unable to protect themselves are gratified by their ability to protect their children, and shielding them from such awful knowledge is part of that safeguarding. So one mother pledged online, "My son will never know the details of his conception. I don't want him thinking he wasn't wanted or conceived out of love." answers the story of his or her conception can itself feel like an act of violence. Mothers who were unable to protect themselves are gratified by their ability to protect their children, and shielding them from such awful knowledge is part of that safeguarding. So one mother pledged online, "My son will never know the details of his conception. I don't want him thinking he wasn't wanted or conceived out of love."

The withholding of traumatic information is as loaded as the telling; often, the child gleans knowledge accidentally from people on whom it has no direct bearing, then feels betrayed by a lifetime's secrecy. In short, there is no good time or safe way to share the news, but concealing it can spell disaster. Holly van Gulden, an adoption counselor, explained, "Keeping secrets especially between generations within a family system implies the material withheld is shameful." To what extent is a mother's choice to spare her child the circumstances of his conception protection, and to what extent is it a dangerous form of denial? Even considered decisions about sharing or withholding fundamental information can have unintended consequences. One man who learned as an adult that he was conceived in rape said the knowledge freed him from seeing his mother as "the 'bad girl' or 'tramp' image that is sometimes associated with unwed mothers." The disapproval his mother had sought to evade by harboring her secret had blighted her son's view of her and, by extension, of himself. Children easily perceive and absorb humiliation, and if they are the nexus of a parent's shame, they bear it as a heavy weight.

To learn that you are the kind of person most mothers would prefer never even to imagine can produce an angry self-doubt similar to that of people with genetic anomalies who believe that selective abortion would invalidate their lives and eradicate their heirs. Some rape-conceived people have become antiabortion activists as a way of marking the fact that they were born. Lee Ezell, raped by her boss at eighteen, gave up her daughter Julie for adoption without ever seeing her. Twenty-one years later, Julie found her, and they shared a joyful reunion. "I'm so thankful that the choice was not available in 1963, when Lee could have been so tempted to easily end my life," Julie said. When Lee met her son-in-law, he said, "I want to shake your hand. I want to say thank you for not aborting Julie."

Some speak grandiosely about how they evaded abortion, as though they had been wily double agents in utero. They sometimes fail to empathize with the trauma to which they are connected. Sherrie Eldridge, conceived in rape and surrendered at birth for adoption, writes of being disappointed when she was reunited with her birth mother forty-seven years later. As her ten-day visit with her birth mother progressed, their incipient relationship grew strained. Her mother said that the reunion had brought a lot of pain to the surface. " incipient relationship grew strained. Her mother said that the reunion had brought a lot of pain to the surface. "Am I so bad that I would cause her pain? I kept asking myself," Eldridge writes. "At that time, I knew nothing of the horrendous pain a birth mother experiences both at relinquishment and reunion. I was dealing with my own pain and unresolved grief." Eldridge assigns her birth mother's grief solely to separation from her child, with no apparent awareness of the excruciating afterlife of her rape. I kept asking myself," Eldridge writes. "At that time, I knew nothing of the horrendous pain a birth mother experiences both at relinquishment and reunion. I was dealing with my own pain and unresolved grief." Eldridge assigns her birth mother's grief solely to separation from her child, with no apparent awareness of the excruciating afterlife of her rape.

For years, Lisa Boynton thought her most important secret was that she had been abused by her grandfather since she was five. When Lisa was in seventh grade, she saw a census form on which her father had identified her as "stepdaughter." He had never wanted Lisa to know, her mother, Louise, told her, because he was afraid Lisa wouldn't love him anymore. Louise said she'd become pregnant at fifteen by a boy from school. "I was angry," Lisa said. "I'm still angry. My whole family knew that he wasn't my real dad, but no one told me."

The following year, Lisa and some friends were hanging out with a friend of theirs, Donny, who was "mentally retarded." Lisa was in eighth grade; Donny was twenty; they had made out a few times, but she never expected it to go further. She went upstairs with him to see something, and he raped her. She screamed, but nobody responded. When she came downstairs, shaking, and asked her best friend why she hadn't helped her, the friend said, "Oh, I thought you were just getting it, finally. It always hurts the first time."

Ironically, only after Lisa's rape-which she kept a secret-did her grandfather's habitual abuse come to light. Her mother overheard her telling a friend about it and prodded her into confessing the whole story. Lisa begged her mother not to tell her stepfather. "She said, 'Just go to bed. It will be all right.' And she must have gone downstairs and told my dad. I heard him throwing things, curses flying out of his mouth." They notified the police. Her stepfather's father pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years on probation. Lisa received a letter of apology from him, but it sounded "as though a lawyer wrote it," she said. "To me, it meant nothing." Lisa's stepfather cut off relations with his own father.

The relationship between Lisa and Louise, despite this energetic support, remained bewilderingly strained. "My dad went above and beyond to make me feel like I was loved and part of the family," Lisa said. "It was my mother who always blamed me for things; my sister was always innocent." After the rape, Lisa became promiscuous. Like many victims of child sexual abuse, she had no sense of boundaries about physical intimacy. "I would sleep with anybody," she said. "Even though I'd been raped by Donny, I continued to have sex with him willingly, up until I was in eleventh grade." She added, almost in bewilderment, "I guess I'd confused sex with love ever since my grandfather began abusing me." about physical intimacy. "I would sleep with anybody," she said. "Even though I'd been raped by Donny, I continued to have sex with him willingly, up until I was in eleventh grade." She added, almost in bewilderment, "I guess I'd confused sex with love ever since my grandfather began abusing me."

Then one day, when Lisa was twenty, Louise confessed that she herself had been raped and that she didn't know who Lisa's father was. The story was eerily similar to Lisa's own. Her mother and her best friend had gone out with two older men, and they'd stopped at the men's house. The best friend and one of the men disappeared together, and the other man invited Lisa's mother into another room, where he raped her. Then the first man came in and raped her, too. When she learned that she was pregnant, she didn't know which of them was the father. When Lisa pressed her mother for names, Louise gave obviously fictitious ones. "I don't think she's telling me the whole story," Lisa said. "Little things just didn't add up. I couldn't tell her I was angry that she never told me, because I could hear the sadness in her voice. And I never wanted to bring it up again. I'm going to die with a lot of unanswered questions."

All the secrets and lies have had a corrosive effect on Lisa, who, in her thirties, still doesn't feel like part of her own family. She has spent a good bit of time looking at online forums that have made her feel less alone. She eventually got a degree in social work, and as a group-therapy leader she counsels women who've experienced similar traumas. Her personal and professional lives are consecrated to recovery. "I minimize my issues and problems," she reflected. "But I'm the first to say, 'Don't minimize yours.'" She lives with a female partner and has a daughter from a previous relationship, to whom she is deeply attached. "I felt like I always had to look out for myself, because nobody else is going to look out for me," she said. "I want my daughter's life to be completely different from mine."

When we met, Lisa was seeing a therapist she liked, yet she had never discussed the rapes with her therapist. Instead of seeing them as connected, she viewed them as ludicrously coincidental. "I didn't think anyone would believe me," she said to me. "Even to myself, it seems far-fetched that someone could be sexually abused and raped-and then find out my mother was raped, too. The only people who know all the pieces are my mother and my partner. And now, you. I wanted to escape the trauma I experienced at my grandfather's hands and everything that came after that; however, I now know it is something that will always stay with me and I will not ever fully recover. What I can do is use my experiences to be a better social worker to my clients. I'm able to identify with and relate to them-but in a healthy way, without disclosing my own abuse." able to identify with and relate to them-but in a healthy way, without disclosing my own abuse."

Prejudice against rape victims and their children is as real as it is irrational. One blogger wrote, "Hmmm, so many children, born out of incest and rape. The CWS [child-welfare system] is overwhelmed and under-prepared. My suggestion? PUT THEM TO SLEEP LIKE UNWANTED PETS!" Even among people with less extreme points of view, prejudice is deeply ingrained. In disdaining and fearing rapists, as most people do, it is only too easy to disdain and fear their progeny. Liberal acquaintances who were all for Deaf politics and neurodiversity expressed unease about raising a child with "those genes." The innocence of the child is conditional in this domain. To the mother, he is an incarnation of the rape; to the world, he is the rapist's heir.

In the face of such bias, a mother may envision her parental relationship as euphoric-either through authentic religious ecstasy or to avoid acknowledging her ambivalence. Kathleen DeZeeuw, in Victims and Victors, Victims and Victors, says, "It was Patrick, my son, conceived in rape-whose life I had tried to snuff out-who taught me how to forgive. He was willing to forgive not only his biological father, but also me (for physically and verbally abusing him as a child)." Another mother speaking out in the same book said, "My daughter's identity is in being a child of God. She was the gift that brought me out of fear and darkness into the Light of authentic Love." The miracle is always twofold: of the child who overcomes his fearsome genes, and of the mother who trounces her initial dread. Rhapsody is helpful to both mother and child. One antiabortionist wrote, "I am the product of rape, and not only rape, but of incest. My mother sacrificed her needs for mine, carried a shame that wasn't hers, and brought a baby into this world that in this day and age probably would not have made it. But she didn't stop there. Being unable to provide me with the things a child needs-like security, food, a roof over my head, schooling-she denied herself the right to keep me, her child. She selflessly let me go for adoption when I was seven." There's an element of will involved in understanding one's own relinquishment as an act of devotion. says, "It was Patrick, my son, conceived in rape-whose life I had tried to snuff out-who taught me how to forgive. He was willing to forgive not only his biological father, but also me (for physically and verbally abusing him as a child)." Another mother speaking out in the same book said, "My daughter's identity is in being a child of God. She was the gift that brought me out of fear and darkness into the Light of authentic Love." The miracle is always twofold: of the child who overcomes his fearsome genes, and of the mother who trounces her initial dread. Rhapsody is helpful to both mother and child. One antiabortionist wrote, "I am the product of rape, and not only rape, but of incest. My mother sacrificed her needs for mine, carried a shame that wasn't hers, and brought a baby into this world that in this day and age probably would not have made it. But she didn't stop there. Being unable to provide me with the things a child needs-like security, food, a roof over my head, schooling-she denied herself the right to keep me, her child. She selflessly let me go for adoption when I was seven." There's an element of will involved in understanding one's own relinquishment as an act of devotion.

When she was three, Tina Gordon called her mother "Mom" and was immediately rebuked. "Don't you ever call me that again," Donna said. "I'm not your mother." "But what am I supposed to call you?" Tina asked. "You can call me Donna," her mother replied. Tina's great-grandmother told her later, "It's not your fault. She was raped when she had you." Tina had no idea what her great-grandmother was talking about. "When I learned how to read, I looked it up in the dictionary and understood the violence part, but not the sex part," Tina said. "For a lot of my life, though, I felt damaged." Tina watched her older sister, Corinna, say "Mom" over and over and watched her receive at least sporadic flashes of love and attention. "I always had to remember that I was the stepchild, so to speak," Tina recalled. The only loving thing her mother ever did for her was to make her sweetened hot milk before bed. Ironically, however, Tina's estrangement from Donna may have afforded her a measure of protection from her mother's destructive tendencies. about. "When I learned how to read, I looked it up in the dictionary and understood the violence part, but not the sex part," Tina said. "For a lot of my life, though, I felt damaged." Tina watched her older sister, Corinna, say "Mom" over and over and watched her receive at least sporadic flashes of love and attention. "I always had to remember that I was the stepchild, so to speak," Tina recalled. The only loving thing her mother ever did for her was to make her sweetened hot milk before bed. Ironically, however, Tina's estrangement from Donna may have afforded her a measure of protection from her mother's destructive tendencies.

Donna had had a nervous breakdown in college and was abusive to both Tina and Corinna when they were young. Donna was living in Florida when Tina was born, and a friend called Donna's mother to say that there was a new baby. "It might already be too late for the older daughter," the friend said, "but you've got to come and get these kids and maybe save this baby." So Tina's grandmother went to fetch the two girls. She found that Corinna was missing parts of her finger pads because Donna had put her hands on the stove as a punishment.

Tina and Corinna grew up in Mississippi under the far more loving care of their grandmother, who taught school by day and cleaned houses by night to keep the family going. Donna would visit and say that she was going to reclaim Corinna as soon as she got back on her feet. She made no such promises to Tina, who soon gave up seeking any kind of approval from her mother and focused on her grandmother and aunts, who proved far more reliable. As a result, Tina saw her mother's hypocrisies with greater clarity than her sister did. "If we were watching television, Corinna would sit on Donna's lap, and I was just on the floor by myself," Tina said.

When Tina was eight and Corinna was ten, their grandmother died at fifty-eight. Donna, close to forty, was clearly unable to handle them both. A great-uncle they barely knew felt they shouldn't be split up and agreed to take them both, so they moved to Connecticut. Aunt Susan and Uncle Thomas gave them material security, but ran an alienating, strict household, and the girls were unhappy. Donna would send care packages and Christmas presents to Corinna, but nothing to Tina. Uncle Thomas told Donna that if she couldn't send presents for both daughters, she shouldn't send anything. After that, there were just letters: cold and formal ones to Tina, effusive ones to Corinna promising to take her back. Two years after a fire at the house in Connecticut, Corinna was caught trying to set fire to it again, and she was sent to a juvenile facility. Another uncle took her in briefly after she was released, but then she wanted to move back in with Donna. Donna would have none of it, and Corinna was utterly devastated. Aunt Susan and Uncle Thomas weren't willing to have her back. So at fifteen, she ended up living on the streets in Mississippi. none of it, and Corinna was utterly devastated. Aunt Susan and Uncle Thomas weren't willing to have her back. So at fifteen, she ended up living on the streets in Mississippi.

Tina found it painful to be in her uncle's house when Corinna was not allowed to be there and decided to go to boarding school. "I've always just had maybe a little bit of a survivor instinct," Tina said. She was admitted to a girls' school, where she was one of seven black students in a population of one hundred and sixty. Her aunt and uncle cut her off after she was disciplined for smoking pot. "I started to be known at school as 'the orphan,'" Tina recalled. Meanwhile, Corinna was hustling and doing drugs; she had developed AIDS by the time Tina started college at New York University. "Donna contacted me to disparage Corinna," Tina remembered. "I said, 'I understand why she's made the choices she's made. Other people have had a huge part to play in that.' Donna said, 'What other people?' I said, 'You and others.' That was the end of her trying to reach out to me." The sisters, however, kept in touch, and Tina visited Corinna repeatedly in the last year of her life, when she was twenty-three.

"No matter what Donna said or did, Corinna would tell me that I should reach out to Donna, forgive Donna," Tina said. "Because I knew it would mean a lot to Corinna, I actually called Donna and asked her to call Corinna and say that she loved her and that she was in her prayers-just to reach out to her before she died. Donna said, 'I don't think I can do that.' Then she said, 'I know I haven't necessarily made good choices, but if I can make that up to you, tell me what I can do.' And I said, 'If you call Corinna, all is forgiven and forgotten.' She said, 'I've heard that she's prostituting, and I heard she was using drugs.' And I said, 'First of all, you don't know if that's true or not, and secondly, what does it matter? She's dying. You don't have to call and talk about her life or what she's done. It would just mean a lot to her if you would call and say that you're praying for her, thinking of her. Something. Anything.' She said, 'I don't know if I can do that.' And she didn't."

Tina enrolled in Columbia Law School, and as her accomplishments accrued, Donna began to seek her out. Donna called to ask whether she was going to be invited to see Tina graduate with honors. Tina said, "I haven't talked to you in years, and the last time I talked to you I made a request of you and you couldn't even do that. So why are you trying to be a part of my life now?"

Tina became a public defender. Having accepted injustice from birth, she found solace in defending other people. When I met her, she was seven months pregnant. I wondered whether she had fears about being a mother. "Despite all the things that happened, in a lot of ways I do feel very fortunate, very blessed," she said. "My grandmother was able to give us so much love. Even though I was only with her for eight years, she made such a huge impression." Tina was engaged to a man with a warm, supportive family, "the exact opposite of mine." Her fiance is naturally affectionate, "and there are times when I'm suddenly, like, 'Every time you come in the room, you don't have to touch me.' He knows how I'm damaged." Tina has worked hard to build a life that can subsume the past. "I don't know what happened to Donna when I was conceived," she said, "but that curse has run its course, and it's going to stop here." She rested a hand on her pregnant belly, as though to indicate how love pushed away over and over again had finally found its object. about being a mother. "Despite all the things that happened, in a lot of ways I do feel very fortunate, very blessed," she said. "My grandmother was able to give us so much love. Even though I was only with her for eight years, she made such a huge impression." Tina was engaged to a man with a warm, supportive family, "the exact opposite of mine." Her fiance is naturally affectionate, "and there are times when I'm suddenly, like, 'Every time you come in the room, you don't have to touch me.' He knows how I'm damaged." Tina has worked hard to build a life that can subsume the past. "I don't know what happened to Donna when I was conceived," she said, "but that curse has run its course, and it's going to stop here." She rested a hand on her pregnant belly, as though to indicate how love pushed away over and over again had finally found its object.

A woman who keeps a child conceived in rape has a permanent tie to her rapist. In some instances, hatred and fear keep the connection alive; in others, however, the mother is bracing herself for the possibility that either the rapist or the child might eventually seek out the other. Just as abused children cling to their abusive parents, driven by a biology beyond logic, so these women remain in thrall to their attackers, unable to break free of the terrible intensity of their connection. Unconditional rejection of the rapist, for them, feels too much like a rejection of the resultant child. If these women fail to experience the anger appropriate to being raped, they destroy themselves; if they evince such anger, they feel that they have failed their children. It's a more extreme version of a common challenge for people who have divorced. It can take a generation to transcend this ambivalence; one woman told me that when her child was born, she had the rapist's eyes. "Her beautiful baby daughter has her her eyes," this woman said. "Now they're the family eyes, not the eyes of the man who raped me." eyes," this woman said. "Now they're the family eyes, not the eyes of the man who raped me."

The grimmest challenge for many of these women comes if the rapist or his family tries to gain access to the child. Men who have gotten away with rape seldom retreat in shame or repentance; they sometimes play out their ghoulish exuberance by laying claim to their progeny. In instances where charges were never filed, the threat of joint custody is real. Stigma Inc., the online support group for people conceived in rape and incest, had a posting saying, "The father/rapist is thus deemed ineligible for visitation or custody of the minor child. However, as in the case of rape victims in general, the burden of proof that a rape took place is often placed upon the woman who has suffered the crime. Often it comes down to a 'he said/she said' issue."

When Emily Barrett would hug her mother, Flora, she was always pushed away. "But it took a minute for her to realize that she wanted to shoo me off," Emily told me, "and I miss those moments right before she did." Flora was a light-skinned Jamaican woman who had emigrated to New York for a better life. By the time Emily was twelve, Flora was on her fourth husband. "She was extremely charismatic, and beautiful, and she was funny," Emily said. "Other people loved her. She was a hypocrite, but it was still interesting to watch, almost like a science project." As an only child, Emily was lonely. Her father, Phil, did not live in the household, but Emily saw or spoke to him every day until she was eleven, when he suddenly disappeared. No one would tell her what had happened, so she assumed he was dead; before she turned thirteen, she developed a crush on a good-looking nineteen-year-old, Blake. He took to giving her rides to and from school, and one day in the car, he leaned over and kissed her. As the years passed, her attachment to him grew. When she was fifteen, Emily gave him her virginity, even though she knew he had a girlfriend.

That same year, Emily answered the phone one day, and it was her father, from whom she'd heard nothing for four long years. He told her to get together all the money she could and meet him at Grand Central Station. Emily headed for the station with $200. Phil appeared abruptly, yanked Emily behind a pillar, took the money from her, and jumped onto a train. Emily was shattered and tried to kill herself. "My mind went on some sort of carnival ride," she said. "And at the end of it was a whole medicine cabinet." Her mother took her to the emergency room. "I didn't know how to explain it other than to say, 'My dead father jumped out of Grand Central Station.' They really thought I was crazy." The resident psychiatrist kept Emily on the ward for twenty-three days, then advised Flora that Emily needed therapy. Three weeks after her release, Flora moved to Virginia, taking her reluctant daughter with her. "My mother dealt with problems by running away, and her idea of therapy was to buy a new house," Emily said.

In Virginia, Emily's mother found her a job doing bookkeeping for friends who owned a restaurant; Emily called them Uncle Eric and Aunt Suzette. Uncle Eric asked Emily to help out his brother, who owned a store, and the brother raped her after driving her to work. "It's not like on television," Emily said. "There's no black eye, and there's no knives and guns. It's five seconds. I was just stunned." She spent the next few days in a haze, then finally called the police, by which time the man had fled.

In the weeks that followed, Emily had severe headaches, and her breasts began to hurt. When Flora found out Emily was pregnant, she locked the doors and unplugged the phones while she decided what to do about it. "She told the school I had appendicitis," Emily said. "Every day she would come home and just scream. And then I'd hear her in her room crying and wailing in her shower. Then Uncle Eric and Aunt Suzette were coming over saying how I'm ruining their reputation. I was sixteen and I had no business having a child. But that whole experience was just insanity." locked the doors and unplugged the phones while she decided what to do about it. "She told the school I had appendicitis," Emily said. "Every day she would come home and just scream. And then I'd hear her in her room crying and wailing in her shower. Then Uncle Eric and Aunt Suzette were coming over saying how I'm ruining their reputation. I was sixteen and I had no business having a child. But that whole experience was just insanity."

Flora finally took Emily to a clinic for an abortion. Emily had been educated in Catholic schools even though her family wasn't Catholic, because Flora thought it was a better education. Emily had been confirmed in the faith; now she was afraid she would burn in hell. She shared her regrets with the clinician, so he sent her home. "That ride home with my mother was one of the worst experiences of my life," she recalled. Flora said that if Emily had really been raped, she wouldn't care about losing the baby, and when they got home, she arranged an abortion at another clinic. Emily's pregnancy was terminated five days later. "For a long time, I would calculate in my mind and imagine how old that baby would be from when I was sixteen," Emily said. "I would see a baby and start to cry."

Aunt Suzette had assured Emily that the rapist had left the country, but Emily thought she saw him everywhere. "I was in a panic," Emily said. "And one day, I was walking from the bathroom to the kitchen, and my mother whispered in my ear, 'This never happened.' And that was it. It was like a switch went off in my head. I never talked about it again. I tried never to think about it again. And eventually, it just sort of dissolved into my mind."

As abruptly as Flora had relocated to Virginia, she moved back to New York. For a few years, life returned to normal. Emily resumed her friendship with Blake. She went off to college, but dropped out to take care of her mother after Flora was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. Flora left Emily a small inheritance. In an eerie echo of Emily's final encounter with her father, she soon got a call from Blake asking for an urgent loan; she gave him $5,000, and he vanished.

Emily located him after a few years and asked about the loan; he said that he had some money to give her and told her to come over to collect it. "He gave me a drink with something in it," Emily said. "Next thing I know, I feel my clothes coming off. I'm seeing flashing lights and pictures. He was positioning my body, he was moving me around. I couldn't believe it. When I woke up, he was in the shower and I was shaking." Emily gathered her clothes and drove home. She was dating a policeman at the time, and when she told him what had happened, he took her to the precinct to report it. Blake was arrested, and the bringing of charges began. "They told me not to contact him, but I needed to know, I wanted to know bringing of charges began. "They told me not to contact him, but I needed to know, I wanted to know why why. I had known Blake for so long and he had been my best friend!" She called him, and he refused to talk because of the restraining order. Then he called her back and begged her not to go through with the charges.

Emily sensed that she was pregnant but couldn't face it: she took seven pregnancy tests, hoping that eventually one would be negative. She broke up with the policeman; her emotional life centered on Blake, the rape, and the pregnancy. At a hearing in her suit against him, when she realized that he might go to prison, she told the assistant district attorney during a recess that she couldn't see it through because she was pregnant by Blake. The attorney asked for a continuance, and Emily left the courthouse. "Blake ran after me and asked, 'What's going on?' And I told him, got in the car, made this crazy U-turn, and I drove."

Blake first convinced Emily not to have an abortion. "Then he said I didn't want my child to have its father in prison," she remembered. "'What are you going to tell it when it asks you where I am?' he said." That question brought up Emily's pain about her father's disappearance. "I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat. I was losing it," she told me. Eventually, she told the ADA that she would not go forward with the rape case. She asked Blake to leave her alone. "But he just kept checking in with me, I guess to make sure that I didn't change my mind. When I was five months and a week pregnant, he told me that he was with another woman, that she was five months pregnant, and that she was moving in with him." Though Emily had not imagined building a life with him, she was crushed.

At the time, Emily was working at a day-care center. "I was a very happy, fun person," she said. "I was around kids all the time, and they were my life. But when I was at home, I turned off the lights, I came upstairs, and I just cried until six forty-five the next morning, when it was time to start work." Then Delia was born. "She was like a salve, like a panacea, which is a lot of responsibility for a newborn," Emily said. She began to think about the blank line on Delia's birth certificate, the one for the second parent, and she decided to add Blake's name in case Delia ever needed another close genetic relative for a medical emergency. What Emily hadn't considered was that Blake would be notified, and when she went to the courthouse to pick up the revised document, he was there. A judge granted him visitation rights. "I realized, 'He's going to be tied to me for the rest of my life,'" Emily said. "I didn't sleep for days before his first visit." So began an uneasy detente. Blake paid child support and saw Delia erratically for two years, then drifted away again. "I was so attached to Delia that I couldn't let go at all," Emily said. "When she was small, she was like a toy, so cute, all huge cheeks. But when she was about four, she started asking me questions about her father and where she came from, and it was like someone took a hammer and cracked me open and I spilled out all over the room." said. "When she was small, she was like a toy, so cute, all huge cheeks. But when she was about four, she started asking me questions about her father and where she came from, and it was like someone took a hammer and cracked me open and I spilled out all over the room."

By then, Emily was running a group of day-care centers. "And one day, I just stopped," she said, "like a clock stops working." She began having panic attacks, blackouts, olfactory hallucinations, and sudden flashes of disorientation. Her hair was falling out. Her doctor attributed the symptoms to stress and advised psychiatric counseling. "He said he wanted me to speak to somebody and he was going into his office to find some names of people he'd recommend," she said. "I don't remember anything after that, until I was in my office at school, and my phone was ringing, and my assistant was banging on my door. She said, 'Miss Emily, Miss Emily! Your doctor's been calling here for an hour. He said that you left your coat and shoes, and are you okay?'" Emily looked down and saw that she was in wet stockings; it was snowing outside.

Emily became intensely agoraphobic and lost her job. "I don't remember how Delia got food," she said. "It got done. I couldn't leave the house, except to go to therapy. Then I couldn't leave the room. I wasn't sleeping for days at a time. I was fragmenting." A psychiatrist put her on antidepressants, and she did constant talk therapy with him, and she gradually began to reemerge. "He saved me," she said. Just as she was getting it together, Blake turned up at the front door to say that he wanted to see Delia. The familiar cycle recurred. He would come occasionally to visit, then vanish, over and over. Emily decided she had to be strong for Delia and not keep her from her father, but Blake's motives always seemed unclear. "I didn't know what to do because he was her father, and she knew it," Emily said. "If something happened to me, he could get her. So I had to make sure he wouldn't hurt her, and the only way to do that was to let him know her so he would care about her."

Blake's attention was never reliable. "When he wasn't around, Delia sometimes said to me, 'I wish I had my daddy here,'" Emily recalled. "He'd be gone a year, and then he would show up. She would ask where he is, and I'd say, 'He's working, maybe,' or 'He'll come when he has time,' or 'Let's do something instead.' I redirected her for years and years, and every time she asked, I started cascading down a hill again." At seven, Delia broke her leg and began crying for her father, so Emily called Blake; he returned the call five months later and started coming over again. Emily had had a brief romance and given birth to a son, Gideon, seven years younger than Delia. Blake told Emily that she belonged to him and that her new child was a betrayal. The sexual brutality his argument implied frightened her, and she decided to flee, so she moved the kids back to Virginia. his argument implied frightened her, and she decided to flee, so she moved the kids back to Virginia.

When I met Emily, Delia was ten and had recently won a national academic award and matriculated in a magnet school for gifted children. "She's never asked about how she came to exist, and I know she wonders," her mother said. "She and I have had conversations about my prickliness, how I pull away. I would never, ever, ever tell her that it has anything to do with her. I always tell her it's because of me, and because my mom pulled away from me. But I don't do it with her brother." Emily had recently become engaged, and she told me that her fiance, Jay, found this coldness toward Delia upsetting. Emily could not bring herself to tell him about Delia's origins in rape "Fix me," Emily said to me as we sat on the floor of her office, late at night, doing this interview. "Why can't I hug my daughter? I love her, but when she touches me, it feels like hundreds of razor blades scraping across my skin, like I'm going to die. I understand that I just have to let her because she's a child, and so I do, but in my mind, I go someplace else, and I know that she knows it. So now she asks permission. I prepare myself. There are rules, like she can't come up behind me. Sometimes she forgets, and I'll jump, like a cat that you put water on, because her father had this stealth ability to just appear in front of you, and you don't know where he came from. She inherited that."

It has been hard working around so large a secret. "She wrote me a really sad letter, a year and a half ago," Emily said. "It said, 'This little girl misses New York. This little girl misses her father.'" When Jay accompanied Emily and her two kids to New York for the funeral of a family friend, he encouraged her to contact Blake for Delia's sake. So she did, arranging for them to spend an afternoon together. When he came to pick her up, he met Jay. The episode proved to be a turning point for Emily. "As soon as I got back to Virginia, my pregnancy, the incident, it all came into my brain and my body at the same time," Emily said. She finally told Jay the truth, and he was shocked.

"She looks like Blake in some ways, but not as much as she did when she was small," Emily added. "She reminds me of me, and I attempt to focus on that. Even if I don't always love myself, I can love myself in her. But there's that other part that makes me struggle every single day, because while most mothers just go with their natural instincts, my instincts are horrifying. It's a constant, conscious effort to keep my instincts from taking over."

The idea of rape within marriage was introduced in the late 1970s by Diana E. H. Russell, who maintained that 14 percent of married women had been raped by a husband. In the late eighties and early nineties, the marital exception to rape laws was gradually removed from the books in most states, despite spirited protests from the political Right, including some who claimed, echoing the misogyny of the colonial era, that accusations of rape within marriage would be used by vengeful wives to persecute innocent husbands. Instead, marital rape most commonly comes up in court within a larger pattern of domestic violence. Cases such as the 1989 Burnham case, in which a woman accused her husband of seventy counts of rape, were instrumental in this shift. Victor Burnham had over many years subjected his wife, Rebecca, to "beatings, being struck by gun butts, being held at gunpoint, being threatened with death, being tied up and raped, being forced to solicit strange men for sexual threesomes, being photographed in pornographic poses, being shocked with a cattle prod, and being forced to have sex with the family dog." The trial included both pictorial evidence and sworn testimony from men who had been "invited" by Burnham to have sex with his wife and declined, recognizing Rebecca's fear. women had been raped by a husband. In the late eighties and early nineties, the marital exception to rape laws was gradually removed from the books in most states, despite spirited protests from the political Right, including some who claimed, echoing the misogyny of the colonial era, that accusations of rape within marriage would be used by vengeful wives to persecute innocent husbands. Instead, marital rape most commonly comes up in court within a larger pattern of domestic violence. Cases such as the 1989 Burnham case, in which a woman accused her husband of seventy counts of rape, were instrumental in this shift. Victor Burnham had over many years subjected his wife, Rebecca, to "beatings, being struck by gun butts, being held at gunpoint, being threatened with death, being tied up and raped, being forced to solicit strange men for sexual threesomes, being photographed in pornographic poses, being shocked with a cattle prod, and being forced to have sex with the family dog." The trial included both pictorial evidence and sworn testimony from men who had been "invited" by Burnham to have sex with his wife and declined, recognizing Rebecca's fear.

Louise McOrmond-Plummer, coauthor of Real Rape, Real Pain Real Rape, Real Pain and herself a rape survivor, wrote, "The woman raped by her partner was routinely blamed and told that since her rapist was her partner, it wasn't 'real' rape. Women such as myself were being told that our pain was an overreaction; the fact of being in a relationship meant that any sexual rights were void." and herself a rape survivor, wrote, "The woman raped by her partner was routinely blamed and told that since her rapist was her partner, it wasn't 'real' rape. Women such as myself were being told that our pain was an overreaction; the fact of being in a relationship meant that any sexual rights were void."

Ashley Green is blonde, slender, and fragile as a reed. She radiates a longing for protection. Growing up with poor white parents in western Pennsylvania, where her father worked intermittently as a coal miner, she had little of it. Both parents were negligent, physically abusive drug users. When Ashley's father despaired of finding work, they moved to Florida. Ashley would often come home from school to find her depressed mother lying on the floor exactly where she had lain in the morning. Ashley was never sure whether there would be food to eat or when the electricity was going to be disconnected again. She had just turned sixteen when she met thirty-five-year-old Martin at a party. During the next year, he accompanied Ashley to church, paid for her to attend volleyball camp, suggested that he would get her a car. She already had a nineteen-year-old boyfriend, but she did not discourage Martin's friendship, which was nonsexual in a way characteristic of men who are grooming a victim.

Martin eventually said that he needed to hire someone to clean his apartment and suggested that Ashley take the job. "I cleaned for a couple of hours, thought I had done a good job, and he said, 'You need to do it again. This isn't clean enough,' and was very harsh with me." He offered her liquor; once she was drunk, he sodomized her twice anally. of hours, thought I had done a good job, and he said, 'You need to do it again. This isn't clean enough,' and was very harsh with me." He offered her liquor; once she was drunk, he sodomized her twice anally.

In retrospect, the situation was clear to Ashley. "He knew what he had: a kid who wasn't being watched, who really wanted out of a very hostile and unpredictable home," she said. "He had food and transportation, these things my parents weren't going to provide. He had a nice apartment and a good job." Those advantages seemed like a step forward, so Ashley broke up with her boyfriend, dropped out of high school, and moved in with Martin. He turned out to be a drug user like her parents.

At seventeen, she became pregnant. Martin grew increasingly violent as the pregnancy progressed, beating Ashley so severely that she twice ran away to a shelter for battered women; once he stabbed her and she nearly died. "I was afraid he was either going to kill our child from beating me or take her from me when she was born," Ashley said. "I used to think if I could just take her from my stomach and hide her somewhere, maybe she would be born alive. I would pray, 'God, if you let my baby live, I'll be a good mother.'" In deference to her religious grandmother, Ashley married Martin just before their daughter was born. The beatings had put her repeatedly in preterm labor, a dangerous condition that can be brought on by stress; she held the pregnancy through multiple bouts, but when she felt the baby was really coming, she asked Martin to drive her to the hospital. He detoured to buy cocaine on the way, and Ashley arrived too late to receive licit drugs to blunt the pain of delivery.

Ashley instinctively loved her newborn girl, Sylvia, but had no idea what to do as a mother. "I was afraid of her. She was very colicky and very temperamental and cried day and night," Ashley remembered. The beatings continued, and sometimes Ashley could barely move. Ashley's aunt had persuaded her to report the abuse, so Martin moved them all to Alabama, beyond the reach of Florida law. When Sylvia was five months old, Ashley escaped with her to a shelter in Florida. They were allowed to stay for thirty days, and during that time Ashley got a driver's license, a car, and a job; arranged to stay with someone from her church until she found an apartment; and filed for divorce. When the baby would fall asleep, Ashley remembered, "I'd thank God I had her for one more day."

As the months passed, however, Ashley increasingly doubted her ability to take care of Sylvia on her own. When she worked, she lost food-stamp eligibility. Sylvia was getting sick frequently, so they needed better health insurance. So Ashley became a welfare mom, which meant better health care, but not enough money for rent. After a desperate year, she went back to Martin. "The day I packed my stuff, I still believed that he would get help and be okay," she said, "and we would be a family." Instead, Martin assaulted her sexually, then took Sylvia and sued for divorce. Ashley didn't see her daughter for three and a half months. Eventually she was granted joint custody, contingent on her continuing to live in Alabama. "It was like being held hostage," she said. Martin made a big show of his mistreatment of Sylvia. "He pulled up one day and there was marijuana smoke rolling out of the car. He actually tried to French-kiss her in front of me when she was three. She would come home with big bruises and knocks on her head." year, she went back to Martin. "The day I packed my stuff, I still believed that he would get help and be okay," she said, "and we would be a family." Instead, Martin assaulted her sexually, then took Sylvia and sued for divorce. Ashley didn't see her daughter for three and a half months. Eventually she was granted joint custody, contingent on her continuing to live in Alabama. "It was like being held hostage," she said. Martin made a big show of his mistreatment of Sylvia. "He pulled up one day and there was marijuana smoke rolling out of the car. He actually tried to French-kiss her in front of me when she was three. She would come home with big bruises and knocks on her head."