Is Rape a Crime?

April 15, 2020
The executive director of Health and Wellness Services at Tufts University tells the intimate, powerful story of how attempting to bring her rapists to justice forged her dedication to activism. The defining trauma of Bowdler's life took place in Boston in the summer of 1984, when two men--self-confessed serial burglars--broke into her apartment and robbed and raped her. Even though there was ample evidence at the crime scene and Bowdler dutifully completed a rape kit with police, her case languished in the system. She received no answers from the detective assigned to her case--one of "a spate of break-in and rapes in the greater Boston area" during that summer--forcing her to endure years of personal and professional trauma. It's exceedingly depressing that so much of this work portrays the author having to undergo the repeated judgment of others, including her family. Sharply encapsulating a victim's dilemma, she writes, "decisions on whether to report are heavily socially informed--victims worry that the rape will not be considered important, that they will not be safe, that they won't be believed, that the crime won't be followed up on, and sometimes they see keeping the perpetrator out of trouble as self-preservation." Indeed, as Bowdler notes, the "strong, self-assured woman of just a few days [before]" vanished with the rape, replaced by someone filled with shame and self-doubt. Divided into three parts--"A Memoir," "An Investigation," and "A Manifesto"--the author moves effectively among the personal and the political. She poignantly explains how watching the 1991 Anita Hill hearings (and witnessing the despicable reactions by male senators and media to her testimony) helped crystallize her activist mission, and she consistently shows herself to be a tireless advocate. Ultimately, she has learned to ask: If rape is considered a crime, why were there no investigations into her own? And when will anything change? An urgent, necessary, stark exploration of "one of the most horrific violations that can happen to a human being."

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Starred review from April 27, 2020
The argument that fuels social justice advocate Bowdler’s provocative debut lies in its title: American society doesn’t regard rape seriously, as evinced by its few investigations, scant prosecutions, and minuscule conviction rates. In 1984, at age 24, Bowdler was raped in her Boston apartment by two men during a break-in. As hospital nurses collected evidence, she came to grasp that “it will be my lifelong torment. I can never again be a person who does not have this story chasing me.” Police insensitivity traumatized her further, stunting her career, and personal relationships for years. In 1993 she earned a Masters in Public Health from Harvard and later took a university position helping students to report sexual assault. Spurred to advocacy by a 2007 Boston Globe article exposing thousands of unexamined rape kits at a state crime lab, she eventually learned detectives never investigated her case and lost her kit: “My frame shifted slowly... Why had I believed ‘solving’ my attack would lead to individual healing, and what is the value of personal justice if not tied to systemic change?” Rape cases, she argues, are low-priority for police because they’re less likely to be solved, but by prioritizing investigating over solving, victims will feel seen, heard, and validated, and more perpetrators will be caught. Exhaustive research adds veracity to Bowdler’s powerful account of rape’s devastating aftermath. This is a brilliant study of how society views rape.

July 1, 2020
Bowdler's combined memoir and manifesto is provocative and illuminating. As a recent graduate in the early 1980s, Bowdler was raped in her home during a break-in. Her attack was one of several in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood of Boston that year that prompted the launch of the Boston Sexual Assault Unit. The trauma derailed Bowdler's career and echoed through the next 35 years of her life. Gradually she built a life with her wife and children and earned a master's degree in public health. In 2007, a Boston Globe article about thousands of untested rape kits pushed Bowdler to become an advocate. By speaking out about being a survivor, Bowdler began pushing for change while seeking answers about the BPD investigation into her attack. Her analysis of the lack of investigation into rape cases and lenient sentencing for convicted rapists strengthens her argument that rape is not treated as a crime in the way that other felonies are. Bowdler's memoir is a thought-provoking, personal account of violence and its long-lasting ripples.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2020

Bowdler, executive director of health & wellness, Tufts University, recounts the gut-wrenching experience of being raped and burgled by two men in Boston in 1984. They broke into her apartment, blindfolded her, repeatedly raped her, and then left her hog-tied with a phone cord. She went to the emergency room and endured an hours-long physical exam that was also traumatizing. That exam produced a rape kit that inexplicably disappeared. From the outset, Bowdler experienced a minimization of her assault from law enforcement. When she followed up with the police, she was ignored by detectives. She internalized this callous dismissal, which made the healing process, already elusive for many sexual assault survivors, all the more difficult. Upon learning, decades later, that thousands of rape kits sat in warehouses untested, she became determined to find out what happened to hers. Much like Emily Winslow's Jane Doe January, Bowdler's quest for justice, while a long shot, helped her to achieve some measure of closure. VERDICT Chanel Miller's Know My Name demonstrated that coming forward to tell one's story is in itself a powerful form of victim advocacy; Bowdler does the same in this affecting account. [See Prepub Alert, 12/9/19.]--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

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January 1, 2020

Executive director of Health & Wellness at Tufts University, Bowdler draws on her own rape in 1980s Boston to examine the nature and legal status of what is the least reported and least successfully prosecuted major felony, with fewer than three percent of rapists ever serving time for their crime.

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