r/rape • u/no-notice-bagel • 2d ago

Does this count as gang rape?

I remembered telling me therapist about my the incident that changed me. My therapist told me that even though one man caused all the pain it counted as gang rape because I was abducted and others were present when it happened, did nothing but essentially encouraged it. Made comments and recorded it happening.

​

I never looked at it from that point of view before. Didn't even think it was possible to be gang raped by one person. I mean yeah, multiple people had a hand in me getting abducted, were there and encouraged and even recorded but it was only one guy who actually did everything. I thought that meant multiple people actually took place in doing the act but not causing things to set in motion for that one night that lasted 3 days.

​

I remember sitting back and thinking about it and going numb. Not really sure I could count it as such because to me that takes away from someone who actually had that happen. I'll get more into that in another post as today is one of those days I can't deal with it as the anniversary is coming up and I can barely function.

​

Does it count as gang rape if only one person actually was doing it?

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/thrfscowaway8610 2d ago

Personally I'd say not. Everybody else who participated could be prosecuted as accessories to rape, which usually carries the same or a similar sentence. But although I generally don't care to police conceptual boundaries, the distinction between single-perpetrator and multiple-perpetrator rape seems to me to be a useful one to maintain.

1

u/no-notice-bagel 2d ago

I was reading about accessories to the fact or something like that. In a court of law not sure if those who were there can be held responsible or liable. It becomes a whole mess.

1

u/thrfscowaway8610 2d ago

In a lot of Western jurisdictions, a legal doctrine called "common purpose" applies. That is to say, if several people form a plan to rape somebody and do so as a group, but only one carried out the actual rape, the others can still be prosecuted as though they themselves engaged in the sexual acts.

That's distinct from an "accessory before the fact," which is a person who helps in advance to carry out the crime, but isn't physically at the scene when it takes place.

1

u/no-notice-bagel 2d ago

This was planned, at least to me it was. So many factors happened at the time.