RAPE: The Bait and the Trap

A useful handbook on rape by a member of the Marin County, California, Rape Crisis Center. It lacks both the historical scope and feminist ideology of Brownmiller's recent study (p. 881) and stays firmly centered on the pragmatic details of the crime--as well as the psychology of perpetrators and victims--with the aim of reducing its incidence. Thus there are wise (but possibly galling to a feminist) admonitions against females hitchhiking, entering bars, or otherwise engaging in conversations with strangers (and, often acquaintances)--actions which to the violence-prone and sexually insecure, seem to suggest that the woman really has a desire to ""get it."" The chief flaw of the book is that MacKellar bases all her assumptions and projected statistics on information from only one study (the Menachem Amir report from Philadelphia), with never a word about more recent data. But she does cogently shatter the many myths about our least punished (though most condemned) transgression, and she makes intelligent suggestions for the overhaul of the legal procedures that presently safeguard the criminal while investigating the victim.