“A former security guard who lured a young co-worker to a hotel room and sexually assaulted her under the guise of ‘rape training’ has been sentenced to one year house arrest. Robert Mayer choked back tears in court yesterday as he apologized for the bizarre 2006 attack… Court heard Mayer was a security guard at Great-West Life when he befriended the then 20-year-old victim, a co-worker’s girlfriend. Mayer gave the woman a job helping him with security at the Galaxy roller rink and told her she’d have to complete mandatory ‘rape training’ if she wanted to keep it. ‘She was absolutely humiliated by this incident and she still suffers to this day,’ said Crown attorney Melinda Murray. Mayer told the young woman he was a licensed counsellor and gained her trust after she confided in him about personal problems she was having, Murray said. ‘She said she was in a very vulnerable place and found it comforting for her to speak to someone she thought had proper counselling training,’ Murray said. The woman initially refused to take the ‘rape training’ but relented after Mayer continued to prod her over the course of several months. Mayer and the woman met at the Carlton Inn, where the woman continued to express misgivings about the ‘training.’ The two talked for an hour before Mayer convinced her to accompany him to a room. Once inside, Mayer shoved the woman on a bed, tore her clothes off and fondled her breasts in what was the first of 10 ‘rape scenarios’ Mayer would subject her to over the next several hours. Mayer coerced the crying woman several times to continue ‘training,’ Murray said. In one ’scenario,’ Murray stood behind the woman and placed her in a choke hold, bruising her neck. In another, Mayer had the woman lie naked on the bed while he kissed and fondled her. ‘He told her he would do anything to go out on a date with her,’ Murray said. None of the ’scenarios’ included intercourse or penetration.” — The Winnipeg Sun (Canada)

(Thanks to Peter for the link.)

If you google “rape training,” you’ll get a pretty large number of results. Of course, most of these are for professionals (policemen, doctors, therapists) who need sensitivity training. There are also some self-defense courses for women to learn martial arts and the like. None of these involve going alone to a hotel room with a coworker and submitting to rape simulations. That’s so outlandish that it’s difficult to understand how the victim put herself in such a position.

Then again, let’s give the idea a fair shake. Simulations are used in all sorts of training programs. For example, soldiers fight a thousand virtual wars before ever fighting a real one. Simulations enhance their ability to deal with honest-to-goodness mayhem and violence when it occurs. Why should the same logic not apply to rape? Maybe women — and men, let’s not be sexist about it — would be better prepared to deal with potential rapes if they all had to undergo rape training sessions. Yes? No? It would certainly raise some charged questions about how realistic the scenarios should be. Would you drive over to the Rape Institute for your little session? Or would you sign up and then, on some random night, an instructor would leap out of the bushes and grab you from behind?

You can practically imagine the weird bits of rape comedy that would ensue. Like, some guy starts to assault you in a desolate parking lot. You think it’s your instructor but really it’s a bona fide rapist. You kick him in the nuts, elbow him in the spleen, knee him in the kidney, then say, “How am I doing? Do I pass? Hey, can I talk to you about financial aid or do I have to talk to the bursar’s office about that… Shit, are you ok? Did you forget your male genital protection device? I thought all you instructors wore cups…”

Or maybe — to put a sort of Candidean spin on the whole thing — the thugs who harbor rapist tendencies would all sign up to be rape trainers. In that way, rape training would transform potential rapists into people who actually teach others how to defend themselves against rapists… Ok, no, maybe not. These rape trainers would never quite get the violence out of their systems. The rape simulation protocols would never enable them to get their rocks off. They’d probably abuse their power all the time. If you can’t trust priests and schoolteachers, who too often abuse their authority, how could you trust anyone who wanted to be a rape trainer?

Which brings the focus right back to this story. How could the victim have trusted this guy who wanted to take her to a hotel room, oblige her to lie naked on a bed, and undergo a series of simulated rapes?

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