There is a wealth of literature, especially in genocide studies (see, for instance, Baum 2008; Waller 2007), trying to establish the psychological profiles of perpetrators of extreme violence. So far, however, apart from a few very interesting case-study-based publications (see, for instance, Eriksson Baaz 2009), there has been no major research undertaken on perpetrators of sexual violence in general, much less on perpetrators of sexual violence against men. Skjelsbæk (2013, 3) has listed a series of potential psychological profiles of wartime sexual violence perpetrators against both men and women, among which are those with “psychopathologies such as deviant sexuality; traumatized individuals, i.e. people with a history of trauma, which may include experiences of sexual abuse and/or extreme violence; dysfunctional individuals who are seeking misplaced emotional comfort; ideological dispositions that would render the person prone to dehumanizing others; paranoia, delusions, sadistic personality traits”. Genocide studies have also shown how the heavily militarized and violent environment in which individuals are placed facilitates the acting out of individuals with such psychological traits. It is, however, unclear whether such characteristics can apply irrespectively of the gender of victims, and my own interviews do not entirely support such a typology: some of the perpetrators I have met were at the time very young recruits who did not seem to be particularly deviant, but who, if their stories are to be believed, lacked strength of will to resist peer pressure. And given the lack of detailed and systematic empirical data on perpetrators of wartime sexual violence, it is difficult to say whether perpetrators of violence against men display a different profile from others.
Of course, it seems that in some cases sexual violence against both men and women is perpetrated by the very same individuals, but there is also indication that at least in the case of Eastern DRC there are differences in terms of profiles (proportionally more civilian perpetrators in the case of sexual violence against women, for instance,) and of gender (40% of female perpetrators in the case of sexual violence against women, vs. 10% of female perpetrators in the case of sexual violence against men) (Johnson et al. 2010). Empirical data and evidence is unfortunately still too scarce to be able to say if this applies to other case studies—say, Bosnia-Herzegovina or Sri Lanka—and if differences in profiles highlighted in genocide studies—for instance, between organizers, executors, fanatics and so on—apply in the case of wartime sexual violence against men.
Several researchers (see, for instance, Skjelsbæk 2015; Eriksson Baaz 2009) have proposed a typology of narratives offered by perpetrators of sexual violence themselves, or of the ways they are depicted by others. These typologies, pertaining to perpetrators of sexual violence against both men and women, display some resemblances, but also some remarkable differences, with the stories I have collected. The Congolese soldiers interviewed by Eriksson Baaz (2009), for instance, rationalized rape in different ways, as pertaining to their identity as heterosexually potent fighters, as a result of their sexual needs and desire or as a consequence of their moral disengagement and of the normalization of violence. Interestingly, these categories overlap to a certain extent with those highlighted by Skjelsbæk (2015) in her study of the sentencing judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). According to her analysis, these legal texts built three main narratives on perpetrators: the “narratives of chivalry”, portraying the perpetrators as protective or driven by their sexual desire, the “narratives of opportunism” describing perpetrators, some of them sadistic and abusive, as taking advantage of the situation, and finally the “narratives of remorse” whereby perpetrators were entering guilty pleas and expressed remorse. If opportunism, context-related variables or remorse clearly appear in the stories of sexual violence against men I have collected, it is not the case of chivalry or sexual desire, perhaps logically considering the heterosexual norms within which most combatants operate. An alternative, but minority, discourse on the “usefulness” and “necessity” of using sexual violence against men also emerged. In their own ways, each of the narratives I have collected provides “excuses” for the perpetration of sexual violence against men, and attempts to downplay the individual responsibility of the narrator. Most perpetrators or bystanders I spoke with, whether soldiers or members of armed groups, expressed discomfort if not remorse at what they did or let happen without reacting, and all strongly emphasized the role played by the context and/or by peer pressure. Such narratives of “reluctance” can be interpreted as a genuine expression of remorse, or can pertain to a more down-to-earth wish to improve my opinion on them.
It is worth underscoring the fact that my sample is context-specific. The narratives I am describing in the forthcoming paragraphs are a series of plots or of stories that I have collected in a specific region, the Eastern Congo, Burundi and to a lesser extent Rwanda, during a specific period (2009–2014). There are good reasons to assume that narratives in, say, Sri Lanka, Bosnia-Herzegovina or Israel/Palestine would display at least partly diverging characteristics, if just because the conflict settings and institutional contexts are themselves vastly different. The lack of existing research focusing specifically on perpetrators of wartime sexual violence against men[8] unfortunately prevents me from relying on comparable work elsewhere, and it is in my opinion not possible to assume that their stories are entirely similar to those of perpetrators of wartime sexual violence against women. In addition, the people I spoke with are former or current soldiers or members of armed groups who had at the time of the interview never had to answer for their crimes in front of a court—or to provide testimony for what they saw. This prevents a systematic comparison, for instance, with the testimonies collected by the ICTY regarding the few men who were accused of sexual violence against both men and women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and whose narratives had probably been impacted by detention, by the need to come up with a proper defense strategy and so on.
Lastly, and before further detailing these narratives, it is interesting to reflect on the discursive strategies that the perpetrators I spoke with deployed in order to talk about what happened. How do they locate themselves in these stories? Do they accept responsibility and use “I” instead of a more diluting “we”, or of a discharging “them”? Not surprisingly, few accepted their own direct responsibility in the perpetration of sexual violence against men, and when they did, they downplayed it by denying being at its origin, or by depicting their own role as minor, or justified it by the abuse of alcohol and drugs, or by peer pressure. Oftentimes the shift from “I” to “we” or even “them” occurred as soon as the issue of sexual violence against men came up, many adopting the position of the bystander, and using “they”. The few individuals who admitted that they had directly taken part in sexual violence against men, and who had thus started their stories using “I” almost always switched to “we” or “them” when it came to explaining why these acts were committed. As I was sometimes meeting survivors and perpetrators during the same research stay, over quite short periods of time, I was struck by how their refusal to endorse the role of agents echoed with the way many survivors describe sexual violence, as if it had been inflicted on others and not on themselves. In the stories I have collected, it seems that sexual violence against men is so shameful and stigmatizing that neither victims nor perpetrators want to be directly associated with it—it is an “othering” violence, perpetrated on others by others.
8
Survivors of sexual violence seem to attract much more academic interest and media attention than perpetrators.