The Executive Director of Health & Wellness at Tufts University blends memoir and analysis to examine her own rape in the early 1980s and the continued marginalization of sexual violence by U.S. law enforcement: Rape is the least reported and least successfully prosecuted major felony, with fewer than 3 percent of reported rapes resulting in conviction
Blame and objectification of the victim is a barbaric age-old tradition that Bowdler bracingly examines in her urgent book ... Bowdler incisively dissects the language surrounding sexual assault ... Is Rape a Crime? forcefully advocates for a more humane protocol ... As for the question she poses in the book’s title, Bowdler leaves readers with a searing edict. 'We have to do better than this.'
blends Bowdler’s own narrative with detailed research about how law enforcement—from crime labs to individual cops—fail rape victims. Bowdler is candid about how trauma from the break-in, rapes and police inaction still affects her entire life. She is now a wife and mother of two, but piecing her life together following the rapes has been a slow process. Understandably, a lot of conversations about rape victims focus on positives, like their strength to survive. Bowdler’s voice in the conversation will make sure you know that her survival is hard won.
Bowdler’s combined memoir and manifesto is provocative and illuminating ... 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.
