Why Do States Use Sexual Torture against Political Prisoners? Evidence from Saddam Hussein's Prisons

What motivates officials of government security agencies to use sexual torture against political prisoners? This article analyzes a sample of thirty-two rape and sexual torture survivor narratives (nineteen female, thirteen male), taken from a larger database of victim narratives of human rights violations under Saddam Hussein's regime. It uses narrative analysis to explore four hypotheses about the causes of rape and sexual torture and presents excerpts from victim narratives to develop our understanding of how and why sexual torture occurs. Support is found for three perpetrator motivations. First, some rapes were opportunistic criminal acts, undertaken by security personnel taking advantage of their positions of power. Second, some perpetrators used rape and sexual torture as methods of last resort, to force a confession when less severe methods of torture failed. Third, interrogators used the threat of rape or rape of female relatives as a way to force male relatives to confess. No evidence is found for a fourth hypothesis, that sexual torture was used against men and women who violated gender norms as symbolic of political opposition. The use of sexual torture varied by gender: women were more often raped as crimes of opportunity or as a mechanism for coercing confessions from male relatives, and men were more often raped as a severe form of torture used when other methods failed. Sexual torture and rape employ existing gender hierarchies to intensify dominance of the torturer over the victim and increase the pain, humiliation, and coercion of torture.