When reporting on heinous crimes, there is a tendency in the media and amongst many people to call the perpetrators monsters or something else to that effect; to dehumanise the perpetrator.

When we classify all perpetrators as monsters, we miss them, because rapists and murderers are not monsters. They are people, like everyone else. They are siblings, parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, children, colleagues, public figures, friends, spouses. They read, watch TV, see films, play video games, participate in community events, host dinner parties, work in respectable jobs, do housework, have pets.

The purpose of this rhetoric is threefold. For the average person, it protects them. They are uncomfortable with the idea that the lives of murderers and rapists look so much like their own. It is, I think, one of of the many reasons the Gisele Pelicot case was made into such a spectacle. The sheer number of ordinary men (at least 72) from all walks of life who took the opportunity to rape an unconscious woman made the case extraordinary for people who are unaware of rape statistics.

In no particular order, here are the professions of the 51 men who could be identified:

• Electrician
• Estate agent
• Firefighter
• Supermarket employee
• Journalist
• Construction worker
• Hairdresser
• Delivery driver
• Truck driver
• Ambulance driver
• Gardener
• IT specialist
• Tiler
• Biker
• Plumber
• Boxer
• Builder
• Roofer
• DJ
• Club manager
• Warehouse worker
• Painter
• Decorator
• Hotel manager
• Refrigeration specialist
• Baker
• Cleaner

The overwhelming majority of them were fathers and husbands. Some (8) had prior sexual assault, rape, domestic violence, stalking, or drug convictions. Most (43) did not.

These people could have been good people, but they weren’t, through circumstance and choice. And people don’t like that closeness. 72 men, over the course of a decade, chose to head to a stranger’s house to rape his unconscious wife, taking him at his word that it was a kink and never thinking to check with her. One of them missed the birth of his daughter to rape Pelicot.

All of those men look like someone you know. And so, many choose to fall back on the monster rhetoric to avoid having to confront that closeness.

The second purpose of the rhetoric is to protect abusers from being found out in the first place. Abuse of others is more common amongst the powerful; when someone feels immune from consequences, they are more likely to do it.

And so, the powerful construct this narrative because it is in their interest to do so. They want to continue to abuse, so they build and protect this idea that it is monsters, not people like them, who rape and maim and kill, so no one suspects them. Psychology Today has a great primer on power dynamics in the context of sexual assault.

The third purpose kicks in when one is finally caught, and aims to let them get away with murder. Many people don’t believe one could be guilty when they don’t fit the dingy, loner, antisocial stereotype. As we saw in the Pelicot case, people who commit atrocities are very much humans; people leading otherwise ordinary lives. By constructing perpetrators as monsters, those in power manipulate perceptions to create “evidence” they are sacrosanct; they don’t look like an abuser, therefore they can’t be! You see this over and over, with media and people who know the accused protesting they couldn’t possibly be guilty of an atrocity because they’re so nice, they’re a sports star, they have a family, and so on.

Putting all of this together, you get ordinary people (overwhelmingly men) committing acts of violence against people they view as less powerful than them, and then manipulating others and the broader narrative so they can get away with it. Often, mental illness in an abused or raped individual is used as evidence they are lying, with no one stopping to think about why that person is ill in the first place. More likely than not, their story of being violated is true, and caused or worsened the mental illness their abuser is now weaponising against them.

False reports of sexual assault are rare. The rate of false sexual assault allegations in Australia is 5%, and that’s just the ones that got reported. Over 90% of sexual assaults are not taken to the police at all. If you factor that in, counting unreported assaults in the 95%, the amount of false reports drops below 1%. It shrinks even more when you consider the 5% figure includes cases closed due to a lack of evidence, because the victim withdrew due to mental health reasons, or any other procedural reason the case may not have proceeded. Hell, cops are known to ignore sexual assault reports completely arbitrarily.

Factors such as gender identity, class, race, sexual orientation, disability, and more come into this, as they always do. Such is the case of American serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, a cop who specifically targeted Black women. He’d pull them over for no reason or visit them in hospital and then sexually assault or rape them, threatening to arrest them if they resisted. Presumably, he targeted Black women as he knew they were less likely to be believed.

You can see the factors at play in Holtzclaw’s case. Being a police officer would make him well-regarded in society, and also give him power over others. The article I linked demonstrates the third factor nicely, by including irrelevant details about Holtzclaw – his college football days and his degree – to garner sympathy for the convicted rapist sentenced to 263 years in prison.

It is crucial to remember that people who commit heinous acts are people, just like the rest of us. Thinking of perpetrators as monsters mean people search for monsters, and overlook the very ordinary abusers in front of them who commit atrocities out of sight. The monster rhetoric is not just misleading, it is actively harmful as it leads to people not believing victim-survivors when their abuser is ordinary, which will be the case the overwhelming majority of the time.