Aftershock of Inmate Rape

April 17 -- Michael Robtoy says he is living proof of why people should care that tens of thousands of men are being raped behind bars every year.

When inmates who have been sexually violated repeatedly are finally freed from their incarceration, they will be "time bombs," and they will one day "explode," he says. And that's exactly what happened to Robtoy.

Prisoner rights activists say more than 90 percent of inmates return to the community within a year, so prisons are, in effect, churning out people who may be more violent than when they went in.

"It's really clear that the most effective way to turn a nonviolent person into a violent one is to send them to prison," says Harvard University criminologist James Gilligan.

Robtoy says his story begins with a sexual assault at a youth facility in California.

"I was beaten and then subsequently raped," says Robtoy. "There [were] five that came in my cell and I was physically raped by three, repeatedly."

Robtoy describes the experience as "humiliating, degrading," and "something that's not supposed to happen."

And that violence on the inside, he says, led to violence on the outside.

'Regaining' One's 'Manhood'

When Robtoy got out of the juvenile facility, he went on to what he describes as a "homophobic crime spree," beating and robbing gay men in an attempt, he says, to regain his manhood. It culminated in murder.

He strangled David King, a gay man, and is now serving a life sentence in Washington state. Robtoy says prison rape can turn victims into victimizers.

Gilligan agrees completely. He says inmate rape — which is about power, not sex — has helped turn America's prisons into "monster factories."

"Rape is a crime of violence," says Gilligan. "It's a way of exerting dominance over another person and humiliating them totally. And nothing stimulates violence as much as feeling humiliated.

"The man who's been raped feels his manhood has been taken away from him. The only way to restore their sense of being an effective, dominant person — rather than the dominated — is by means of violence against other people."