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Frank “actually described two other rapes he did… And Frank had no idea that what he was describing to me were acts of rape.”

This quotation occurs in Chapter 10. Krakauer has interrupted the narration of the unfolding events of the Missoula rape crisis to include background information from an interview with Dr. David Lisak, one of the country’s top researchers on acquaintance rape. (Lisak appears later in the story to give educational testimony during Jordan Johnson’s rape trial.) Lisak is discussing one of the subjects of his clinical research, a young man given the alias Frank. Frank. Lisak says, has the psychological profile and narcissism he came to see in many of the unknowing rapists he interviewed. Frank pompously describes getting girls blackout drunk and taking them upstairs at frat parties to have sex with them while they are unconscious. The quotation is significant because it is one of the few attempts in Missoula to delve deeper into the psychology of rapists. Krakauer learns that rapists are often unaware or in denial of the violent and criminal nature of their actions, and that there is little in their external behavior to differentiate them from anyone else. They could be star students or accomplished athletes, and popular with their friends and classmates.

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