Paraphilic coercive disorder: Contagious virus?

I posted last week about a proposal to create a new mental disorder in the DSM-V for preferential rapists. A shocking news story out of Australia makes me think that if Coercive Paraphilic Disorder exists, it must be contagious. Not just contagious, but virulently contagious in certain all-male environments.

Of the 198 students at St Paul's College at the University of Sydney, a large proportion were apparently infected with a highly contagious form of the virus. If Paraphilic Coercive Disorder makes it into the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, St. Paul's will be Ground Zero for the epidemic.

According to an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald, men at the elite, all-male college proudly set up a pro-rape Facebook group called "Define Statutory" that promoted sexual aggression against women. But the elite students did not stop with words. They fostered an alcohol-fueled climate in which rapes were common, most sexual assaults went unreported, and women students felt so unsafe that they quit school, the story reports.

Reporter Ruth Pollard documented a series of rapes and sexual assaults, including one incident in which about 30 drunk, naked men broke into a college and surrounded a young woman, touching and taunting her.

The good news is that, if it's a contagious illness, there could be an immunization like the one for the H1N1 virus. So, while the DSM developers are frenetically creating new diagnoses, let's not forget to work on finding some cures, too.

The Sydney Morning Herald article is HERE.