The thing is that rape is no longer used as a legitimate trauma, but as a shorthand. It's brought out when one of two things is needed: 1) To give a character, male or female, an excuse to be hard, angry, angsty, or some combination 2) to show the "dangers" in the world by having the character "pay" for their lifestyle. Rape itself is a legitimate, scarring trauma and the reason I have minimal tolerance for it in fiction is because it is cheapened by simply being used as an excuse to have characters act in a stereotyped way, or as a shorthand for "dangerous life."

Everything I've rad about this book, good and bad, makes me think that the rape of one character fits intothe former, and the other into the latter.

There's is also the equally unpleasant factor of the fact that Adam TOLD her not to go. This adds the element of "paying the price for not obeying your man." Had she "obeyed" she would not have been raped, therefore, it was "wrong" of her to make her own decision to do what she wanted with her own life. This is a theme I have even less of a tolerance for than the rape shorthand.