This paper describes the conceptual framework for a rape empathy training program for criminal justice workers. The framework will serve as the guidelines for a planned program manual. Together, this paper and the future manual will serve to encourage empathy in workers who are willing to foster empathy but who are inhibited from feeling empathy by a lack of emotional and intellectual awareness of rape trauma. Eight premises are listed which serve as the basis for the paper and the proposed program. A presentation is given of the three-phase program, which is based on: (1) the process of systematic sensitization, a self-awareness process which helps develop the practice of emotional involvement; and (2) the concept of the disruptive entry spectrum, a way of segmentizing rape trauma in order to help a person to understand and experience the various aspects of the trauma. The disruptive entry spectrum is described as an original concept which, it is hoped, will help individuals to relate to the trauma experience in partial steps, drawing nearer to the fullness of understanding as the training program advances. (Author/NB)