I find the concept tasteless at best, and horrifically offensive at worst; I've seen this be used for both genders, although I will get to that despite this being mainly about women.
Personally, the only times I find using this theme in fiction appropriate is strictly for writing books that bring awareness to it and it MUST not be used to drive a romantic plot. I find it most offensive when victims of any form of abuse, sexual or physical, have been mainly portrayed by media (and by society as a byproduct) as "broken" people that can only be fixed by a special person who can solve all their problems. Think "manic pixie dream girl" except probably worse and even more intolerable. It's just not realistic and all it does is minimize the gravity of a traumatic experience nobody would want to go through.
If you do decide to pursuit it as a driving plot, you had better be prepared to go through weeks of research about the trauma, aftermath, and recovery following it. While I don't want to police people and what they want to write, sexual assault to drive a plot or the character development of a person shouldn't be used in a setting that isn't grounded heavily in reality-- any fantastical aspects, just seems to come off as disingenuous and cheap no matter how good your intentions are. In other genres, you could acknowledge it, but I've only seen this once in all the books I've read and it was used in passing to drive home how depraved society became after it broke down (it was in a post-dystopia novel, but it was used in one line to describe a flashback a character had during a torture scene in which her captors started to cut her fingers off and she was increasingly afraid they would do what they did to her mother before killing her. It was a difficult passage to read through.)
It is risky business, because realistically, writing an entire novel about someone recovering from this would primarily be read by either a target audience for purposes of being a PSA type of story, or by people who had suffered through it and needed a way to cope with how they were feeling or find some way to not feel alone about their experience (such as the women and girls who wrote letters to the author of Speak, a young adult novel primarily centered around a girl who was dealing with recovering and getting her life back together after being assaulted at a party. I had to read it in high school, and my naivety made me miss so many subtle hints about why she was the way she was. Rereading it as an adult 8 years later, I didn't need to get to the middle of the book to see why she acted the way she did.).
Re: for men, I have seen this be used by young and ignorant beginner fiction authors, only they often force it to drive a romantic plot in BL fanfiction. Typically, it is the more feminine looking young man that endures it, and the end result is that their partner must essentially kiss their trauma away. In essence, the event is trivialized and is used to infantilize the victim. By infantilize, I mean the author will portray resulting PTSD or anxiety symptoms in a reductive way that is seen as "cute" because the significant other will 'comfort' the other person. There's also always a revenge element to it, but it does nothing but put me off from bothering with the rest of it. I partially attribute this to a dubious idea of what "Hurt & Comfort" can be for a theme of the fanfic. Almost always, FF.net has mostly assault/similar traumatic experiences under this category using BL pairings. I say young and ignorant, because this can be unlearned so long as they don't ask for critique from people their age who are just as ignorant about the topic. Typically, this isn't even necessary-- most people just wise up as time passes and they learn more about the world around them.
Another thing is that whoever does the assault, you CANNOT and MUST not portray them as anything but simply the antagonist. Why would you insult the victims reading your story, or really any woman, by making the one who did it sympathetic in any way? They were the one who may as well have murdered the victim; the only character we should sympathize with is the victim. Not the abuser.
There's also the fact that it does not happen solely to straight women, it can really happen to women regardless of their sexuality or even gender alignment. Sexual violence is a complex and sensitive matter that requires much more effort and tact to write than it may be worth if you don't intend on using it to spread awareness about it to others or start a conversation by giving others a voice with it. If you aren't willing to do that nor are you willing to dedicate a lot of time to researching the matter, exposing yourself to a lot of different experiences/perspectives from civilian points of view in addition to academic writings on the topic in sociological and psychological fields, you are better off writing something else. Really think about if you're doing anything good with using rape/assault as a plot device for a character in a fictional universe where it's almost purely fantasy in nature. If you just can't think of any other ways to make a woman in the story seem complex or show an ability to become a strong person without resorting to that, perhaps you need to reevaluate what makes you believe 'good writing' for women is.
