What is it with CLINT and rape scenes?

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He mostly makes films set in lawless worlds where order and civility have broken down to a level of anarchy. As such, he depicts violence, both conventional and sexual, to show how out of control the world has become.

Is his use of violence (and by extension sexual violence) gratuitous? Possibly, but it's there to create an atmosphere/commentary on the world being depicted.

Some of this has been covered, but here it is: Rape was extremely common up until recent times. And even now it is more common than you might like to believe. But in times where law enforcement was lacking and life was lived out in the rough and tough wilderness, rape was something that happened a lot. Just read some of the stories in the bible. Heck, even god commanded the Hebrews to take some of the women as concubines and the men raped them. So in esscence even god had people being raped. That was common place back then and was in the old west. Also, if you want to show how "unlawful" a place was, just show rape. If you want to cause your audience to hate a certain group, just show them raping a sweet young girl. The use of rape in the instances you showed made total sense.

If I have to judge by the movies mentioned by the OP, I would say there is nothing with Clint and rapes: in two of the three movies there is no rape, but almost rape; in the other, the woman likes it in the end (whether you find it disgusting or not is another thing).

“A Perfect World” with Kevin Costner had an attempted rape scene in the beginning too.

It was part of the rape culture in the 1880's. Wasn't as bad as 2018, but still existed.

Well, let's not get into the Death Wish series..

Face it, for us as armchair good guys to root for someone's ultimate demise, they had better do something truly despicable. Rape fits that. Murder works, and causing the death of a child more so, but rape is a crime whose heinousness is good enough for us to root for the rapist to die, perhaps horribly and feel good about it. No one wants to see a woman's innocence taken, see her terrified for her life, or be physically and mentally damaged, perhaps forever. Everyone roots for the rapist to get his.

One of my favorite scenes in Shawshank is when Boggs gets dragged out of his cell and beaten to an inch of his life while suffering horrible and permanent injuries for raping Andy.

You can argue that making the perp a rapist is too easy, but that's another argument.