Fairly critiquing sensitive content

TRIGGER WARNING: fictional SA, including SA of minors

I am in a writing group with my sister and a few folks from around the area. We have a split group of men and women, about 6 of us.

The problem comes from the most recent critique session and submissions. One of the male writers has a villain that does some really awful things, including murder, but the big reveal of his backstory is he SA'd a woman at the direction of his mother when he was 17. All of us cautioned him on this, especially since the villain is already hated as written. He doesn't need this part of his story, and he seemed to become defensive, but still polite when we were giving critique. His defense was none of this would be on the page, which further caused us to question the need for it.

Then, to my shock, the other man who cautioned him about this being an extreme thing wrote out a whole scene of a woman being violently brutalized before being forcibly disrobed. This was in his third chapter with a long list of problematic things happening to only the female characters in his story. I had to stop reading the scene because it was more triggering than the worst episodes of the Handmaid's Tale, and ffs that's a visual medium! It almost played out like a sick fantasy.

I would have no problems if the "woman brutalized for the sake of character growth" trope goes to die. I usually try to be objective in my critiquing, but I can't be here, especially with the state of the world today regarding SA. Is there a way we can get these folks to listen to reason, or is it just better to bow out? I appreciated the feedback I got from this group, but holy shit the fact they are writing this stuff for free and without warning us is crazy to me.