Sexual Assault

“You never know when something is going to happen to change your life. You expect it to arrive with fanfare, like a wedding or a birth, but instead it comes in the most ordinary of circumstances. Afterward I tried to find something to explain what had happened. But the night was ordinary. It usually is, I think, when your life changes. Most people aren’t doing anything special when the carefully placed pieces of their life break apart.”

From What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love, By Carole Radziwill.

1 in 5 women will become a victim of sexual violence during her time in college.

(National Study on Victimization of College Women, 2000)

In the U.S., over 10% of all victims of sexual violence are male.

(U.S. Department of Justice. 2003 National Crime Victimization Survey. 2003)

Victims of Sexual Assault are 4 times more likely to be assaulted by someone they already know than by a stranger.

(Dean G. Kilpatrick et al., "Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study." Washington, DC: NIJ, 2007) 

The U.S. Department of Justice defines sexual assault as any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient of the unwanted sexual activity. This includes sexual activity such as forced sexual intercourse, sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape. The legal definition of rape changes from state to state, but at the core of all definitions is the act of non-consensual sexual conduct.

Rape is a violation of a person’s basic right to bodily integrity and his or her right to control with who and when he or she has sex.  Rape is not just a woman’s issue.  Men and women are victims of rape. Rape can happen in any kind of gender combination, it is not a heterosexual specific problem.   Rape is violent, and rape is a crime.