A Research on Sexual Assault

Research on Sexual Assault

Student’s Name:

Institution:

Date:

Proposed Research Topic: Sexual molestation and abuse against minors damages the undeveloped body of the victims and their undeveloped mind causing life-long suffering to the unfortunate victims.Introduction

There are categories of crime that affect the community as well as their victims such as rape, sexual assault, and other sex related crimes. In the very way we lead our lives and raise our children, the impact of sexual crime, rape and assault can be seen. This is because these crimes affect our overall sense of safety. The media today is full of constant baggage of violence and sex. For someone to have the trend of what is going on, he only needs to read the newspapers or watch TV. The coverage on sexual assault and crimes can become saturated particularly when the crime is high profile in nature and the offender or victim well known in the community. It becomes even worse if there are multiple victims of sexual assault, and the crimes being committed by serial offenders operating within a particular jurisdiction. It however important to understand that the problems of sexual assault and rape are far much worse than the fear they bring to many and the terrible nature of the crimes themselves. It is the community reaction coupled with the crime itself victim’s stereotypes and many myths which make investigations on these crimes so difficult and prosecute. This is because many people live in denial of the occurrence of these crimes in the society, at times the people involved are well known and respectable figures in the society. Another problem that arises is the general understanding of the term “sexual crime” bringing in a general stereotypical understanding of sex crime. When we think of sex, we think pleasure, warmth, love, emotions and many more of the kind. Prople on the other hand perceive that crime is associated with violence, anger, devastation, and fear and it is associated with theft, burglary, murder and the like.

Definitions

Looking at sexual assault in legal terms, it is a statutory offence in various jurisdictions including the US, Canada, Scotland, Wales, and England and its definition determined by each jurisdiction. There are jurisdictions that use highly technical or detailed definitions of the term sexual assault. Generally, sexual assault refers to any involuntary sexual act where someone is physically forced or coerced to take part or engage against their consent or will. It may also involve non-consensual touching of a person. It includes rape, groping, forced kissing, child sexual abuse and torturing a person in a sexual manner.

It is very important to carry out sexual assault research because statistics carry significant power of persuasion. These researches provide accessible and instant way of grasping the extent as well as nature of social issues. It is worth noting that ant statistical data has a complex methodological history that reflects how it should be used. This research helps in determining barriers to disclosure, low rate of reporting to the police, varying definitions of sexual assault and abuse, the effects of sexual assault to the victims and the factors leading to sexual assault.

To the victims of sexual assault this research seek to educate them on possible ways dealing sexual assault crimes and the steps that should be taken when one has been faces with such an assault. This research encourages sexual assault victims to always make reports to the relevant authorities and also helps educate them on how to live with it.

Thesis Statement

The personal intimate nature of sexual assault and violence has made it very difficult to detect despite being widespread across many societies. Children, relatives, friends and neighbors should be trained to identify and report incidences of sexual assaults and violence if ways of controlling this crime are to be developed and the crime controlled effectively. On the other hand this violence cannot be categorized as personal crime since the victims always suffer from depression, stress, poor health among others. Alcohol and increased use of drugs leads to increase of sexual violence and assault especially in the collage going group. Though there are many proposals of innovative methods of dealing with sexual assault in the US, this problem still persist. Sexual assault makes the sufferer feel rejected, less productive and isolated.

Background

In the past sexual violence was considered to be something only happening to the women during war and peace times especially in the ancient Greek in the 20th century. This contributed to negligence of all indicators of the methods, aims and magnitude of the violence was. It started being considered a minor issue and became criminalized towards the end of the 20th century, with a wider concentration and focus on the victims. There are so many myths about sexual violence and assault. These myths continue to perpetuate in today’s society because they have been socially accepted. Many of these myths have put blame on the victims of sexual assault and minimized the responsibility of the offender. The seriousness of the offence has also been neglected by these myths leading to the victims of sexual assault left feeling isolated and neglected. With this condition, they feel ashamed and have no support to begin the healing process. It is very important to understand these myths on sexual assault as they help in support and treatment of the victims. In order to reach our goal of ending sexual violence, we should dispel these myths surrounding sexual offense and hold the offenders accountable. Some of these myths are: the belief that sexual assault won’t happen to me or to anyone I know; the belief that sexual assault is provoked by the victim’s behavior or by the way they dress; the belief that most sexual assaults occur between strangers; the belief that sexual assault only occur in the dark; the belief that men cannot be sexually assaulted; the belief that most sexual assault occur because of uncontrollable impulsive act; the belief that people who commit such acts are mentally ill; the belief that those that do not fight back have not been sexually assaulted.

Discussions

There have been no or few hard data on sexual assault and violence in the hands of the law enforcement and policy makers to base the responses of sexual violence and assault until of recent. The national Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) has captured a wider range of information and data on the cases on sexual assault that have been reported to law enforcement. There have been two researches extracted from 1991 with the aid of 1991 NIBRS files that has summarized the data collected from 60991 victims of sexual assault and another summarizing the information on 57752 people believed to be the offenders. From the information collected, 67% of the assaults are against juvenile victims and these juvenile victims are more likely to be male. Out of 6 cases of sexual assaults on juvenile victims, 5 occurred in the residents. On the other hand crimes on adults were likely to occur anywhere. Out of the total number of cases in this research 60 % of the offenders were adults offending the underage of 12 years and below and most of the offenders were well known to the victims. According to the research assault on children of age 6 and below are likely to go unreported or the offenders released,( Snyder, 2000)

Though widely condemned, sexual abuses on children have been more prevalent than realized previously and the offenders do not admit to have committed the assaults. In such a situation only the child’s testimony can be the evidence. Children are believed that they cannot participate in such legal proceedings without trauma, and also since they are not adults. This is according to the members of the criminal-justice system. There are barriers effective to successful completin of assault cases against children. Such barriers include the ability of a child not to speak and give the actual scenario, children not able to participate in legal proceedings on the grounds of not being as credible as adults. Organizations such as the Children Aid Society of Ottawa can help bring a case on children sexual assault against the offender. The CAS workers can investigate the allegations based on the information provided to them by the parents of the children. The worker as part of the investigation may involve the police and other authorities to protect the children Berliner (Berliner, 2010).

For the past 20 years or so, different researchers have brought forward reports indicating widespread problem of rape in the American social setup. Many researchers have concluded that nearly one out of four women is raped in their life time. This causes long term health problems and physical distress among women. According to many researches, the assault impacts go far much than the victims. Also affected are their families and friend and also even neighbors. Another group that is also affected is those who help the assault victims like the advocates, therapists and researchers who may experience vicarious trauma. Methods should be developed to prevent sexual assault and focus put on improving community response.(Campbell, 2005)

There have been arguments from some feminists that myths on sexual assaults constrain the reporting of these assaults to the authorities. It is true that myths have been widely accepted by different societies and they play a big role in preventing report to the police. There are many myths that come up with sexual assaults. Some of these myths are: the belief that sexual assault won’t happen to me or to anyone I know; the belief that sexual assault is provoked by the victim’s behavior or by the way they dress; the belief that most sexual assaults occur between strangers; the belief that sexual assault only occur in the dark; the belief that men cannot be sexually assaulted; the belief that most sexual assault occur because of uncontrollable impulsive act; the belief that people who commit such acts are mentally ill; the belief that those that do not fight back have not been sexually assaulted. With the analysis of 186 sexual assault cases at the hospital based sexual assault care in 1994 with the aid of logical regression, a positive association was identified between reporting of these assaults to the authorities and overtly violent components of real rape myth, occurrence of physical injuries and use of physical force. (Mont Du Janice, 2003)

There are sexual assault prevention programs offered by North American Universities that focuses on attitude change. According to these programs, the most effective sexual prevention technique is self-defense training however not considered as an integral component of typical prevention program (Söchting, 2004).

In spite of the fact that the criminal equity framework has experienced change to dispose of sexual assault case steady loss and to enhance the general treatment of rape exploited people, few studies have analyzed the impact of these changes. In this study, the creators look at prosecutorial charging choices over two remarkable purviews: Kansas City, Missouri, which uses a particular unit for rape cases, and Miami, Florida, which does not utilize a specific unit to focus the impact of prosecutorial specialization on case results. The discoveries of the study uncover that, regardless of contrasts in departmental arrangements and rates of supplication dealing and trials, prosecutors’ charging choices and the indicators of charging are comparable in the two locales. The creators reason that, paying little heed to whether choices are made in a specific unit or not, victimized person validity is a genuine “central concern” of the prosecutor in rape cases (Beichner, 2005).

According to the Rennison Marie’s study on the assault cases reported to the police between 1992-2000, on the victims that were injured and treated from completed rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. The research indicates that of all rape, 39 % of attempted rapes and 17% of assaults against females led to injuries. The reports were most likely to be done by the victims. 45 % of injured female victims reported attempted rape as compared to 22 % injured of unreported attempts received medical care (Rennison Marie, 2002).

Meta-examinations of the adequacy of school rape training projects on seven result measure classifications were directed utilizing 69 studies that included 102 treatment mediations and 18,172 members. Five of the result classifications had critical normal impact sizes (i.e., assault demeanor, assault related disposition, assault learning, behavioral aim, and occurrence of rape), while the result regions of assault sympathy and assault mindfulness practices did not have normal impact sizes that contrasted from zero. A critical finding of this study is that more drawn out mediations are more successful than concise intercessions in changing both assault state of mind and assault related mentality. Mediator investigations likewise recommend that the substance of programming, kind of moderator, sex of the group of onlookers, and sort of gathering of people may additionally be connected with more prominent project adequacy. Suggestions for exploration and practice are examined (Anderson,2005).

Conclusion

In conclusion, it has been very difficult to measure the actual and true extent of sexual violence against women. This is because most of the cases of assault go unreported. Approximately 36 per cent of female sexual assault victims usually go unreported to the authorities. Only 19 percent of the sexual assault victims report to the police. The main factors behind the hidden figure of sexual assault are disclosure and issues of prevalence. The most sexual assault victims are female and most assaults occur at home and it is a crime that is on the rise, growing steadily in the US though many studies indicate small decrease in the number of sexual assaults and rape cases in the US.References

Anderson, L. A., &Whiston, S. C. (2005). SEXUAL ASSAULT EDUCATION PROGRAMS: A META‐ANALYTIC EXAMINATION OF THEIR EFFECTIVENESS. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29(4), 374-388.

Beichner, D., &Spohn, C. (2005). Prosecutorial charging decisions in sexual assault cases: Examining the impact of a specialized prosecution unit. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 16(4), 461-498.

Berliner Lucy &Barbieri Kay Mary. (14 APR 2010). The Testimony of the Child Victim of Sexual Assault.Social Issues (40)2, 125-137.

Campbell, R., & Wasco, S. M. (2005).Understanding rape and sexual assault 20 years of progress and future directions.Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20(1), 127-131.

Mont Du Janice, Miller Lee- Karen &Myhr L. Terri. (April 2003). The Role of “Real Rape” and “Real Victim” Stereotypes in the Police Reporting Practices of Sexually Assaulted Women.Violence Against Women, 466-486.Rennison Marie Callie PH.D. (August 2002). Rape and Sexual Assault: Reporting to Police and Medical Attention. 1-4

Söchting, I., Fairbrother, N., & Koch, W. J. (2004).Sexual Assault of Women Prevention Efforts and Risk Factors.Violence Against Women, 10(1), 73-93.

Snyder, Howard N. (2000-07-00). Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement: Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics. A NIBRS Statistical Report. 1-22