This is a trigger warning. This article may bring up feelings of discomfort or panic for sexual assault survivors. If you need someone to talk to you can always call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at (800) 656-HOPE (4673). To learn more about the hotline, or to get involved click here.
In certain ways we, as a country, have made some big strides in sexual assault awareness from where we once were. Make no mistake though, in a lot of ways we have taken steps backwards and we have a very long journey ahead. It takes each and every one of us to do our part to help create a safe environment for everyone and to spread awareness. These four basic facts about sexual assault and rape will hopefully serve as a wake up call to this country, or at least its readers, on why we need these harrowing stories to be all over the mainstream news and media.
1. Two hundred ninety-three thousand and sixty-six victims of rape and sexual assault each year in America.
That is right. That number was not a typo. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey of 2009-2013 done by the U.S. Department of Justice, which only surveys ages 12 and up, there is an average of 293,066 victims of rape and sexual assault each year. After the math is done, this means that every two minutes, another American is sexually assaulted. Even at such a high rate of one specific crime, we still do not see very much of this on the mainstream news stations or newspapers. Unless it is a celebrity of course, but even in those cases the story teeters off of the radar after a few months. Instead we see things such as what basketball teams made it to the finals, or what celebrity got engaged today. I have to ask, is it more important to spread the awareness of celebrities and sports than of sexual violence that is constantly happening all around us?
2. Child Protective Service responds to a sexual abuse call every eight minutes.
Ninety-three percent of child (12 and under) sexual assault victims know their abuser personally. Parents need to be educating their children at an early age that their body is theirs and nobody else should have control of it, especially if they feel in danger. Many children that have been sexually abused do not tell their parents until they are adults. My parents taught me about sexual violence at a very young age just for this reason and I am eternally grateful to them for that knowledge. However, many parents, school systems, and yes, our government, have their own reservations about the education of sexual assault. Many say they do not what their kids to learn about rape or any other sexual assault at a young age because they do not want to scare their children. Apparently the world still believes that ignorance is bliss. Have we not learned anything from the "abstinence-only" sexual education that our country stood by until very recently when President Obama abolished all funding towards it? Maybe we should ask all of the young parents who had unplanned pregnancies, or the teenagers with sexually transmitted infections, or anyone with HIV or AIDS how this "ignorance-only" sexual education helped them in life.
3. Less than one-third of students who are found guilty of on-campus sexual violence are expelled.
That's right, even when the school board has found the perpetrator guilty of sexual assault, they are still protecting this person simply because they are a student of their institution. At Stanford University, former swimmer Brock Allen Turner was found guilty of raping an unconscious woman and was just sentenced to a weak six months in jail this past Thursday. According to the judge, any longer jail time would have been too big a negative impact on his life. What about the impact on the victim's life? In fact the victim bravely had a personal letter that she read to her rapist in court published that details the immense impact that this horrible event has made on her life. “You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.” Her powerful opening statement speaks poetic volumes about the rape epidemic. This harrowing story should spread like wildfire all over the news.
If you want to learn more about the history of sexual violence on college campuses, watch this video that highlights another high-profile college campus rape case, the case of Emma Sulkowicz, or "The Mattress Girl."
4. Out of every 100 rape cases, only two rapists will face jail time.
According to the Justice Department, only seven of those 100 cases will even lead to an arrest of the attacker. This statistic alone makes an important statement about the sexual violence crisis that America is having. The government and the legal department have made it close to impossible for many survivors to find some sort of justice.
Every couple of months there is a sexual assault story that becomes viral on Facebook, Twitter, BuzzFeed and other similar websites. This definitely helps spread awareness, and hitting "share" on this article supports sexual assault awareness, but what I hope for the most is that as a reader you feel encouraged to speak up for either yourself, or survivors who cannot speak for themselves. Trust that hope exists, and get involved in the fight against sexual violence.
