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4.4 Violence against Women: Rape and Sexual Assault

Learning objectives.

• Describe the extent of rape and sexual assault.
• Explain why rape and sexual assault occur.

Susan Griffin (1971, p. 26) began a classic essay on rape in 1971 with this startling statement: “I have never been free of the fear of rape. From a very early age I, like most women, have thought of rape as a part of my natural environment—something to be feared and prayed against like fire or lightning. I never asked why men raped; I simply thought it one of the many mysteries of human nature.”

When we consider interpersonal violence of all kinds—homicide, assault, robbery, and rape and sexual assault—men are more likely than women to be victims of violence. While true, this fact obscures another fact: Women are far more likely than men to be raped and sexually assaulted. They are also much more likely to be portrayed as victims of pornographic violence on the Internet and in videos, magazines, and other outlets. Finally, women are more likely than men to be victims of domestic violence , or violence between spouses and others with intimate relationships. The gendered nature of these acts against women distinguishes them from the violence men suffer. Violence is directed against men not because they are men per se, but because of anger, jealousy, and the sociological reasons discussed in Chapter 8 “Crime and Criminal Justice” ’s treatment of deviance and crime. But rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, and pornographic violence are directed against women precisely because they are women. These acts are thus an extreme manifestation of the gender inequality women face in other areas of life. We discuss rape and sexual assault here but will leave domestic violence for Chapter 10 “The Changing Family” and pornography for Chapter 9 “Sexual Behavior” .

The Extent and Context of Rape and Sexual Assault

Our knowledge about the extent and context of rape and reasons for it comes from three sources: the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), both discussed in Chapter 8 “Crime and Criminal Justice” , and surveys of and interviews with women and men conducted by academic researchers. From these sources we have a fairly good if not perfect idea of how much rape occurs, the context in which it occurs, and the reasons for it. What do we know?

Up to one-third of US women experience a rape or sexual assault, including attempts, at least once in their lives.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

According to the UCR, which are compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from police reports, 88,767 reported rapes (including attempts, and defined as forced sexual intercourse) occurred in the United States in 2010 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2011). Because women often do not tell police they were raped, the NCVS, which involves survey interviews of thousands of people nationwide, probably yields a better estimate of rape; the NCVS also measures sexual assaults in addition to rape, while the UCR measures only rape. According to the NCVS, 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults occurred in 2010 (Truman, 2011). Other research indicates that up to one-third of US women will experience a rape or sexual assault, including attempts, at least once in their lives (Barkan, 2012). A study of a random sample of 420 Toronto women involving intensive interviews yielded an even higher figure: Two-thirds said they had experienced at least one rape or sexual assault, including attempts. The researchers, Melanie Randall and Lori Haskell (1995, p. 22), concluded that “it is more common than not for a woman to have an experience of sexual assault during their lifetime.”

Studies of college students also find a high amount of rape and sexual assault. About 20–30 percent of women students in anonymous surveys report being raped or sexually assaulted (including attempts), usually by a male student they knew beforehand (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000; Gross, Winslett, Roberts, & Gohm, 2006). Thus at a campus of 10,000 students of whom 5,000 are women, about 1,000–1,500 women will be raped or sexually assaulted over a period of four years, or about 10 per week in a four-year academic calendar. The Note 4.33 “People Making a Difference” box describes what one group of college students did to help reduce rape and sexual assault at their campus.

People Making a Difference

College Students Protest against Sexual Violence

Dickinson College is a small liberal-arts campus in the small town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. But in the fight against sexual violence, it loomed huge in March 2011, when up to 150 students conducted a nonviolent occupation of the college’s administrative building for three days to protest rape and sexual assault on their campus. While they read, ate, and slept inside the building, more than 250 other students held rallies outside, with the total number of protesters easily exceeding one-tenth of Dickinson’s student enrollment. The protesters held signs that said “Stop the silence, our safety is more important than your reputation” and “I value my body, you should value my rights.” One student told a reporter, “This is a pervasive problem. Almost every student will tell you they know somebody who’s experienced sexual violence or have experienced it themselves.”

Feeling that college officials had not done enough to help protect Dickinson’s women students, the students occupying the administrative building called on the college to set up an improved emergency system for reporting sexual assaults, to revamp its judicial system’s treatment of sexual assault cases, to create a sexual violence prevention program, and to develop a new sexual misconduct policy.

Rather than having police or security guards take the students from the administrative building and even arrest them, Dickinson officials negotiated with the students and finally agreed to their demands. Upon hearing this good news, the occupying students left the building on a Saturday morning, suffering from a lack of sleep and showers but cheered that they had won their demands. A college public relations official applauded the protesters, saying they “have indelibly left their mark on the college. We’re all very proud of them.” On this small campus in a small town in Pennsylvania, a few hundred college students had made a difference.

Sources: Jerving, 2011; Pitz, 2011

The public image of rape is of the proverbial stranger attacking a woman in an alleyway. While such rapes do occur, most rapes actually happen between people who know each other. A wide body of research finds that 60–80 percent of all rapes and sexual assaults are committed by someone the woman knows, including husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends, and only 20–35 percent by strangers (Barkan, 2012). A woman is thus two to four times more likely to be raped by someone she knows than by a stranger.

In 2011, sexual assaults of hotel housekeepers made major headlines after the head of the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a hotel housekeeper in New York City; the charges were later dropped because the prosecution worried about the housekeeper’s credibility despite forensic evidence supporting her claim. Still, in the wake of the arrest, news stories reported that hotel housekeepers sometimes encounter male guests who commit sexual assault, make explicit comments, or expose themselves. A hotel security expert said in one news story, “These problems happen with some regularity. They’re not rare, but they’re not common either.” A housekeeper recalled in the same story an incident when she was vacuuming when a male guest appeared: “[He] reached to try to kiss me behind my ear. I dropped my vacuum, and then he grabbed my body at the waist, and he was holding me close. It was very scary.” She ran out of the room when the guest let her leave but did not call the police. A hotel workers union official said housekeepers often refused to report sexual assault and other incidents to the police because they were afraid they would not be believed or that they would get fired if they did so (Greenhouse, 2011, p. B1).

Explaining Rape and Sexual Assault

Sociological explanations of rape fall into cultural and structural categories similar to those presented earlier for sexual harassment. Various “rape myths” in our culture support the absurd notion that women somehow enjoy being raped, want to be raped, or are “asking for it” (Franiuk, Seefelt, & Vandello, 2008). One of the most famous scenes in movie history occurs in the classic film Gone with the Wind , when Rhett Butler carries a struggling Scarlett O’Hara up the stairs. She is struggling because she does not want to have sex with him. The next scene shows Scarlett waking up the next morning with a satisfied, loving look on her face. The not-so-subtle message is that she enjoyed being raped (or, to be more charitable to the film, was just playing hard to get).

A related cultural belief is that women somehow ask or deserve to be raped by the way they dress or behave. If she dresses attractively or walks into a bar by herself, she wants to have sex, and if a rape occurs, well, then, what did she expect? In the award-winning film The Accused , based on a true story, actress Jodie Foster plays a woman who was raped by several men on top of a pool table in a bar. The film recounts how members of the public questioned why she was in the bar by herself if she did not want to have sex and blamed her for being raped.

A third cultural belief is that a man who is sexually active with a lot of women is a stud and thus someone admired by his male peers. Although this belief is less common in this day of AIDS and other STDs, it is still with us. A man with multiple sex partners continues to be the source of envy among many of his peers. At a minimum, men are still the ones who have to “make the first move” and then continue making more moves. There is a thin line between being sexually assertive and sexually aggressive (Kassing, Beesley, & Frey, 2005).

These three cultural beliefs—that women enjoy being forced to have sex, that they ask or deserve to be raped, and that men should be sexually assertive or even aggressive—combine to produce a cultural recipe for rape. Although most men do not rape, the cultural beliefs and myths just described help account for the rapes that do occur. Recognizing this, the contemporary women’s movement began attacking these myths back in the 1970s, and the public is much more conscious of the true nature of rape than a generation ago. That said, much of the public still accepts these cultural beliefs and myths, and prosecutors continue to find it difficult to win jury convictions in rape trials unless the woman who was raped had suffered visible injuries, had not known the man who raped her, and/or was not dressed attractively (Levine, 2006).

Structural explanations for rape emphasize the power differences between women and men similar to those outlined earlier for sexual harassment. In societies that are male dominated, rape and other violence against women is a likely outcome, as they allow men to demonstrate and maintain their power over women. Supporting this view, studies of preindustrial societies and of the fifty states of the United States find that rape is more common in societies where women have less economic and political power (Baron & Straus, 1989; Sanday, 1981). Poverty is also a predictor of rape; although rape in the United States transcends social class boundaries, it does seem more common among poorer segments of the population than among wealthier segments, as is true for other types of violence (Truman & Rand, 2010). Scholars think the higher rape rates among the poor stem from poor men trying to prove their “masculinity” by taking out their economic frustration on women (Martin, Vieraitis, & Britto, 2006).

Key Takeaways

• Up to one-third of US women experience a rape or sexual assault, including attempts, in their lifetime.
• Rape and sexual assault result from a combination of structural and cultural factors. In states and nations where women are more unequal, rape rates tend to be higher.

For Your Review

• What evidence and reasoning indicate that rape and sexual assault are not just the result of psychological problems affecting the men who engage in these crimes?
• Write a brief essay in which you critically evaluate the cultural beliefs that contribute to rape and sexual assault.

Barkan, S. E. (2012). Criminology: A sociological understanding (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Baron, L., & Straus, M. A. (1989). Four theories of rape in American society: A state-level analysis . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). Crime in the United States, 2010 . Washington, DC: Author.

Fisher, B. S., Cullen, F. T., & Turner, M. G. (2000). The sexual victimization of college women . Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

Franiuk, R., Seefelt, J., & Vandello, J. (2008). Prevalence of rape myths in headlines and their effects on attitudes toward rape. Sex Roles, 58 (11/12), 790–801.

Greenhouse, S. (2011, May 21). Sexual affronts a known hotel hazard. New York Times , p. B1.

Griffin, S. (1971, September). Rape: The all-American crime. Ramparts, 10 , 26–35.

Gross, A. M., Winslett, A., Roberts, M., & Gohm, C. L. (2006). An examination of sexual violence against college women. Violence Against Women, 12 , 288–300.

Jerving, S. (2011, March 4). Pennsylvania students protest against sexual violence and administrators respond. The Nation . Retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/blog/159037/pennsylvania-students-protests-against-sexual-violence-and-administrators-respond .

Kassing, L. R., Beesley, D., & Frey, L. L. (2005). Gender role conflict, homophobia, age, and education as predictors of male rape myth acceptance. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 27 (4), 311–328.

Levine, K. L. (2006). The intimacy discount: Prosecutorial discretion, privacy, and equality in the statuory rape caseload. Emory Law Journal, 55 (4), 691–749.

Martin, K., Vieraitis, L. M., & Britto, S. (2006). Gender equality and women’s absolute status: A test of the feminist models of rape. Violence Against Women, 12 , 321–339.

Pitz, M. (2011, March 6). Dickinson College to change sexual assault policy after sit-in. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Retrieved from http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11065/1130102-1130454.stm .

Randall, M., & Haskell, L. (1995). Sexual violence in women’s lives: Findings from the women’s safety project, a community-based survey. Violence Against Women, 1 , 6–31.

Sanday, P. R. (1981). The Socio-Cultural Context of Rape: A Cross-Cultural Study. Journal of Social Issues, 37 , 5–27.

Truman, J. L., & Rand, M. R. (2010). Criminal victimization, 2009 . Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

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The Global Prevalence of Sexual Assault: A Systematic Review of International Research Since 2010

Emily r. dworkin.

University of Washington, United States

Barbara Krahé

University of Potsdam, Germany

Heidi Zinzow

Clemson University, United States

Associated Data

We present a review of peer-reviewed English-language studies conducted outside the United States and Canada on the prevalence of sexual assault victimization in adolescence and adulthood published since 2010.

A systematic literature search yielded 32 articles reporting on 45 studies from 29 countries. Studies that only provided prevalence estimates for sexual assault in intimate relationships or did not present separate rates for men and women were excluded. All studies were coded by two coders, and a risk of bias score was calculated for each study. Both past-year and prevalence rates covering longer periods were extracted.

The largest number of studies came from Europe ( n =21), followed by Africa ( n =11), Asia and Latin America ( n =6 each). One study came from the Middle East and no studies were found from Oceania. Across the 22 studies that reported past-year prevalence rates, figures ranged from 0% to 59.2% for women, 0.3% to 55.5% for men, and 1.5% to 18.2% for LGBT samples. The average risk of bias score was 5.7 out of 10. Studies varied widely in methodology.

Conclusion:

Despite regional variation, most studies indicate that sexual assault is widespread. More sustained, systematic, and coordinated research efforts are needed to gauge the scale of sexual assault in different parts of the world and to develop prevention measures.

Sexual assault against adolescents and adults is a global public health problem. Sexual assault encompasses a broad spectrum of behaviors and is generally defined as any attempted or completed sexual act, ranging from unwanted sexual touch to rape, that is committed against someone without a person’s freely given consent ( Basile et al., 2014 ; World Health Organization, 2017 ). These include acts that are committed by force, threat of force, or verbal coercion, as well as acts that are committed against someone who is unable to consent due to age, disability, or impairment (e.g., substance use). Sexual assault is associated with a wide range of mental and physical health outcomes, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, substance use disorders, somatic complaints, and negative reproductive health outcomes ( Dworkin et al., 2017 ; Weaver, 2009 ). In light of these consequences, it is important to understand the global prevalence of adolescent and adult sexual assault in order to appropriately allocate resources and develop effective prevention and intervention strategies.

There is evidence of differences in the prevalence of sexual assault in various world regions ( World Health Organization, 2013 ). Applying an ecological perspective, various sociocultural factors that may differ across countries—such as cultural norms supporting violence generally and patriarchal norms—may affect these prevalence rates ( Krug et al., 2002 ). However, most of the research on sexual assault has been conducted in the United States (US) and Canada. This limits the understanding of the public health burden of adolescent and adult sexual assault worldwide. Thus, the purpose of this review was to summarize the global prevalence of sexual assault in adolescence and/or adulthood for men and women outside of the US and Canada. The review includes both general population prevalence data and specific estimates for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population, given evidence for the disproportionate burden of sexual assault on LGBT individuals ( Canan et al., 2019 ; Walters et al., 2013 ).

Prior Research on the Prevalence of Sexual Assault Victimization

Epidemiological studies..

Data obtained since 2010 from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey—an epidemiological study conducted annually in the US—indicates that 18.0–21.3% of women and 1.0–7.1% of men had a lifetime history of attempted or completed rape, and 1.2–1.6% of women and 0.7% of men had experienced attempted or completed rape in the prior 12 months ( Breiding et al., 2014 ; Black et al., 2011 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). In addition, 13.0–43.9% of women and 6.0–23.4% of men had experienced lifetime sexual coercion, and 5.5% of women and 5.1% of men had experienced sexual coercion in the prior 12 months ( Breiding et al., 2014 ; Black et al., 2011 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). Fewer epidemiological studies of the prevalence of sexual assault have been conducted internationally. An exception to this is the World Health Organization World Mental Health surveys, which were conducted from 2001 to 2012 in 24 countries ( Scott et al., 2018 ). These surveys assessed lifetime experiences of sexual assault and other traumas as part of assessing posttraumatic stress disorder. Among women in high-income countries, the lifetime prevalence of sexual assault ranged from 1.8% (Spain) to 26.1% (United States) ( Scott et al., 2018 ). Among women in low- or middle-income countries, the lifetime prevalence ranged from 0.6% (South Africa) to 1.5% (Columbia-Medellin).

Literature Reviews.

Several reviews have been conducted that address the prevalence of sexual assault victimization around the world. We next summarize these reviews, with an emphasis on reviews that include studies of the international prevalence of sexual assault victimization when available. These reviews, in some cases, reflect wide ranges of prevalence estimates, which may be due to methodological differences in primary studies (e.g., sampling strategy, operational definition of sexual assault, measures).

Reviews of Prevalence Among Women.

Several prior reviews have synthesized data on the worldwide prevalence of sexual assault among women. Most recently, a review of worldwide nonpartner sexual assault among women reported data from studies prior to 2011 ( Abrahams et al., 2014 ). This review reported a worldwide estimate of 7.2% lifetime prevalence. Lifetime prevalence was estimated at 3.3–12.2% for Asia, 16.4% for Australasia, 6.9–11.5% for Europe, 5.8–15.3% for Latin America, 4.5%−21.0% for Africa, and 13.0% for North America. In addition to this study’s limitations of focusing only on women and nonpartner violence, the authors noted that most of the reviewed studies used a single broad item to assess sexual assault and only reported lifetime prevalence. An older report by the World Health Organization (WHO) summarized national surveys from regions around the world and reported 5-year sexual assault prevalence estimates among adult women of 0.3–8.0% ( Krug et al., 2002 ). A more recent WHO report described lifetime prevalence among women, with a 30% estimated global prevalence of physical and/or sexual partner violence among ever-partnered women and a 7% estimated global prevalence of nonpartner sexual assault ( World Health Organization, 2013 ). The prevalence of partner violence was highest in African, Eastern Mediterranean and South-East Asia regions and the prevalence of nonpartner sexual assault was highest in Africa and the Americas.

Reviews of Prevalence Among Men.

Fewer reviews have summarized the global prevalence of sexual assault among men. In a review of adult sexual assault among men that included US, Canadian, and international studies, lifetime prevalence estimates ranged from 1% for forcible rape to 30% for any form of coercive sexual contact ( Peterson et al., 2011 ). However, this review highlighted that the only epidemiological studies of sexual assault against men had been conducted in the US.

Reviews of Prevalence Among LGBT Individuals.

Studies indicate that the risk for sexual assault is elevated among LGBT populations in comparison to heterosexual populations. A review of 75 studies from the US indicated that the prevalence of adult sexual assault against people identifying as gay, lesbian, or was 11.3– 53.2% for women and 10.8–44.7% for men ( Rothman, Exner, & Baughman, 2011 ). A more recent epidemiological study reported rates of adult sexual assault (ranging from non-penetrative behavior to completed rape) to be 63% in lesbian women, 80% in bisexual women, and 44% in heterosexual women ( Canan et al., 2019 ). In a study of undergraduates from 120 institutions, past-year sexual assault was reported by 10% of gay men, 10% of bisexual men, 6% of heterosexual men, 9% of lesbian women, and 17% of bisexual women, 8% of heterosexual women, and 11–33% of transgender persons ( Coulter et al., 2017 ). This evidence indicates that higher rates of sexual assault among sexual minority groups represent an important health disparity ( Canan et al., 2019 ). However, no review to our knowledge has summarized the prevalence of sexual assault against LGBT individuals outside of the US.

Reviews of Prevalence Among College Students.

In a review of US-based studies of sexual assault that occurred among women since starting college, prevalence estimates were 0.5–8% for forcible rape, 2–34% for unwanted sexual contact, 2–14% for incapacitated rape, and 2–32% for sexual coercion ( Fedina, Holmes, & Backes, 2018 ). A second US-based review found that the prevalence of completed sexual assault that occurred among women since starting college ranged from 14.2%−23.1% (Muehlenhard et al., 2017). To our knowledge, there has been no review of the prevalence of sexual assault among college students outside of the US.

The Current Study

The purpose of the current study was to update these prior reviews with recent worldwide findings on the prevalence of sexual assault. Due to the large number of studies focusing on US and Canadian samples and the underrepresentation of other world regions in the literature base, we decided to limit the scope of the current review to world regions outside the US and Canada. In contrast to the Abrahams et al. (2014) study, we chose to expand the focus to women and men, as well as to studies that included both partner and nonpartner violence. Because many non-US studies have primarily focused on partner violence and were already described in the review by Abrahams and colleagues (2014) , and in light of evidence that partner and nonpartner violence have distinct mental health effects ( Temple et al., 2007 ), we did not include studies in our review if they only examined sexual assault in intimate relationships. We furthermore focused on prevalence estimates for sexual assault that took place after childhood in order to separate these experiences from child sexual abuse. Many prior reviews and studies have solely reported lifetime prevalence rates, making it difficult to obtain accurate estimates of assaults taking place in adolescence and adulthood. It is important to develop a fine-grained understanding of adolescent/adult assaults specifically, which are likely associated with different consequences ( Messman-Moore, Long, & Siegfried, 2000 ) and contextual factors (e.g., greater likelihood of a non-family perpetrator) ( Smith et al., 2017 ) than child sexual abuse, and thus suggest different implications for intervention. In addition, we systematically evaluated each study using an assessment tool to estimate risk of bias.

Eligibility Criteria

We sought peer-reviewed studies published in English since 2010 that assessed the prevalence of adolescent or adult sexual assault in a country other than the US or Canada. Studies including general population and college student samples were included to reflect the predominant samples in studies from North America, as well as the greatest generalizability to the broader population. Student samples in particular were included given that they are a frequently-studied group found to experience particularly high risk in studies in the US ( Fedina et al., 2018 ), but the extent to which they experience elevated risk globally is unknown. We excluded studies that (1) only reported the prevalence of sexual assault in the context of intimate relationships; (2) only reported the prevalence of sexual assault among a narrow, special population (e.g., sex workers, pregnant women), with the exception of studies of LGBT individuals; (3) only reported the prevalence of sexual assault among a combined sample of men and women; and (4) only reported the prevalence of childhood or lifetime (i.e., where it was not clear that child sexual abuse was excluded) sexual assault.

Study Identification

We searched PsycInfo and PubMed on August 30th, 2019 for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English since 2010. We used Boolean operators for terms related to sexual assault (“sexual assault” OR “forced sex” OR “sexual coercion” OR “sexual victimization” OR rape OR “violence against women” OR “sexual violence” OR “sexual aggression” OR “sex offenses” OR victimization) and prevalence (prevalence OR scale OR incidence). Because this returned a large number of articles about scale development, we excluded studies with related terms (“psychometrics” OR “test validity” OR “test construction” OR “validity” OR “reliability”) in the title, Medical Subject Heading, or abstract. To exclude studies of children, we excluded studies with the words “childhood,” “child,” or “children” in the title, and in PsycInfo, selected Adolescence (13–17 years) and Adulthood (18 years & older) in the Age Group search option. To exclude qualitative studies, we excluded studies with qualitative in the title, and, in PsycInfo, narrowed the results by methodology to quantitative studies. Finally, to exclude studies conducted in the US, we excluded studies with “US” or “United States” in the title, and in PsycInfo, used the Location search term function to exclude studies conducted in the US or Canada. This yielded 549 results from PsycInfo and 414 results from PubMed, for a total of 869 unique articles reviewed for eligibility. Each article was reviewed by two authors for eligibility. Articles identified as potentially eligible by at least one author were re-reviewed for eligibility in reference to exclusion criteria by the first author in consultation with the second and third authors. Of 177 articles reviewed in more depth, 74 articles were excluded because they focused only on sexual assault in the context of intimate partner violence, 30 articles were excluded because they focused on childhood or lifetime sexual assault (i.e., not adolescent or adult sexual assault), and 26 were excluded because they focused on a special population, 9 were excluded that did not measure prevalence, 5 were excluded because they were duplicates, and 1 was excluded because relevant information could not be extracted. Ultimately, 32 articles were determined to be eligible.

Data Extraction

All three authors coded studies. To increase reliability, all three authors first coded five articles (two of which were ultimately excluded due to insufficient data) independently, using a draft codebook, and then reviewed discrepancies as a group and revised the codebook. Each author then coded 2/3 of the remaining articles such that all articles were double-coded. Discrepancies were tracked and resolved as a group. We coded the following variables:

Prevalence of sexual assault.

We coded any prevalence estimates provided reflecting sexual assault in adolescence, adulthood, and/or the past year separately for women (unselected for sexual orientation), men (unselected for sexual orientation), and LGBT individuals. When studies reported multiple subtypes of sexual assault (i.e., partner and nonpartner), we recorded these subtypes only when a combined prevalence rate was not provided. We also recorded the number of individuals who provided data on sexual assault (i.e., the denominator of prevalence estimates) and the number of people exposed to sexual assault (i.e., the numerator of prevalence estimates).

Study methodology.

We coded study characteristics including year of publication, year of data collection, country name, and world region. In terms of sample characteristics, we coded minimum, maximum, and mean age of the sample; whether the sample was limited to women; and whether the sample was limited to university students given evidence from the US that risk for sexual assault is especially high on college campuses ( Fedina et al., 2018 ). We also coded characteristics of the instrument used to assess sexual assault, including the instrument name; whether the instrument consisted of one item only; whether the definition of sexual assault was limited to penile-vaginal intercourse and/or nonpartner perpetrators; and whether incapacitated, coerced, non-penetrative, and/or attempted sexual assault were explicitly included in the definition of violence provided to participants or instrument items.

Risk of bias.

We adapted Hoy and colleagues’ (2012) 10-item tool for assessing risk of bias in prevalence studies. We coded whether studies’ target population closely matched the national adolescent/adult population in terms of relevant variables (e.g., age, sex, occupation) (item 1); whether studies’ sampling frame was representative of their identified target population (item 2); whether studies either conducted a census or used random sampling to select participants from the sampling frame (item 3); whether the response rate was >= 70% and whether responders and nonresponders were compared, and if so, whether significant differences were identified (item 4); whether studies collected data directly from participants, rather than a proxy (item 5); whether studies used behaviorally-specific questions about sexual acts (e.g., fondling, penile penetration) and/or tactics (e.g., force, coercion) to assess the acceptability of the specificity of case definition (item 6); whether studies presented evidence of the reliability and/or validity of the instrument used to assess sexual assault (item 7); whether studies used the same mode of data collection for all participants (item 8); whether studies reported at least one prevalence estimate reflecting a recall period of an acceptably short length (i.e., within 12 months, as defined by Hoy and colleagues 1 ; item 9); and whether an appropriate and accurate numerator and denominator were presented that corresponded to the reported prevalence estimates (item 10). Thus, each study received a bias score ranging from 0 to 10.

LGBT sample characteristics.

We recorded the percent of women in the LGBT sample and the study definition of the LGBT group sampled.

Summary of Included Studies

Ultimately, 32 English-language articles from 29 countries reflecting 45 country-specific studies were included (see Table 1 for study characteristics by region). The most represented regions were Europe (21 studies; 11 of which were conducted by the same research group) and Africa (11 studies), and the least represented regions were the Middle East (1 study) and Oceania (i.e., New Zealand and Australia; 0 studies). Most studies assessed sexual assault in both men and women; only 31.1% of studies were limited to women. About a quarter (26.7%) of studies were limited to university students. Eight studies provided prevalence information for LGBT individuals, including five studies that presented prevalence information for LGBT individuals only and three that presented prevalence information for both an overall sample and LGBT individuals specifically. In general, survey questions were administered in the local language. For the few studies that did not state this explicitly, none indicated that a language other than the local language was used.

Study Characteristics by Region

Note . No studies were found for Oceania.

Assessments of sexual assault.

Sexual assault was assessed via interview for all participants in 15 (33.3%) studies, and via self-administered survey in 30 studies. A single-item measure was used in 11 (25.6%) studies. 2 Thirty (68.2%) studies presented behaviorally-specific descriptions of sex acts to participants, and 32 (71.1%) presented behaviorally-specific descriptions of tactics (e.g., force, coercion) to participants. In terms of the definition of sexual assault used, 5 (11.4%) studies limited their definition to penile-vaginal penetration, 2 (4.5%) explicitly included drug/alcohol-facilitated sexual assault but not other forms of incapacitated violence, 17 (38.6%) explicitly included any incapacitated sexual assault, 27 (61.4%) explicitly included coerced sexual assault, 26 (59.1%) explicitly included non-penetrative sexual assault, 24 (54.5%) explicitly included attempted sexual assault, and 1 (2.2%) only assessed sexual assault committed by nonpartner perpetrators.

The average risk of bias across studies was 5.7 out of 10, in which 10 indicates maximum bias. Importantly, these studies could have been unbiased for their study goals; risk of bias instead reflects the degree of bias for the goal of characterizing country-level prevalence of sexual assault (which, in most cases, was not the study goal). Nevertheless, we next describe the risk of bias in assessing prevalence to contextualize study findings and highlight research needs, consistent with best practices for conducting systematic reviews ( Petticrew & Roberts, 2008 ; Sanderson, Tatt, & Higgins, 2007 ). In 80.0% (n = 36) of studies, the target population did not closely match the national adolescent/adult population in terms of relevant variables. In 71.1% (n = 32) of studies, the sampling frame was not representative of its identified target population. For 55.6% (n = 25) of studies, we found that they did not either conduct a census or use random sampling to select participants from the sampling frame. In 75.6% (n = 34) of studies, the authors did not demonstrate that their prevalence estimates were at minimal risk of nonresponse bias (either via reporting a response rate of >= 75% or demonstrating no significant differences between responders and nonresponders). No studies failed to collect data directly from participants, rather than a proxy. Almost half (46.6%; n = 21) of studies did not use an acceptably specific case definition (defined as using behaviorally-specific questions about both sexual acts and coercive tactics). In 88.9% (n = 40) of studies, no evidence of the reliability and/or validity of the instrument used to assess sexual assault was presented, and 2.2% (n = 1) of studies did not use the same mode of data collection for all participants. In 60.0% (n = 27) of studies, the length of the shortest prevalence period assessed was not appropriate (an appropriate recall period was defined as 12 months or less, consistent with the risk of bias instrument). Finally, 86.7% (n = 39) of studies did not present numerators and/or denominators corresponding to the reported prevalence estimates or presented numerators and/or denominators that did not match the reported prevalence estimates.

Region-Specific Prevalence

Next, we present prevalence findings by region, first separated for women, men, and LGBT individuals, and then separated into past-year prevalence and prevalence for other recall periods (e.g., since age 18). When possible, we present comparisons as a function of nationally representative sampling designs vs. other sampling designs, student vs. nonstudent samples, assessment of sexual assault by interview vs. self-report, and/or study definitions of sexual assault. When such comparisons were not possible due to a small number of studies, we instead present a descriptive summary of each study.

Summary information by region is presented in Table 1 . Details of study methodology can be found in Supplemental Table 1 . Prevalence rates are presented in Supplemental Table 2 (women), Supplemental Table 3 (men), and Supplemental Table 4 (LGBT individuals).

Eleven studies reflected countries in Africa, including Botswana (1 study), Burundi (1 study), Cameroon (1 studies), Ethiopia (2 studies), Malawi (1 study), Nigeria (3 studies), South Africa (1 study), and Swaziland (1 study).

Nine studies reported on past-year prevalence among women. The two studies using nationally-representative sampling designs to assess past-year prevalence found rates of 4.7% (Swaziland; Tsai et al., 2011 ) and 14.1% (Malawi; Fan et al., 2016 ). In comparison, somewhat higher rates—14.6% (Nigeria; Adejemi et al., 2016 ) and 24.4% (Ethiopia; Adinew & Hagos, 2017 )—were identified in the two studies of past-year prevalence among students, and a wider range of past-year prevalence rates—4.6% (Botswana; Tsai et al., 2011 ) to 38.3% ( Parmar et al., 2012 )—in the five studies using non-student and non-nationally-representative samples. In the five studies that assessed sexual assault by interview, past-year prevalence ranged from 4.6% (Botswana; Tsai et al., 2011 ) to 38.3% ( Parmar et al., 2012 ), as compared to a somewhat narrower range of 5.1% (Nigeria; Decker et al., 2014 ) to 24.4% (Ethiopia; Adinew & Hagos, 2017 ) for the four studies using self-report assessments. The study using the most restrictive definition of sexual assault (including only completed, forced, penile/vaginal penetration) found a past-year prevalence rate of 11.3% (Burundi; Elouard et al., 2018 ), whereas the study using the most inclusive definition of sexual assault (including incapacitated, coerced, non-penetrative, and/or attempted assaults) found a relatively higher past-year prevalence rate of 24.4% (Ethiopia; Adinew & Hagos, 2017 ).

Three studies reported on prevalence during other periods of time for women. Two separate studies of Ethiopian students at the same university reported rates of sexual assault during college: Adinew and Hagos (2017) used a broad definition of sexual assault and reported a sexual assault prevalence rate of sexual 8.0% since starting university and 2.4% in the current academic year, and Tora (2013) reported that the prevalence of completed rape was 2.4% during the first year of university and 0.8% in the 2nd year of university and above. Ibanga (2011) reported a prevalence rate of 16.5% since age 16 (Nigeria).

Two studies reported prevalence rates for men unselected for sexual orientation. Both were conducted in Nigeria. The past-year prevalence of sexual assault was reported to be 9.4% among undergraduate students ( Adejimi et al., 2016 ), and the prevalence of sexual assault since age 16 was reported to be 15.0% among randomly-sampled individuals in the North-Central and South-South regions of Nigeria ( Ibanga, 2011 ).

LGBT individuals.

Adejimi and colleagues (2016) reported that the past-year prevalence of sexual assault was 14.8% among bisexual individuals (51% of whom were women) and 18.2% among “homosexual” individuals (27% of whom were women).

Seven studies contributed information from four countries in Asia: China (3 studies; 2 Hong Kong and 1 mainland), India (2 studies), Mongolia (1 study), and Turkey (1 study).

Four studies reported past-year prevalence rates for women unselected for sexual orientation. All of these studies used self-report assessments of sexual assault 3 , and none used a nationally-representative sampling design. The one study of past-year prevalence among college students found a rate of 59.2% (Turkey; Schuster et al., 2016), whereas the past-year prevalence range was lower—0.0% (Hong Kong; Zhang et al., 2016 ) to 7.2% (India; Decker et al., 2014 )—for non-student samples. Of the studies assessing past-year prevalence, the two studies with the most restrictive definition of sexual assault (including only completed, coerced or forced penile/vaginal penetration) found past-year prevalence rates for non-partner sexual assault of 1.0% (China) and 1.6% (India). In comparison, the study using the most inclusive definition of sexual assault (including incapacitated, coerced, non-penetrative, and/or attempted assaults) found a relatively higher past-year prevalence rate of 59.2% (Turkey; Schuster et al., 2016).

Two studies reported on prevalence during other periods of time for women. In a representative sample of Hong Kong Chinese women, 0.6% reported nonpartner sexual assault since age 18. In a study of students at four universities in Turkey, the prevalence since age 15 was 77.6%.

Two studies reported prevalence rates for men unselected for sexual orientation. One study reported a past-year prevalence of 0.3% among unmarried young men in Hong Kong ( Zhang et al., 2016 ). In a representative sample of Hong Kong Chinese men, 0.8% reported nonpartner sexual assault since age 18. In a study of students at four universities in Turkey, the past-year prevalence of sexual assault was 55.5%, and the prevalence since age 15 was 65.5%.

Two studies reported prevalence for LGBT individuals. Shaw and colleagues (2012) reported a past-year prevalence of sexual assault of 17.5% among men who have sex with men and transgender individuals in 4 districts in southern India. Peitzmeier and colleagues (2015) reported a past-3-year prevalence rate of 16.0% (crude) and 14.7% (weighted) among people assigned male sex at birth who had had anal sex with a man in the past 12 months.

Twenty-one studies reflected European countries, including Austria (1 study), Belgium (1 study), Cyprus (1 study), Germany (3 studies), Greece (1 study), Lithuania (1 study), Netherlands (3 studies), Norway (1 study), Poland (2 studies), Portugal (1 study), Slovakia (1 study), Spain (2 studies), Sweden (1 study), and the United Kingdom (2 studies). Eleven of these studies were conducted by Krahé and colleagues.

Four studies reported past-year prevalence rates for women unselected for sexual orientation. Among the studies using nationally-representative designs, the past-year prevalence of sexual assault ranged from 0.6% (Spain; Domenech Del Rio et al., 2017 ) to 1.7% (Netherlands; de Haas et al., 2012 ), whereas the highest past-year prevalence rate (1.9%) was identified in the one study of past-year prevalence among students (United Kingdom; Holloway & Bennett, 2018 ). Two studies of past-year prevalence used interviews to assess sexual assault and found rates of 0.6% (Spain; Domenech Del Rio et al., 2017 ) and 1.2% (Germany; Allroggen et al., 2016 ). In comparison, similar but somewhat higher rates were identified in the two studies using self-report measures: 1.7% (Netherlands; de Haas et al., 2012 ) and 1.9% (Wales; Holloway & Bennett, 2018 ). In terms of study definitions, the study assessing past-year prevalence with the most restrictive definition (which referenced both completed forced penetration and “sexual assault” generally) found a prevalence rate of 1.2% (Germany; Allrogen et al., 2012). In comparison, the two studies with the most inclusive definitions (explicitly including coerced, non-penetrative, and/or attempted assaults) found that past-year prevalence was 0.6% (Spain; Domenech Del Rio et al., 2017 ) and 1.7% (Netherlands; de Haas et al., 2012 ).

Fifteen studies assessed the prevalence of sexual assault since adolescence or adulthood among women. In the three studies using a nationally-representative design, the past-5-year prevalence was 2.5% (Germany; Hellmann et al., 2018 ), the prevalence since age 13 was 9.8% for completed sexual assault (Britain; Macdowall et al., 2013 ), and the prevalence since age 18 was 6.2% (Norway; Thoresen et al., 2015 ). In college samples, the prevalence since the (country-specific) age of majority was higher, ranging from 30.8% (Spain; Krahé et al., 2015 ) to 45.5% (Greece; Krahé et al., 2015 ), and the range of prevalence estimates in non-college samples was wider, from 6.2% (Norway; Thoresen et al., 2015 ) to 52.2% (Netherlands; Krahé et al., 2015 ). The prevalence since the age of majority was assessed by interview in one study and was found to be 6.2% (Norway; Thoresen et al., 2015 ), whereas the prevalence as assessed by self-report measures was higher, ranging from 9.8% ( Macdowall et al., 2013 ) to 52.2% (Netherlands; Krahé et al., 2015 ). The study with the most restrictive definition of sexual assault (including only forced completed penetration) found a prevalence of 6.2% (Norway; Thoresen et al., 2015 ), whereas the prevalence in studies with the most inclusive definition (including incapacitated, coerced, non-penetrative, and/or attempted assaults) was higher, ranging from 19.7% (Lithuania; Krahé et al., 2015 ) to 52.2% (Netherlands; Krahé et al., 2015 ).

Four studies reported past-year prevalence rates for men unselected for sexual orientation. Among the studies using nationally-representative designs, the past-year prevalence of sexual assault was 0.6% (Germany; Allroggen et al., 2016 ) and 0.7% (Netherlands; de Haas et al., 2012 ). In comparison, among the studies not using nationally-representative designs, the past-year prevalence was similar at 0.5% (Sweden; Swahnberg et al., 2012 ) and, in the only study to assess past-year prevalence in a sample of college students, past-year prevalence was 0.6% (United Kingdom; Holloway & Bennett, 2018 ). In the study with the most restrictive definition (which referenced both completed forced penetration and “sexual assault” generally), past-year prevalence was 0.6% (Germany; Allroggen et al., 2016 ), whereas in the study using the most inclusive definition (including coerced, non-penetrative, and/or attempted assaults), past-year prevalence was similar, at 0.7% (Netherlands; de Haas et al., 2012 ).

Sixteen studies assessed the prevalence of sexual assault since adolescence or adulthood among men; all studies used a self-report measure to assess sexual assault. Among the two studies using nationally-representative designs, the prevalence of completed sexual assault since the age of majority was 0.3% (Norway; Thoresen et al., 2015 ) and 1.4% (Britain; Macdowall et al., 2013 ). In comparison, the range of prevalence estimates since the age of majority was relatively higher—from 19.4% (Germany; Krahé & Berger, 2013 ) to 55.8% (Greece; Krahé et al., 2015 )—in four studies of college students, and wider—from 1.5% (Sweden; Swahnberg et al., 2012 ) to 49.0% (Cyprus; Krahé et al., 2015 )—in nine studies using non-student and non-nationally-representative samples). The study with the most restrictive definition of sexual assault (including only forced completed penetration) found that prevalence since the age of majority was 0.3% (Norway; Thoresen et al., 2015 ), whereas rates were higher—ranging from 10.1% (Belgium; Krahé et al., 2015 ) to 55.8% (Greece; Krahé et al., 2015 )—in the studies using a more inclusive definition of sexual assault (including incapacitated, coerced, non-penetrative, and/or attempted assaults).

Three studies reported prevalence rates for LGBT individuals. In a study of university students in Germany, Krahé and Berger (2013) reported prevalence rates since the age of consent (14 years) of 8.7% for women and 26.3% for men with a history of same-sex contact only, and 47.4% for women and 37.0% for men with a history of both same- and opposite-sex contact. In a study of alcohol-related sexual assault among university students in Wales, Holloway and Bennett (2018) reported past-year prevalence rates of 3.0% among individuals identifying as lesbian or gay, 2.0% among individuals identifying as bisexual, and 2.8% among individuals identifying as “other.” Bos and colleagues (2019) studied cisgender individuals in the Netherlands attracted to people of the same sex, and found that the prevalence of sexual assault since age 16 was 10.9% for men and 23.9% for women.

No identified studies reported on the prevalence of sexual assault in Oceania.

Latin America

Six studies reported on the prevalence of sexual assault in Brazil (3 studies), Chile (2 studies), and Mexico (1 study).

Four studies reported prevalence rates for women. The past-year prevalence of sexual assault was assessed by one study as 4.7% (Brazil; da Silva et al., 2010 ). Three studies reported on the prevalence of sexual assault since age 14, and yielded rates ranging from 29% (Brazil; D’Abreu et al., 2013 ) to 51.9% (Chile; Schuster et al., 2016b ).

Three studies reported prevalence rates for men unselected for sexual orientation. These studies reported on the prevalence of sexual assault since age 14 and yielded rates ranging from 20.4% (Chile; Lehrer et al., 2013 ) to 48.0% (Chile; Schuster et al., 2016b ).

Three studies reported prevalence rates for LGBT individuals. In a study of cisgender men in Brazil who had sex with a man or transgender person in the past 12 months, 54.1% of those with a lifetime sexual assault history reported past-year sexual assault ( Sabidó et al., 2015 ). Among college students in Brazil, the prevalence of rape since age 14 was 11.8% for bisexual men, 14.3% for bisexual women, 14.3% for “homosexual” men, and 0% for “homosexual” women ( D’Abreu et al., 2013 ). In a study of cisgender men who have sex with men (defined as individuals who reported anal or oral sex with a male partner in the last year) in Tijuana, Mexico, a past-year prevalence rate of 1.5% was identified ( Semple et al., 2017 ).

The aim of this paper was to offer an updated review of English-language studies published since 2010 that examined the prevalence of adolescent and/or adult sexual assault in countries other than the US and Canada. Knowledge about the worldwide scale of sexual aggression is scarce compared to the broad research literature that has built up in North America. A systematic search of the relevant databases yielded a total of 32 articles with 45 studies from 30 countries that met the inclusion criteria for our review (i.e., peer-reviewed studies published in English since 2010 that assessed the prevalence of adolescent or adult sexual assault in a country other than the US or Canada in general population or student samples of different sexual orientations). The majority of studies in this review found that sexual assault was endemic in the country studied. The prevalence of past-year sexual assault against women ranged from 0% (China) to 59.2% (Turkey). The prevalence of past-year sexual assault against men ranged from 0.3% (China) to 55.5% (Turkey). Among LGBT individuals, the prevalence of past-year sexual assault against ranged from 1.5% (Mexico) to 54.1% (among those with a lifetime sexual assault history; Brazil). As expected, prevalence rates based on longer time periods were higher, but due to variations in the periods covered, they cannot be presented in a summary fashion. These differences may reflect variation in study methodology. In addition, sociocultural variables (e.g., presence of patriarchal, heterosexist, or violence-supportive norms) that differ across countries may affect risk for sexual assault ( Krug et al., 2002 ) and explain these differences.

Differences in Prevalence Estimates by Study Methodology

Study methodology varied widely, which likely impacted the magnitude of obtained prevalence estimates. Comparisons for all of these aspects of study methodology are limited by a small number of studies using the same type of methods; indeed, in many regions, we were unable to conduct any comparisons. Nevertheless, some notable differences were observed.

First, some patterns in prevalence rates as a function of sample were noted. In particular, past-year prevalence estimates tended to be higher in college student samples (for past-year prevalence among women in Africa, Asia, and Europe, but not for men in Europe) as compared to nationally-representative samples. Although research in the US has also documented high rates of sexual assault in college samples ( Fedina et al., 2018 ), there is some indication that higher rates of sexual assault observed in college samples may be due to the younger age of these samples rather than college attendance per se ( Mumford et al., 2020 ). Indeed, there is evidence that rates of sexual assault may in fact be higher among college-aged women who do not attend college ( Sinozich & Langton, 2014 ), potentially because college attendance may be a marker of certain protective factors against victimization risk (e.g., economic and housing stability). Yet other studies did not find differences between students and nonstudents in the prevalence of sexual assault ( Coker et al., 2016 ; Mumford et al., 2020 ). Therefore, additional research is needed to examine a potentially increased risk of sexual assault among young adults globally, and to understand regional risk and protective factors for victimization. In addition, as compared to nationally-representative samples, the range of prevalence estimates tended to be wider in samples that were neither nationally representative nor composed of college students (for past-year prevalence among women in Africa; for prevalence since adolescence/adulthood among both women and men in Europe), suggesting less precision in reflecting the true country-level prevalence of sexual assault in these studies.

Second, study definitions of sexual assault appeared to affect observed prevalence estimates. In most cases where we were able to make comparisons, prevalence was higher when using explicitly inclusive definitions of sexual assault—including, for example, coerced, attempted, and/or non-penetrative assaults—and lower when studies used more restrictive definitions. This suggests that researchers should be thoughtful in how they define sexual assault, and assessing and reporting the prevalence of specific types of assaults (e.g., coerced vs. force) would be helpful to increase the comparability of global studies on this topic.

Less clear patterns emerged as a function of whether sexual assault was assessed by interview or self-report. Whereas the range of past-year prevalence estimates among women in Africa was wider for interview studies versus self-report studies, higher rates of sexual assault (both past-year and in adolescence/adulthood) were identified in self-report studies as compared to interview studies among women in Europe. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that research has found no differences in rates of disclosure of sensitive information (including sexual assault) as a function of interview versus self-report methods ( Rosenbaum et al., 2006 ). However, there may be cross-cultural differences in comfort with disclosure in interview versus self-report measures, and more research on this topic is needed to clarify this issue.

Studies that assess the prevalence of sexual assault in multiple countries using similar methods can help to identify true differences in prevalence across countries. However, just three studies in our review included data from more than one country ( Decker et al., 2014 , two African and two Asian countries; Krahé et al., 2015 , 10 countries in the European Union; Tsai et al., 2011 , 2 African countries). These studies show clear differences in prevalence rates that cannot be attributed to differences in methodology. For example, in the Decker et al. study, past-year prevalence rates of nonpartner sexual assault of women varied from 2% in China to 18% in South Africa. In the Krahé et al. (2015) study, prevalence rates of sexual assault victimization since the age of consent varied between 20% in Lithuania and 52% in the Netherlands. A qualitative follow-up study did not reveal differences between the countries in the way the items were interpreted ( Krahé et al., 2016 ). However, even when the same design and instruments are used, comparability of prevalence rates between countries may be affected by cultural differences, such as differences in willingness to disclose experiences of violence, or in familiarity with the response format ( Krahé, Bieneck, & Möller, 2005 ). Indeed, it is likely that the prevalence rates identified in this review are biased by underreporting ( Cook et al., 2011 ).

Strengths and Limitations of the Reviewed Literature

The studies included in this review highlight existing research priorities and gaps. We were able to obtain prevalence data obtained for most world regions, even though only English-language studies were included. However, the total number of estimates was small and distributed unevenly across world regions, with Europe ( n =21) and Africa ( n = 11) making up two-thirds of the studies. Although many of studies from Europe were conducted by a single research team and reflected relatively small samples comprised mostly of students, this still represents an uneven distribution., which was also found in the comprehensive review of prevalence studies of nonpartner sexual assault by Abrahams et al. (2014) . In addition, we found no studies from Oceania and only one study from the Middle East from which we could garner prevalence data. Although it is possible that research on this topic was published in languages other than English, it is also possible that this reveals a lack of research on this topic in certain world regions. This could be due to multiple factors, such as less structural support for academic research outside of the US and Canada, relatively less attention to the issue of sexual assault prevalence in some countries, or country-specific difficulties in conducting prevalence research (e.g., ongoing conflict, infrastructure challenges).

More studies examined sexual assault rates for women compared to men, which mirrors the state of the evidence in North America (e.g., Fedina et al., 2018 ; Peterson, et al., 2011 ). However, it was surprising to note that less than a third of studies were limited to women, which perhaps reflects an increase in global attention to the problem of sexual assault against men. The underrepresentation of studies including LGBT participants ( n = 19) (e.g., men who have sex with men) also parallels the North American knowledge base ( Rothman et al., 2011 ). Moreover, it is worth noting that 12 of the 19 LGBT studies came from Europe, reflecting a lack of attention to sexual assault in these groups in many countries outside the Western world.

Assessment of the risk of bias of studies identified a notable strength of this body of literature: the methods used in the current set of studies to assess sexual assault were relatively high-quality. In 32 studies, behaviorally-specific questions presenting different coercive strategies were used to elicit reports of sexual assault, and 30 studies used behaviorally-specific questions about the sexual acts in which victims were made to engage. The use of behaviorally-specific questions is considered superior to the use of broad, single-item questions ( Cook et al., 2011 ), which were used in 11 studies. Using behaviorally-specific questions is particularly relevant for cross-cultural analyses of the prevalence of sexual assault because cultural differences in the social construction of sexual assault are not detected using broad labels, such as rape. The predominance of the gold standard of using behaviorally-specific questions in the current body of studies is in contrast to the review by Abrahams et al. (2014) , who found most of their studies to use broad questions about sexual assault, not specifying coercive strategies and sexual acts. One possible reason for this difference is that our review was restricted to studies published in peer-reviewed journals, whereas over 90 percent of the estimates in the Abrahams et al. review came from grey literature reports that are typically not subjected to the same degree of rigorous quality control. However, it is also possible that this reflects more recent researcher adoption of advancements in the measurement of sexual assault.

In addition to the small overall number of studies, the knowledge about sexual assault generated by the body of evidence covered in our review is limited by several aspects of the studies. The average risk of bias score was 5.7 on a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 indicates maximum bias, indicating that the obtained prevalence rates need to be interpreted with caution with regard to their generalizability to the population as a whole. Specific areas of limitation were identified in this regard. First, fewer than half of the studies ( n = 19) were based on random samples from the target population, one was based on a census, and the remainder were based on convenience samples. Second, sample sizes varied widely, ranging from 22 to over 10,000 across the total set of studies, which creates large differences in terms of statistical power and measurement error. These aspects highlight the challenge of ensuring equivalence in the study of sexual assault across cultures, which needs to be defined at the level of conceptual definitions, operationalizations, sample selection, data collection process, and analyses ( Padilla, Benitez, & Vijver, 2019 ). It is important to note that these methodological issues are by no means specific to the literature covered by this review but also apply to studies of the prevalence of sexual assault more generally, including the evidence from North America ( Cook et al., 2011 ). It is also important to note that the primary goal of these studies was not necessarily to assess the prevalence of sexual assault, so these limitations pertain to the goal of understanding the global prevalence of sexual assault rather than reflecting the quality of the primary studies per se.

Limitations of the Current Review

Although the present set of studies adds important information about the scale of sexual assault worldwide, several limitations have to be noted about our review. First, only studies published in English were accessible to us. It is possible that relevant articles on this topic were published in languages other than English and were missed by our search strategy, although the lack of research on this topic from certain English-speaking countries (e.g., Australia) was notable. Second, the review was limited to studies published in peer-reviewed journals. Given that such studies accounted for less than 10% of the estimates included in the review by Abrahams et al. (2014) , this means that many more prevalence estimates are likely to be available in other outlets, which are not considered in our study. However, the limitation to studies subjected to peer review was deemed appropriate to achieve a similar standard of quality control across the studies, acknowledging that these standards may still vary to some extent between journals. Third, we did not consider studies that focused exclusively on sexual assault by intimate partners. In countries outside North America and Western Europe, intimate partner violence against women has received far more research attention than sexual assault by strangers. Because this literature has been covered comprehensively by Abrahams et al. (2014) , we decided to adopt a broader perspective that also included nonpartner sexual assault. Finally, because we focused on studies that were primarily concerned with identifying the prevalence of sexual assault, we may have missed studies that did not specify “incidence,” “prevalence,” or “scale” among the keywords but reported lifetime or one-year prevalence rates as part of other research questions.

Research Implications

Based on the results of this review, the first priority for a global research agenda on the comparative prevalence of sexual assault across countries should be to assess prevalence in multiple countries using standardized data collection protocols. Realizing this goal is likely beyond the scope of a single study and may require large-scale funding by international agencies for comparative studies in a sufficiently large sample of countries from different regions. Given the uneven geographic distribution of available English-language studies, special attention should be given to regions (e.g., Middle East, Oceania) where few or no previous studies have been conducted. Once a reliable data base has been established, the second task for a cross-cultural research agenda on the prevalence of sexual assault consists of identifying factors that may differentiate countries in terms of their relative scale of sexual assault. A limited body of comparative studies have examined associations between country-level variables, such as gender inequality, overall levels of crime, or religious affiliations, and prevalence rates of sexual aggression (e.g., Coon, 2013; Hines, 2007 ; Krahé et al., 2015 ). A special topic is the problem and significance of sexual assault in regions of conflict, in which sexual assault is more difficult to assess but also more likely to occur ( Krug et al., 2002 ). Third, it will be important to gain an understanding of sexual assault in specific subcultures within countries. Some of the studies in our review examined sexual assault in selected subgroups of the population, such as samples from disadvantaged or high-risk neighborhoods (e.g., Decker et al., 2014 ; Tsai et al., 2011 ). This perspective needs to be extended to identify conditions that precipitate sexual assault within regions. The use of qualitative research methods and an intimate knowledge of the respective culture are essential to address this task. Finally, future systematic reviews should include studies published in a range of languages other than English to address the English-language bias of the current review. Fostering international collaboration between researchers on this topic could help to facilitate such reviews.

Policy Implications

The gaps identified in this review also have implications for the development of policies and prevention measures. One task is to promote the acknowledgement of sexual assault experiences by sexual minorities, especially in countries in which they are discriminated against at the levels of law and societal discourse. Another task is to offer better protection to victims regardless of sex and sexual orientation by appropriate legislation and victim-support provisions. Finally, combining evidence from prevalence studies with knowledge about variables that predict an increased vulnerability to sexual assault is needed to design theory-based programs for the prevention of sexual assault. In the age of globalization and large-scale migration, such efforts need to consider the cultural context in which sexual assault occurs and must be stopped.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental table 1, supplemental tables 2 to 4, acknowledgments.

Author note: Manuscript preparation for this article was supported by National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Grant R00AA026317 (PI: Dworkin). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the University of Washington or the NIAAA.

1 We acknowledge that there is limited and mixed evidence regarding whether 12-month prevalence estimates of sexual assault are necessarily more accurate than those reflecting longer recall periods ( Gibbs et al., 2019 ), but chose to retain this criterion to maximize similarity to the original tool and reflect the likelihood that shorter recall periods produce less biased recall than longer recall periods.

2 The total number of studies reflects those studies for which we were able to code study characteristics. The number of studies is smaller than 45 when some studies were missing information on a given study characteristic.

3 Zhang et al. (2016) used face-to-face interviews unless participants requested to complete measures alone, in which case, self-report measures were used.

Contributor Information

Emily R. Dworkin, University of Washington, United States.

Barbara Krahé, University of Potsdam, Germany.

Heidi Zinzow, Clemson University, United States.

* = Studies included in the review

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Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

Illustration by Leigh Wells

A hallmark of the #MeToo movement has been to make plain the ubiquity of sexual violence against women and the impunity with which some perpetrators get away with it again and again. Rape is the nation’s most underreported violent crime, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics , as survivors fear that juries will believe the perpetrators, not them, and if they pursue justice, they may suffer further physical, economic, or social harm.

This stacked deck, known as “rape culture,” is the set of social attitudes about sexual assault that leads to survivors being treated with skepticism and even hostility, while perpetrators are shown empathy and imbued with credibility not conferred on people accused of other serious crimes, like armed robbery.

New research from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Dara Kay Cohen , Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Public Policy, Matthew Baum , Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, and Susanne Schwarz, M.P.P. ’15, finds that rape culture bias is not only real, but it shapes how people determine what a believable rape case looks like, who is most likely a rape victim, and in which circumstances rape is less likely to take place.

In a series of experiments, respondents were given certain details about rape cases, like the survivors and perpetrators’ race, a survivor’s sex and sexual history, a perpetrator’s socioeconomic status and relationship to the survivor, where the crime took place, and what clothing the victim wore — all details known to have the potential to trigger four key elements of rape bias: victim blaming, empathizing with perpetrators, assuming the victim’s consent, and questioning the victim’s credibility. The respondents were asked to determine which cases should be reported to police and how severely perpetrators should be punished, and briefly explain why, according to a paper published in Political Behavior .

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The details provided were not legally relevant and therefore should not have factored in people’s evaluations, “but they do,” said Schwarz, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral student in political science at Princeton University. “People use them to discriminate between and differentiate between the cases.”

Schwarz began working on the issue of rape culture with Baum and Cohen while a graduate student at HKS, and the recent research follows on prior work by the two professors. In 2018 Baum and Cohen (with co-author Yuri Zhukov, Ph.D. ’14, of the University of Michigan) published what is believed to be the first large-scale quantitative analysis of rape culture bias in the U.S. media, and its consequences.

Cohen and Baum were stunned by national news coverage of high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio, who in 2013 were convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl. Many of the accounts appeared to favor the perpetrators, so they decided to examine how common such bias was in news stories about sexual assault.

After developing a 72-point framework with which to measure bias, they evaluated all newspaper stories about rape in the Lexis Nexis database published between 2000 and 2013 using machine-learning data analysis. They found a correlation between the level of rape bias in a community’s news coverage and the incidents of rape reported and prosecuted there, according to the resulting paper, coauthored with Zhukov.

Correlation is not causation, of course, so the researchers next wanted to know how the public’s perceptions of rape generally influenced their views of specific rape cases.

“What started out as this attempt to capture how systematic biases against rape survivors in the media are … then morphed into the question of: How does this type of coverage affect how people evaluate these cases?” said Schwarz.

In the new study, the researchers found that some types of victims were believed less often than others, and some scenarios were seen as less credible. Details related to consent, such as the victim’s sexual history and prior relationship with the perpetrator, and to victim blaming, such as their sex or the venue of the rape, most influenced whether people would report a case to police and how harshly respondents believed the rapist should be punished.

Cases involving male survivors were “significantly less believed” than female ones, while the race of survivors and perpetrators was not influential in the way some might expect, although respondents were 4.7 percentage points likelier to believe Black female survivors than white female victims. Despite the controversy surrounding the initially lenient punishment of Brock Turner, a white Stanford University swimmer convicted of sexual assault and attempted rape of an unconscious woman behind a dumpster outside a fraternity in 2015, a perpetrator’s socioeconomic status was not a factor for respondents. But where the rape took place was influential, with people, by 6 percentage points, less likely to report rapes that happened at a party and 17.6 percentage points less likely to seek harsh punishment. If the victim and perpetrator knew one another prior to the rape, the case was 11.8 percentage points less likely to be referred to police.

Some respondents were asked about factors in the context of armed robbery to test whether such attitudes were crime-related or rape-specific.

The researchers were surprised that respondents so willingly offered their rationales for deciding whether to report a case or how to punish perpetrators. While respondents often attributed it to analysis of the facts presented , “it is also driven by these false beliefs that people hold about what a rape victim looks like, what a believable rape incident looks like, and under what circumstances rape happens and does not happen,” said Schwarz.

The findings indicate that testing the effect that rape-culture bias has on police officers, attorneys, and judges would be an important but very challenging area to pursue in future research.

“One of my hopes for the implications of this research is just to make people aware that there is an undercurrent of bias about how seriously we take these crimes and how much we believe [rape] to be deserving of punishment or how much we kind of blame the victim for putting himself or herself into the situation that resulted in the attack,” Cohen said.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Sexual Abuse — The Impact Of Sexual Assault On Mental Health

The Impact of Sexual Assault on Mental Health

• Categories: Assault Sexual Abuse

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Words: 1595 |

Published: Oct 25, 2021

Words: 1595 | Pages: 4 | 8 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, impact on mental health, how to help, works cited.

• Government of Ontario. (2016). Sexual Assault. Retrieved from http://www.ontario.ca/page/sexual-assault
• French, B. H., & Neville, H. A. (2017). Gender, race, and sexual coercion: Associations with positive sexual experiences. Journal of Black Psychology, 43(7), 703-725.
• Dario, L. M. (2018). Sexual Assault: Mental Health Consequences and Considerations for Therapy. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 27(2), 212-230.
• Hagene, P. (2015). Posttraumatic stress disorder following sexual assault: Implications for primary care. Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice, 42(2), 199-214.
• Prout, C., & Henderson, J. (2018). I Have the Right To: A High School Survivor's Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope. Margaret K. McElderry Books.
• Hauser, C. (2016). St. Paul’s School Rape Trial: Chessy Prout, Victim, Testifies. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/us/st-pauls-school-rape-trial-chessy-prout.html
• Entertainment Weekly. (2018). Chessy Prout on her powerful new memoir I Have the Right To. Retrieved from https://ew.com/books/2018/03/13/chessy-prout-i-have-the-right-to/
• VanCamp, R. (2019). The Medical Model of Counseling and Psychotherapy: Therapist’s Guide to Help Clients Manage Trauma. Journal of Counseling & Development, 97(1), 80-88.
• National Sexual Assault Hotline. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.rainn.org/
• Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.rainn.org/

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“What would happen,” the poet Muriel Rukeyser asks in her oft-quoted poem “Käthe Kollwitz,” “if one woman told the truth about / her life? / The world would split open.” Over the past few years, I’ve begun to question the truth of that statement, especially as it relates to telling the truth about sexual violence. What is the purpose and function of writing about rape? More to the point, what to me is the purpose and function of writing when writing about my rape?

These questions grew more painful to consider after I published my first book, which examined the long-term effects of violence and survival, and more painful still when I learned this book had ended up on the reading lists of various feminist tastemakers on Twitter, one of whom noted that she was using the book as a writing prompt for her students’ exploration of violence. Thus my personal experience was to become a jumping-off point for others’ creativity, my descriptions of my assault disseminated and refracted through the exercises of strangers so they could understand the effects of such violence themselves. My assault would thus become both symbol and trope, something that could be parsed and imitated until all the rage and humanness drained out of it.  I had always known, of course, that this one of the possible outcomes of publishing such a book, especially one that ended up in the maw of social media. But actually reading this student’s response to my essay, in which my assault was reimagined and repeated back to me in her language, made me feel both sickened and small.

Speak truth to power, writers and non-writers alike declaim, and now I’ve seen this phrase trickle through the feeds of people on Facebook and Twitter. The aim is to tell the truth of our lives as we see it, as directly and with as little remorse as possible. Such an outpouring of personal testimony has indeed cracked open the world, in part by reminding participants in social media that the things most American institutions want to forget about our nation—its violence against people of color, its killing of LGBTQ people, its seemingly implacable hatred of women and their bodies—stubbornly persist. There is indeed a power and value to truth-telling. But truth-telling relies on narrative, and narrative telling—even supposedly artless, immediate telling—is in fact crafted. It wants a particular response, and nothing crafts language so effectively as a Web format that requires you to express yourself in 280 characters or less, and sells these truth-telling nuggets in a stream of visual media, making it impossible for the audience to focus on any but the most extreme, compelling, and direct language.

Social media and truth-telling both encourage the reader, primarily, to emote. And having emoted, having felt all the things and thought all the thoughts the writer has asked us to think and feel within that limited format, we can walk away from the engagement satisfied with the blunt, brute fact of our feelings. Social media offers a veneer of authenticity that claims the authority of survivorship and thus makes autobiography and resilience satisfactory political goals.

A memoir about sexual assault guarantees a certain amount of attention, because it is sensational and because writing about violence encourages a kind of voyeurism. But while this may be one possible response, it is not this writer’s desire to make the reader participate in the imagined reconstruction of violence. And reconstructing another person’s trauma is not what we teach other budding writers about the purpose of testimonies of violence, in particular the testimonies of violence that women might produce. If anything, we argue, women’s testimonies should inspire not empathy (or not only empathy) but political outrage, in large part because women’s autobiographical writing has been so effectively suppressed over centuries. Women’s writing about violence serves as a public novelty, one which, if it does not always receive the social stamp of high art, at least promises an authentic expression of rage, of grief, of endurance and survival, and—most powerfully—of hope.

But I’m not actually that interested in resilience. I want jail time for offenders. I want politicians tossed out of office, priests defrocked, federal judges fired and replaced. I want a country that doesn’t treat violence against women as sexual entertainment.

Over the past year, I’ve begun to hate the book I published. The more I read from and talk about it, the more politically and aesthetically suspicious my own writing appears to me. Who had I written it for? Who did I really imagine as its audience? The project started, in part, as a reaction to the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which got me thinking about the ways in which sex discrimination has shaped my working life, which got me thinking about the sexual assault I experienced as a twenty-year-old woman at a coat factory where I worked one summer as a down stuffer along with several itinerant workers, one of whom attacked me. The book was finally published around the time that our current president, then a presidential candidate, admitted to grabbing women “by the pussy,” which made the #MeToo hashtag started by Tarana Burke in 2006 erupt into a firestorm. Into this storm my book was tossed, and while I was happy at first to add my voice to the movement, over time I began to feel that the book sounded less like me than an automated reply. Using the same language that has characterized the experience of so many other women certainly brings me into community with them, but that shared language also makes the stories of survivors feel depressingly interchangeable and flat.

Perhaps this flattening is created in part by our social expectations about female psychology and women’s writing, in particular our assumption that women’s writing is primarily or only autobiographical, not imaginative, and that it stems from an institutionally disadvantaged position that we equate with pain. This, too, enrages me. It feels as though, because I am female, I was born into this language and psychology; as a woman and a writer, I am a grievance waiting to be heard and endured. At times it feels that the best I can do is pay close attention to that grievance, to give it a slightly different shape and coloration. By writing about my assault, I confirm the most inarguably authentic position of the not-male, and also the not-white: the pained, the wounded, the helpless, the small .

To speak about one’s assault in a way that feels actually authentic is to thread the needle through an incredibly slender eye, made ever more narrow: by the pressure of therapeutic services, which argue that such narratives are not only good, but necessary for psychic healing; political and social institutions, where truth-telling makes for good rallying cries and possible legislation; and by social media, which argues for ever more devastating expressions of the self to be streamed and consumed and disseminated.

Effective writing about violence shares many of the aesthetic traits of political language, which is to say its directness resists excessive or subtle interpretation. It compresses time and context in order to focus on the moment at hand. Writing about violence authenticates itself through the performance of immediacy and vivid feeling. This is what suggests truth—and it is surprisingly, distressingly easy to duplicate.

The social media performances of grief, selfhood, and outrage I daily read feel suspiciously like masquerades. In my feeds, writers try to outshine and outthink the politicians and abusers inspiring our outrage, using language whose nuance rarely rises above theirs. In this way, we are shackled to victimizing doubles. As much as I despise the self-help books, the prayer circles, the thin whine of grief on Twitter and its overuse of the word trauma , the only identity that seems unable to be challenged or shamed is that of the victim. Thus I and others willingly write into and about how we have been diminished or shamed, to stop ourselves from being attacked by those claiming to be more morally progressive online, because the only way to keep yourself safe within that group, it seems, is to become the witting accomplice to your own self-objectification.

Refracting and repeating narratives of violence also risk downplaying or even ignoring matters of race and class in favor of the sensational act itself, even as race and class make violence a more or less likely experience for a person to have. It is not lost on me, for example, that I come from a middle-class family and was attacked by someone skirting the poverty line, that what brought us together was a coat factory that relied on both our labor to exist: me, the mixed-race college student earning money for her next year’s tuition; my attacker, a white man who moved from job to job, city to city, aimless and resentful of the opportunities I would have in a world he imagined pandered to minorities. It is not lost on my either that the stories we repeat most often online are those told by and about middle and upper middle class white women. Our retweeting and sharing of these stories replicates the culture’s co-opting of Tarana Burke’s #MeToo hashtag into the world of (largely) white and (largely) middle-class feminism.

The young student, consciously or unconsciously, performed this co-option when she imitated my writing. She understood that some part of writing about and against violence, especially the violence that women experience, is imitative and coercive. One does not have to be a victim of violence to render that violence believably or powerfully. The actual experience of an assault may be private, it may reveal the world to be artless and cruel, but the sharing of it depends entirely on creative skills, detailed images, and ideas of identities that can be appropriated.

 Even as I write this, it strikes me that perhaps I’m wrong to think we’ve become numb to, or jaded about, female narratives of pain. I think back to that look on Arizona senator Jeff Flake’s face in the elevator as he fled the Kavanaugh hearings, the moment when a protester pried apart the elevator doors to demand he hear about the assault she’d survived. I see again the pain twist across his face. Perhaps the reason the #MeToo movement hasn’t achieved more substantial victories for women is not that its language has started to feel formulaic, but that it really is too painful for people to witness. It’s too painful because it asks those who have not suffered to imagine the limits of their physical invulnerability—to realize, if only empathetically, that their sense of self-protection is a fantasy. We turn away from the language of violence not because it has become anodyne, but because we see how easily each of us can be made a victim.

“Perhaps writers like us really can change the world,” one young woman wrote to me recently in a private Twitter message. “Your book inspired me to tell my own story. You can check out my feed.” I thumbed down the screen to read it, the words of this stranger who, like me, was humiliated and hurt, raw and furious, her own terrible story wedged now between video grabs from a Trump rally and a trailer for John Wick 3 . I stopped reading and her story flickered past. I wrote privately to thank her, added a few glib notes of praise, and told her I hoped she’d continue writing. Then I deleted her message.

The Ferrante Project: The freedom of anonymity brings together sixteen women writers of color (alongside sixteen visual artists in a linked project with the Warhol Museum) who anonymously contributed new works in response to, or critique of, the cult of personality, posturing, and preemptive celebrity of writers at the expense—sometimes—of the quality and provocation of the work itself. This is a collaboration between Aster(ix) and CAAPP: Center of African American Poetry and Poetics.

Contributors include Angie Cruz, Sarah Gambito, Dawn Lundy Martin, Khadijah Queen, Ru Freeman, Ayana Mathis, Vi khi nao, Cristina García  Cathy Linh Che, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Deborah Paredez, Emily Raboteau, Paisley Rekdal, Natalie Díaz, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and Jamey Hatley.

This page collects the works of anonymous writers published by  AGNI.

Thoughts about sexual assault on college campuses

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, martha nussbaum martha nussbaum ernst freund distinguished service professor of law and ethics - the university of chicago.

October 21, 2021

• 22 min read

This interlude is from Martha Nussbaum’s book, Citadels of Pride: Sexual Abuse, Accountability, and Reconciliation , published by W. W. Norton & Company in May 2021.

So far we have traced the evolution of legal standards for sexual assault and sexual harassment, and their current defects and challenges. There is, however, a significant area of our national discussion that is not fully covered by these discussions, because it involves a complex and uneasy mixture of federal law (Title IX, discussed in Chapter 5) and informal tribunals: sexual assault and harassment on college campuses. Because my previous discussions have covered the most salient issues in each area of law, I need not devote a full chapter to this case, nor do I wish such a disproportionate focus to suggest that women who attend college deserve more attention than women who do not. Unequal access to higher education is already a major problem of justice in our society, compounding other disadvantages based on race and class. There is no reason to perpetuate the injustice by paying more attention to the problems of those women who have managed to arrive at a college or university. One of the great strengths of the traditions I have described is the fact that working-class and minority women (for example Cheryl Araujo, Mechelle Vinson, Mary Carr) have been among their salient plaintiffs.

Yet, because the institutional structures are different, the topic of campus assault requires separate treatment, albeit briefly. Nobody knows exactly how large a problem this is, but one recent survey by the Association of American Universities found that around 20 percent of female undergraduates are victims of sexual assault or sexual misconduct at some point during their college life. 1 Other studies have found frequent sexual abuse of males as well, amounting to 6 to 8 percent. Although there are disputes over methodology and definition, there’s no doubt about the severity of the issue. It would appear, however, that attending college does not make a woman more likely to suffer sexual assault. 2

Sexual harassment and sexual assault have long included abuses of power between faculty and students, but on the whole, these cases have been understood as workplace abuses of power, and are dealt with under clear public rules, in much the manner of other workplaces. Thus, Chapter 5 has already basically dealt with these cases. In this Interlude I focus on student-student assault and harassment.

The literature on this topic is vast and controversies are heated, in part because the Obama administration guidelines have now been replaced by different guidelines developed by the Department of Education under the aegis of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. However, the controversies cross political lines. Thus the group of Harvard Law School professors who protested against the Obama guidelines as unfair to accused men, anticipating the DeVos critique (I’ll describe their intervention as Stage Two below) included some conservatives, but also faculty from the left and even extreme left of the faculty.

I’ll cover the salient issues briefly, without discussing all the ins and outs of all the controversies. Thus the intention of this brief discussion is to indicate, in a general way, how my overall view in this book’s detailed chapters would approach campus cases, rather than to construct a comprehensive argument. 3

A large proportion of sexual assaults and alleged sexual assaults occur when one party, or usually both parties, have been drinking heavily. Heavy drinking makes memory gappy and adjudication very difficult. In general campuses need to do much better with alcohol education and treatment. But one recommendation that most college administrators would support is: lower the drinking age. This approach seems counterintuitive, but it is really sensible. Right now, if adults are present where there is under-age drinking (and most students are under twenty-one), they can be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. So they refrain from providing badly needed supervision, including help for students who have passed out. If the drinking age were reduced to eighteen, adults could attend parties and be prepared to give assistance.

Another alcohol-related issue that needs addressing, in both education and adjudication: sex with a person who has passed out or is close to that point is an assault. This is a species of my point about affirmative consent, but it needs to be repeated again and again. The standard, however, is far from clear in application. Many cases before campus tribunals concern the thorny and as yet unresolved question of how impaired a person must be in order not to be capable of decision-making. Since the evidence comes, typically, from two impaired individuals, it is hard for them to remember how impaired they were. Third-party evidence is usually helpful, but is not always available.

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Campus Tribunals

There is considerable confusion in the public mind over why campuses do not simply turn accusations over to the police. So it’s important to point out that campuses have membership conditions, usually spelled out in the admissions contract, that go beyond the letter of the law and that need to be enforced by the campus itself. Plagiarism, not attending class, cheating on exams–all of these things are likely to be punished, sometimes with suspension or expulsion, even though they are not crimes. Similarly campuses may adopt sexual requirements that go beyond the law. Some of these are extreme: honor codes at some religious schools penalize all non-marital sexual conduct. I think such restrictions are counterproductive, creating cultures of silence (if a woman discloses that she has been raped, she can be penalized for engaging in sex). But there are also some reasonable requirements, such as affirmative consent, that are not necessarily the law of the land.

Moreover, the criminal justice system takes a long time, and victims need swift justice in order to deal with the trauma and go forward as students.

Finally, if a perpetrator is convicted in the criminal justice system, that record is ruinous for future life and employment. Campus convictions come in degrees, and many involve mandatory counseling and other lesser penalties. For this reason, having the criminal justice system as the only option, would deter reporting and bringing charges, since victims often hesitate before ruining the perpetrator’s life, and yet they seek some measure of recognition. They want the wrong done to them to be acknowledged—both that it happened and that it was wrong—and they want accountability for the perpetrator; but typically they are not seeking maximal revenge. Nor do they want lengthy involvement with the formal criminal justice system.

These are reasons why campus tribunals are not replaceable by the criminal justice system. However, it must also be said that these tribunals often do their job poorly. Faculty and administrators who serve on them are rarely well trained, and they do not always understand the quasi-legal issues with clarity. Procedures are often poorly defined, and the accused, who typically lack legal representation, are at a disadvantage.

Procedural Issues for Tribunals

How, then, can these tribunals be made to work better?

In this section I’ll refer to several key stages in the debate. Stage One was the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the Obama administration, laying out standards to which all universities must conform to receive federal money. 4 Stage Two involved a series of objections to these standards, some issued by Betsy DeVos once she became secretary of education, 5 but similar objections were raised earlier by legal professionals—most famously by a group of twenty-eight Harvard Law School professors, drawn from both the left and the right, in a letter published initially in the Boston Globe but widely reprinted. 6 Next, in Stage Three, came the new Department of Education draft rule, which, like all administrative rules was subject to “notice and comment,” 7 and received over 124,000 comments. 8 Finally, in Stage Four (May 2020), the Department of Education issued its Final Rule, which is now legally binding on all colleges and universities that receive federal money. 9 I’ll proceed issue by issue.

First, all involved need to get clear about the best burden of proof. This issue has been one of the largest political disputes. Three standards are currently in use in our legal system. The most stringent, used throughout the United States in the criminal justice system, is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Many countries do not use this standard for criminal trials, but our tradition has judged that convicting an innocent person is more heinous and more to be avoided than letting a guilty person go free. Together with this exacting standard, our criminal justice system gives the accused a constitutional right to the “effective” and cost-free assistance of legal counsel, although great disparities still exist between public defenders provided free of charge and the sort of lawyer that a more affluent defendant typically would engage—not always because of quality, but because public defenders are overworked and usually don’t have enough time to devote to each client. But at least there is cost-free representation. Furthermore, our Constitution’s “confrontation clause” gives accused parties the right to confront witnesses testifying to their guilt. Over time other rights have been inferred from constitutional guarantees, the most famous being the Miranda warnings that must be read to defendants on arrest, warning them of their right to counsel and their right to remain silent. So our system is protective of defendants in multiple ways.

In civil trials, the standard, instead, is “preponderance of the evidence,” which means anything over 50 percent. Obviously this is a much weaker standard. Nor are free lawyers always provided in civil cases (some states do, most don’t). Still, the civil litigation system has firm procedural structures that safeguard the parties—especially a lengthy period of “discovery,” which gives both sides a chance to examine the other side’s evidence. Without such structural safeguards, and without legal counsel assisting the parties, many people feel that the “preponderance” standard is likely to lead to error.

A third intermediate standard is “clear and convincing evidence,” which is used in ways specified by the relevant state laws, often in areas such as paternity and child custody. This standard is typically thought to mean that it is about 75 percent likely that the person did what is alleged.

Before the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the Obama administration, 10 most universities used “clear and convincing evidence” as the standard in sexual assault tribunals. The Obama administration insisted, instead, on the civil “preponderance of the evidence” standard. The Harvard Law School faculty letter, and DeVos in her own remarks, held that this standard was not protective enough of the accused. So far, it seems that nobody favors the “reasonable doubt” standard, which would be very difficult to apply in the informal and evidentially challenged situation of a tribunal. So the choice is between the other two standards, and in the end the Department of Education’s Final Rule gives every college that choice.

It’s important to be clear that a college tribunal will not take away a defendant’s liberty. That dire consequence is our legal system’s primary reason for choosing reasonable doubt. Courts, however, have repeatedly held that educational opportunities are economic or property interests, not matters of freedom. So it seems that there is nothing at all odd about using either the civil justice standard of preponderance, or the tougher standard of clear and convincing evidence. This is where the debate occurs.

In real life, both sides have merit. Preponderance defenders believe, rightly, that in the typical alcohol-fueled interaction any stronger standard will be very difficult to meet. However, it is also true that education, albeit a property interest, is one of special defining importance in our society. So it’s important to be protective of the accused. And the civil standard is probably a bad idea in a setting that lacks the procedural safeguards that are usually present in civil trials. Clear and convincing makes more sense, I believe; but if a school should opt for preponderance—as I said, the Final Rule ultimately, and rather surprisingly, gives institutions a choice between these two—a careful tribunal would probably think in terms of a kind of preponderance plus, not necessarily convicting someone where the evidence suggests a mere 50.5 percent likelihood of guilt. The 50.5 approach would really not be protective enough of the accused. Many preponderance-based tribunals actually interpret the standards somewhat more strongly. Whatever the standard, members of tribunals need better training about the whole issue of evidence and the burden of proof.

A second issue of great importance is the definition of sexual harassment. The campus process typically runs together the two things our legal system has carefully kept apart—namely sexual assault or abuse, and (workplace) sexual harassment. There is no harm in this combination so long as sub-definitions are clearly drawn. Sexual assault is typically defined as a single act, not a pattern of actions: you only need to rape a woman once to be guilty of rape! Sexual harassment, by contrast, has two forms. If there is a quid pro quo, a single act suffices. But in “hostile environment” harassment, the plaintiff needs to show a pattern of actions that are sufficiently “serious” and “pervasive,” as well as “unwelcome.” One demeaning comment or gross overture will not suffice. This distinction seems correct.

In terms of this legal background, the Dear Colleague letter was far from adequate. It defined sexual harassment as “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, non-verbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” This meant in practice that one gross or demeaning comment, with no prior evidence of its unwelcomeness, would be actionable. The Department of Education’s Final Rule, by contrast (Stage Four), hews closely to legal standards accepted elsewhere in our legal system. There are three categories of sexual harassment: (1) “any instance of quid pro quo harassment by a school’s employee,” (2) “any unwelcome conduct that a reasonable person would find so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies a person equal educational access”; and (3) “any instance of sexual assault as defined in the Clery Act [a federal statute dealing with campus security], dating violence, domestic violence, or stalking, as defined in the Violence Against Women Act.” In other words, a single unannounced act can still be sexual assault or a quid pro quo, but verbal harassment must form a pattern that meets the Supreme Court standard of pervasiveness and severity, as determined from the point of view of a reasonable observer. The Final Rule protects someone who makes a deeply offensive remark without advance notice of its unwelcomeness and who does not persist.

On most grounds the Department of Education’s Final Rule is an advance over the Obama administration’s rule, and also over the Department of Education’s first rule (Stage Three), under DeVos, which did not include dating violence, domestic violence, or stalking. The Final Rule is perhaps too narrow in its requirement that the accuser show that the harassment is not just severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, but that it also has a deleterious effect on the person’s equal educational access. Campuses are academic organizations, but they are also social organizations. Social harassment does not always affect someone’s ability to study, and why should that need to be shown? Why isn’t the poisoning of the person’s campus social life sufficient? There are other issues that have been raised, but on balance the “notice and comment” process seems to have worked pretty well.

I shall not go into the details of the various discussions of the questioning and confrontation process in the old and new rules. What I want to focus on, instead, is what I consider to be one of the largest problems with campus tribunals, which has not been addressed by any of these rules: the lack of access to free legal counsel for the accused. Most institutions not only do not provide a lawyer for the accused party; they actively discourage the hiring of lawyers. Typically the accused is permitted to have one supporter or advisor, but when the accused asks if this person can be a lawyer, they are usually discouraged. This is wrong. “Advisors” are typically faculty or administrators who have no legal training and who cannot do an energetic job of defending their client’s rights. And it is also wrong to require people to hire their own lawyers. Free legal assistance would go a long way to dispelling the worries of the twenty-eight Harvard Law School faculty members (Stage Two) about the system’s unfairness. Columbia University does provide free legal counsel for the accused, and so, now, does Harvard Law School (though not the rest of Harvard). My own university has recently begun to implement a policy offering free legal counsel to both defendants and plaintiffs. I have not been able to find out how many other institutions do this. And some federal grant money is available to support accused students at state universities. But the linchpin of our justice system is legal representation. Perhaps this requirement could be waived for minor offenses for which the likely penalty is alcohol counseling, for example; but in cases where the accused faces expulsion it should be mandatory, no matter what it costs. Colleges and universities have many doctors, nurses, and psychologists on their payrolls. And they do have a staff of lawyers, only not for this purpose. They should enlarge their legal departments to include lawyers at the service of students, for just this sort of problem.

I’ve said that tribunals are often poorly trained. The best solution to this problem, since membership of tribunals rotates, is mandatory sexual assault and sexual harassment training for all faculty and administrators. Such training is now required in most universities, as it is in most businesses. At the University of Chicago, each administrator and faculty member must complete the course online every year. It is not perfect, but it does supply a uniform level of awareness.

The Title IX Process

A welcome element of experienced professionalism is now supplied by the presence of Title IX offices on campuses. Typically they do face-to-face training as well as online training, though not as often. But they also play a crucial role through a strong norm of mandatory reporting, which is helping to close the information gap. If a student discloses sexual harassment or assault to any faculty member or administrator, that person is required immediately to inform the Title IX coordinator, giving the complainant’s name. The coordinator will then contact the complainant, typically promising her complete confidentiality and anonymity if she requests it. The complainant usually also has decisional autonomy: nothing will be done, and the alleged perpetrator will not be contacted, unless the complainant gives a go-ahead. Meanwhile the coordinator can advise the complainant about how the process works.

Mandatory reporting is controversial. Many have feared that it will discourage disclosures: the minute you open up to someone you trust, the information also goes to someone else you don’t know. But on the whole mandatory reporting seems wise. The Title IX staff, in my experience, behave with restraint and professionalism, protecting confidentiality. Once faculty and administrators have experience with the coordinators, my experience is that they do come to trust them. And faculty (and others) are relieved of a huge burden of dealing with the whole of a traumatized person’s subsequent life and choices. Faculty usually are not equipped to shoulder this burden, however well-intentioned they are.

The letter by the twenty-eight Harvard Law School professors objected to too much centralized power being vested in the Title IX office, in the scheme at first proposed by Harvard Law School in its attempt to institutionalize the Obama administration standards. The main problem they identified was that the Title IX office did both investigation and adjudication. Their letter was surely correct to say that this setup is very unfair and unwise. Harvard Law School quickly heeded their criticism, separating the two functions. The primary function of the Title IX office should be—and by now for the most part is—investigative and advisory. The tribunals themselves typically consist of faculty, and sometimes administrators, and are constituted according to procedures subject to faculty autonomy and faculty governance. They have many defects, but they are not an alien bureaucracy invading the campus, as the Harvard letter had feared.

We now need to address the gaps in the process that remain, particularly in the area of legal representation.

We have all learned a great deal from these somewhat painful debates. And progress has been made. Although in some ways DeVos has been a polarizing figure, the Final Rule adopted by the Department of Education under her aegis, thanks to the notice-and-comment process, is debatable but still arguably fair. It seems distinctly superior both to the draft rule and to the standards articulated by the Obama administration. We now need to address the gaps in the process that remain, particularly in the area of legal representation.

• Nick Anderson, Susan Svrluga, and Scott Clement, “Survey: More than 1 in 5 Female Undergrads at Top Schools Suffer Sexual Attacks,” Washington Post, September 21, 2015, https://www​.washingtonpost​.com/local/education/survey​-more​-than​-1​-in​-5​-female​-undergrads​-at​-top​-schools​-suffer​-sexual​-attacks/2015/09/19/c6c80be2​-5e29​-11e5​-b38e​-06883aacba64_story​.html​.
• Charlene L. Muehlenhard et al., “Evaluating the One-​in-​Five Statistic: Women’s Risk of Sexual Assault While in College,” Journal of Sex Research 54, no. 4 (May 16, 2017): 565, https://doi​.org/10​.1080/00224499​.2017​.1295014​. As discussed there, evidence does not support the assumption that college students experience more sexual assault than nonstudents.
• In this area, my two research assistants did such superb and meticulous work on this topic, which naturally interested them greatly, that their work is worthy of note in itself and is on file with me: Sarah Hough, “Legal Approaches toward On-​Campus Sexual Violence in the US: A Brief Overview,” unpublished paper, July 1, 2019; and Jared I. Mayer, “Memo on De Vos’s Changes to Campus Title IX Proceedings,” unpublished paper, May 20, 2020.
• National Sexual Violence Resource Center, “Dear Colleague Letter: Sexual Violence” (US Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, 2011), https://www​.nsvrc​.org/publications/dear​-colleague​-letter​-sexual​-violence​. The NSVRC website also contains much helpful background information.
• See “Department of Education Issues New Interim Guidance on Campus Sexual Misconduct,” US Department of Education, September 22, 2017, https://www​.ed​.gov/news/press​-releases/department​-education​-issues​-new​-interim​-guidance​-campus​-sexual​-misconduct​.
• “Rethink Harvard’s Sexual Harassment Policy” (Opinion), Boston Globe, October 14, 2014, https://www​.bostonglobe​.com/opinion/2014/10/14/rethink​-harvard​-sexual​-harassment​-policy/HFDDiZN7nU2UwuUuWMnqbM/story​.html​.
• For an overview of the notice-​and-​comment system of regulation making, see “A Guide to the Rulemaking Process,” Office of the Federal Register, January 2011, https://www​.federalregister​.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaking_process​.pdf​.
• “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance,” Federal Register, November 29, 2018, https://www​.federalregister​.gov/documents/2018/11/29/2018​-25314/nondiscrimination​-on​-the​-basis​-of​-sex​-in​-education​-programs​-or​-activities​-receiving​-federal​.
• See 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a) (2018). A helpful memo clarifying the content of the Final Rule is Apalla U. Chopra et al., “Analysis of Key Provisions of the Department of Education’s New Title IX Regulations,” O’Melveny & Myers LLP, May 15, 2020, https://www​.omm​.com/resources/alerts​-and​-publications/alerts/analysis​-of​-key​-provisions​-of​-doe​.
• National Sexual Violence Resource Center, “Dear Colleague Letter.”

Economic Studies

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Sarah Reber, Gabriela Goodman, Rina Nagashima

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Overview of Rape and Sexual Violence

The term "sexual violence" refers to a specific constellation of crimes including sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape. The person who commits this crime may be a stranger, acquaintance, friend, family member, or intimate partner. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers agree that all forms of sexual violence harm the individual, the family unit, and society and that much work remains to be done to enhance the criminal justice response to these crimes.

Sexual Violence Takes Many Forms

Sexual harassment ranges from degrading remarks, gestures, and jokes to indecent exposure, being touched, grabbed, pinched, or brushed against in a sexual way [1] . In employment settings, it has been defined as "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct that enters into employment decisions or conduct that unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment" [2] .

• Read more about civil rights and sexual harassment in an NIJ research report.
• See also  Sexual Harassment on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Web site .

Sexual assault covers a wide range of unwanted behaviors—up to but not including penetration—that are attempted or completed against a victim's will or when a victim cannot consent because of age, disability, or the influence of alcohol or drugs. Sexual assault may involve actual or threatened physical force, use of weapons, coercion, intimidation, or pressure and may include—

• Intentional touching of the victim's genitals, anus, groin, or breasts.
• Exposure to exhibitionism.
• Undesired exposure to pornography.
• Public display of images that were taken in a private context or when the victim was unaware.

Rape definitions vary by state and in response to legislative advocacy. Most statutes currently define rape as nonconsensual oral, anal, or vaginal penetration of the victim by body parts or objects using force, threats of bodily harm, or by taking advantage of a victim who is incapacitated or otherwise incapable of giving consent. Incapacitation may include mental or cognitive disability, self-induced or forced intoxication, status as minor, or any other condition defined by law that voids an individual's ability to give consent.

Not surprisingly, rates of rape also vary widely among studies according to how the crime is defined, what population is studied, and what methodology is used. Estimates range from as low as 2 percent [3] , as quoted in The Epidemic of Rape and Child Sexual Abuse in the United States [4] ,  to 56 percent [5] . The most recent and methodologically rigorous studies show that sexual assault still occurs at rates that approximate those first identified more than 20 years ago when Koss, Gidycz, and Wisiewski  [6] found that approximately 27.5% of college women reported experiences that met the legal criteria for rape.

Sexual assault and rape are generally defined as felonies. During the past 30 years, states have enacted rape shield laws to protect victims and criminal and civil legal remedies to punish those who commit this crime. The effectiveness of these laws in accomplishing their goals is a topic of concern.

Estimates also vary regarding how likely a victim is to report victimization. Traditionally, rape notification rates differed depending on whether the victim knew the person who committed the crime — those who knew the person were often less likely to report the crime. This gap, however, may be closing.

[note 1] Hill, C., and E. Silva. Drawing the Line: Sexual Harassment on Campus. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women, 2006.

[note 2] Rubin, P, 1995. Civil Rights and Criminal Justice: Primer on Sexual Harassment . Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, October 1995, NCJ 156663.

[note 3] Gordon, T., and S. Riger. Female Fear . New York: Free Press, 1989, NCJ 118492.

[note 4] Russell, D.E.H., and R.M. Bolen. The Epidemic of Rape and Child Sexual Abuse in the United States. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000: 247.

[note 5] Goodman, L.A. "Prevalence of Abuse Among Homeless and Housed Poor Mothers: A Comparison Study." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 61(4)(October 1991): 489–500.

[note 6] Koss, M.P., C.A. Gidycz, and N. Wisiewski. " The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Higher Education Students ." Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 55(2)(1987): 162–170, NCJ 108037.

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Content Warning:  Please note that reading the following false statements may be upsetting or triggering to some. We encourage you to proceed with caution and reach out to confidential resources if you need additional support.

Rape myths are false beliefs people hold about sexual assault that shift blame from the perpetrator to the survivor. Rape myths have grown out of the long-standing gender roles, acceptance of violence, and incorrect information concerning sexual violence that exist in our society. These false statements not only shame survivors into silence; they also hurt our community’s general knowledge of sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. The most effective way to confront and tackle rape myths is to educate yourself on the facts and challenge them when you encounter them.

Myth: Rape happens only to “certain” types of women. Fact: Any person of any gender, age, race, class, religion, occupation, physical ability, sexual identity, or appearance can be raped. The perpetrator does not choose the victim because they are young, pretty, or provocatively dressed; the perpetrator chooses the victim who is vulnerable. The perpetrator may select a victim who is smaller or weaker than they are, who is alone or isolated, who is incapacitated or handicapped in some way, or who does not suspect what is about to happen.

Myth: Rape and sexual assault are about sexual attraction and gratification. Fact: Rape and sexual assault are about control and domination.

Myth: It’s not really rape when a person changes their mind in the middle of sexual activity. Fact: Consent is retractable ; a person can change their mind at any time. Their partner is responsible for respecting their decision to stop.

Myth: When it comes to sex, men can be provoked to “a point of no return.” Fact: Men are physically able to stop at any point during sexual activity. Rape is not an act of impulse or uncontrollable passion; it is an intentional act of violence. Perpetrators of rape are not only men, and anyone is able to stop at any point.

Myth:  Rape is usually violent and involves a stranger. Fact:  90% of sexual assaults on college campuses are committed by someone the victim knows. Many rapes involve force or the threat of force, but rapes are also committed while the victim is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or when asleep.

Myth: If a person goes to their date’s room on the first date, it implies they are willing to have sex. Fact: Nothing is ever implied, consent must always be clear . Of the 90% of assaults in which the survivor knows the perpetrator, approximately half of these occur on a date. The best way to prevent a bad situation is communication. If you are not sure what the other person wants, just ask. You cannot continue without consent.

Myth: A victim must have “asked for it” by being seductive, drunk, careless, high, etc. Fact: No one asks to be violated, abused, injured, or humiliated. Perpetrators who are intoxicated or under the influence of drugs are still responsible for their actions and regardless of behavior, no one deserves to be raped.

Myth: If a person doesn’t fight back, they weren’t really raped. Fact: Whatever a person does to survive is the appropriate action. Rape can be life threatening, especially when a rapist uses a weapon or force. Submission is not the same as cooperation. There are many reasons why a victim might not physically fight their attacker including shock, fear, threats or the size and strength of the attacker.

Myth: There are a lot of false rape reports. Fact: Rapes are no more likely to be falsely reported than any other felony. The FBI estimates that, at most, 2% of reported rapes are false. Because 90% of rapes on college campuses are not reported, it’s especially important that we take each report seriously.

Myth: Most people report rape or sexual assault to the police. Fact: Rape and sexual assault are two of the most underreported crimes in our society. Estimates show that only 12% of college student survivors report the assualt to the police. Factoring unreported rapes together with the odds of an arrest being made and the chances of getting a felony conviction, only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail. In other words: 15 of 16 rapists walk free.

Myth: It is ok to pressure or talk someone into sexual activity. Fact: No, this falls into the category of coercion. Coercion is not consent. Consent must always be affirmative : freely given. Coercion is a tactic used to intimidate, trick, or force someone to have sex with them. Myth: If you wouldn’t have been drinking, you wouldn’t have been sexually assaulted. Fact: Alcohol is a weapon that some perpetrators use to control their victim and render them helpless. As part of their plan, a perpetrator may encourage the victim to use alcohol, or identify an individual who is already incapacitated. Alcohol is not a cause of rape; it is only one of many tools that perpetrators use. Myth: When someone says no, they really mean yes. Fact: Yes means yes. When someone says yes, they are explicitly giving consent. Silence does not mean consent. It is the responsibility of the person initiating or escalating sexual activity to gain consent at each and every act, every time. If you are ever unclear about your partner’s wishes, ask for clarification. If your partner says no or seems unsure, respect that person and their wishes.

Myth: If a person has an orgasm then they were not actually sexually assaulted. Fact: Orgasm does not mean that someone “enjoyed” sex, or that they wanted it. Orgasm can be a natural biological reaction that someone can’t control; it doesn’t mean that forced or coerced sexual activity was consensual. Often this is used to silence the survivor.

Myth: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender individuals deserve to be raped because of their lifestyle. Fact: No one deserves to be raped. This is an excuse used by perpetrators who commit rape as a hate crime against LGBTQ+ individuals.

Myth: Men can’t be sexually assaulted. Fact: 5-6% of men will experience sexual assaulted while in college. College is also the time when men are most at risk. As with all, male survivors can be supported best by talking about the issue in an inclusive way, avoiding the presumptions that all survivors are female or that all male victims are gay.

Myth: People who commit sexual assaults are abnormal perverts or mentally ill. Fact: Sexual offenders come from all educational, occupational, racial and cultural backgrounds. They are “ordinary” and “normal” individuals who sexually assault victims to assert power and control over them and inflict violence, humiliation and degradation.

(From: https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf ,  https://www.knowyourix.org/issues/statistics/ ,  https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/most-victims-know-their-attacker ,  https://cmsac.org/facts-and-statistics/ , and http://titleix.uconn.edu/more-information/sexual-assault/sexual-assault-myths/ )

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Sexuality & Narratives of Consent & Control

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Amanda Charles Follow

Sexual Assault and its Impacts in Young Adult Literature

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As sexual abuse has become a more prominent topic in the media it has become necessary to find helpful ways in which young adults can discuss sexual assault without feeling threatened. Young adult novels have become a vehicle through which teenagers can begin to understand sexual assault and the trauma that follows it. These novels are able to extend their reach to both victims and their peers. The following essay highlights my research on the effects of discussing sexual abuse in young adult literature. As a victim of sexual assault, I found solace in the young adult novel Speak which narrates the aftermath of rape in a 14 year old girl’s life. Having connected with and begun my personal healing process through a young adult novel, I began my search to find evidence that there were other teenagers like myself, young adults who found comfort in books that discussed sexual abuse. My journey uncovered the great resource that these novels can be in the classroom and out of it. When discussed correctly in a classroom or read appropriately outside of school, rape novels become a source of strength to victims and a dispeller of rape myths among victims’ peers. I found that exceedingly dark and explicit novels discussing sexual abuse are generally targeted at an older audience and therefore do not pose the threat to innocence that most adults are afraid of. YA novels discussing sexual abuse have proved to be a place of sanctuary, compassion, and discussion among young adults. They offer a safe place within which young adults can connect and heal. Their presence is not only beneficial but crucial.

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On Writing as a Survivor

• March 23, 2022

Every survivor has a story. Telling that story can help them celebrate their voice, their creativity, bring awareness to the issues, or even advocate for prevention. Although not for everyone, writing has long been celebrated for its healing capabilities . While online spaces of writing, poetry corners , books , and blogs can play a positive influence in the lives of those healing from trauma, they can also constitute spaces of abuse and harassment. When writers put their experiences, thoughts, feelings, or narratives online, they can become targets for criticism , victim blaming or trolling.

If survivors face harassment for their work or writings online, it creates a whole second wave of trauma. Online harassment can create emotional, mental, and psychological harm that is just as impactful as trauma that occurs offline. Research shows that cyberbullying causes acute mental health issues in victims which are no less severe simply because they take place online. In fact, one study shows that more than one-third of cyber victims (35%) had “clinically significant” post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.

When we consider the impacts of trauma on a person, we want to be aware of the layering aspect of it. That is, trauma is not one single thing that one acquires and then gets rid of; people may encounter new traumatic experiences as they heal from previous ones. Perhaps they are not yet healed from those previous traumas, and new crises unfold. When someone who is already working through trauma faces harassment or bullying, it compounds negative emotions in a way that can be immensely harmful. This is very much the case when those who write about their experiences encounter online abuse as a result of telling their story.

Many survivors are aware of these risks and, as a result, limit themselves and the actions they want to take to reclaim their power. Telling their story can also be difficult for survivors when speaking through someone else or being interviewed by someone else — that is, when other writers or journalists “cover” their story or focus on their life or experiences for a piece. Survivors should always have control of their own voices and stories. It’s extremely important that journalists and members of the media understand how to be trauma-informed and understand the sacrifices survivors make when telling their story. For example, although interviewers themselves may be well informed in how to talk about sexual violence, the piece they ultimately publish may garner negative comments online which may be harmful. Telling victims to “just ignore it” does little to mitigate the impact.

Yet, research shows that journalists are no strangers to harassment themselves. Data has indicated that journalists who identify as women face disproportionate rates of harassment and further expectations to accept it as an aspect of their profession. According to a study done by The Center for Media Engagement, women in journalism often “felt strong pressure to engage online as part of their job and often felt they had no choice but to face the harassment.” The nature of the harassment did not always revolve around the content of their writing, but it focused on their gender, aspects of their appearance, or their sexuality. Those who actively chose to refrain from social media felt it hurt their career and visibility as a result.

This all showcases the ways in which patriarchy pervades the virtual world. As such, it is vital for survivors to have access to resources and support, and for the media to be trauma-informed in its coverage and collaborations with survivors. The following materials may prove useful for survivors, journalists, or other  members of the media writing about sexual assault.

For Survivors Writing

My Story, My Terms

The goal of this workbook from Women’s Justice NOW is to guide individuals through the healing power of storytelling and help those who are considering sharing their stories make an informed decision about doing so.

 Speaking Out From Within: Speaking Publicly About Sexual Assault 

This pamphlet from PCAR was written for survivors who are thinking they want to do public speaking around their experience.

Survivors Write: Writing practice for personal and community transformation

This free e-book from Jen Cross of Writing Ourselves Whole describes resources for those interested in writing in groups with others (or alone), including a sample eight-week syllabus, additional writing prompts, writing guidelines, and a bibliography.

How Writing Letters to My Body Helps Me Heal From Sexual Assault In this piece published in them ., Lexie Bean explains how writing can be a tool to rebuild, to question, and to validate survivors’ own experiences.

Writing About Surviving and Being an Expert on Sexual Assault

In this piece, Katie Guest Pryal gives guidance on writing about tough topics, like sexual assault, when you identify as a survivor.

For Writers Facing Harassment

Online trolling: You are not alone! 

The page from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ ) is a hub for relevant publications on the topic of gendered abuse against journalists.

Journalists and Online Harassment 

The piece by Slaughter & Newman from the Dart Center covers what online harassment against journalists is, how prevalent it is, and how journalists can effectively respond.

Practical and legal tools to protect the safety of journalists

The Thomson Reuters Foundation has partnered with UNESCO , IWMF and INSI to develop a range of practical and legal tools for journalists, media managers, and newsrooms to strengthen responses to online and offline harassment and to protect free and independent media.

For the Media

Reporting on Sexual Violence This resource page of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC )  provides guidance and tips for journalists reporting on sexual violence.

Guide for Journalists

Know Your IX has assembled this guide for reporters and editors who are covering gender-based violence, particularly on college campuses.

If You're Writing About Assault

Amelia Roskin-Frazee covers six tips for writing about sexual assault.

Reporting Sexual Assault: A Guide for Journalists 

The purpose of the guide by the Michigan Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence   is to provide insight into new trends and assist journalists in developing strategies to accurately frame the public discussion on sexual assault, as well as encourage an accurate and compassionate approach to reporting on this issue and facilitate relationship building between journalists and local sexual assault experts.

It is time for action to end violence against women: a speech by Lakshmi Puri at the ACP-EU Parliamentary Assembly

Date: Wednesday, 19 June 2013

Speech by Acting Head of UN Women Lakshmi Puri on Ending Violence against Women and Children at the ACP-EU Parliamentary Assembly on 18 June 2013, in Brussels

Good morning.

Honourable Co-Presidents of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly Ms. Joyce Laboso (congratulations on this new important role) and Mr. Louis Michel, Honourable Members of Parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I thank you for inviting me to address you at this ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly on a matter that concerns all of us, all 79 African, Caribbean and Pacific nations and 27 European Union Member States represented in this forum, and ALL nations of the world.

It is one of the most pervasive violations of human rights in the world, one of the least prosecuted crimes, and one of the greatest threats to lasting peace and development.

I am talking about violence against women and children. I am honoured to be here, at your request, to address this urgent matter as you join together to advance human rights, democracy and the common values of humanity.

We all know that we have to do much more to respond to the cries for justice of women and children who have suffered violence. We have to do much more to end these horrible abuses and the impunity that allows these human rights violations to continue.

When we started UN Women two-and-a-half years ago, we made ending violence against women and girls one of our top priorities.

I think we can all agree that the time for complacency is long gone, has passed and belongs to another era. The silence on violence against women and children has been broken and now. Now is the time for stronger action.

It is time for action when up to 70 per cent of women in some countries face physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime.

When one in three girls in developing countries is likely to be married as a child bride; when some 140 million girls and women have suffered female genital mutilation; when millions of women and girls are trafficked in modern-day slavery; and when women’s bodies are a battleground and rape is used as a tactic of war – it is time for action.

This violence against women and children has tremendous costs to communities, nations and societies—for public well-being, health and safety, and for school achievement, productivity, law enforcement, and public programmes and budgets.

If left unaddressed, these human rights violations pose serious consequences for current and future generations and for efforts to ensure peace and security, to reduce poverty and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the next generation of development goals we are discussing .

The effects of violence can remain with women and children for a lifetime, and can pass from one generation to another. Studies show that children who have witnessed, or been subjected to, violence are more likely to become victims or abusers themselves.

Violence against women and girls is an extreme manifestation of gender inequality and systemic gender-based discrimination. The right of women and children to live free of violence depends on the protection of their human rights and a strong chain of justice.

Countries that enact and enforce laws on violence against women have less gender-based violence. Today 160 countries have laws to address violence against women. However, in too many cases enforcement is lacking.

For an effective response to this violence, different sectors in society must work together.

A rape survivor must have rapid access to a health clinic that can administer emergency medical care, including treatment to prevent HIV and unintended pregnancies and counseling.

A woman who is beaten by her husband must have someplace to go with her children to enjoy safety, sanity and shelter.

A victim of violence must have confidence that when she files a police report, she will receive justice and the perpetrator will be punished.

And an adolescent boy in school who learns about health and sexuality must be taught that coercion, violence and discrimination against girls are unacceptable.

As the Acting Head of UN Women, I have the opportunity to meet with representatives from around the world, with government officials, civil society groups and members of the business community.

I can tell you that momentum is gathering, awareness is rising and I truly believe that long-standing indifference to violence against women and children is declining.

A recent study published in the American Sociological Review finds that transformation in attitudes are happening around the world.

The study looked at women’s attitudes about intimate partner violence in 26 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. It found that during the first decade of the 2000s, in almost every one of these countries, women became more likely to reject intimate partner violence.

The surveys found growing female rejection of domestic violence in 23 of the 26 countries. It found that “women with greater access to global cultural scripts through urban living, education, or access to media were more likely to reject intimate partner violence.”

The study’s author concludes that domestic violence is increasingly viewed as unacceptable due to changes in global attitudes. Yet even with this rising rejection, in nearly half of the countries, 12 of the 26 – more than half of women surveyed – still believe that domestic violence is justified. So even though attitudes are changing, we still have a long way to go to achieve the changes in attitudes that are necessary to end violence against women and children.

I witnessed this myself at the 57th Commission on the Status of Women at United Nations Headquarters in New York this past March. The agreement reached at the Commission on preventing and ending violence against women and girls was hard-won and tensions ran high throughout the final week of the session.

There were many times when it was unclear whether the Commission would end in deadlock, as it did 10 years before on the same theme, or if Member States were going to decide on a groundbreaking agreement.

In the end, thanks to the tireless work of civil society advocates and negotiations into the wee hours of Government delegates and UN Women colleagues, agreement was reached on a historic document that embraces the call of women around the world to break the cycle of violence and to protect the rights of women and girls.

The landmark agreement provides an action plan for Governments. It breaks this down into the four P’s: Protection of human rights, Prosecution of offenders, Prevention of violence, and Provision of Services to survivors.

Protecting human rights

When it comes to protecting rights, Governments are called on to review national legislation, practices and customs and abolish those that discriminate against women. Laws, policies and programmes that explicitly prohibit and punish violence must be put into place, in line with international agreements, and you as Members of Parliament can play a key role.

Based on findings from UN Women’s 2011-2012 Progress of the World’s Women report «In Pursuit of Justice », out of all the ACP countries, 37 have legislation against domestic violence, 34 have legislation against sexual harassment, and just nine have legislation against marital rape.

Providing services When it comes to providing services, the agreement calls for strong action to improve the quality and accessibility of services so that women have prompt access to services regardless of their location, race, age or income.

These include: health-care services including post-rape care, emergency contraception and abortion where legal; immediate and effective police responses, psychological support and counselling; legal advice and protection orders; shelter, telephone hotlines, and social assistance.

Responses must be timely and efficient to end a culture of hopelessness and impunity and foster a culture of justice and support. In almost all of the ACP countries comprehensive multisectoral services need to be put in place and made accessible to all.

Prosecuting offenders

When it comes to the prosecution of offenders, we know that ending impunity means that laws must be enforced.

Women must have access to the police to file a criminal report and receive legal advice and protection orders. The response to violence must be immediate, coordinated and effective so that crimes are punished and justice is secured. This is true for times of peace and conflict. There can be no lasting peace when women suffer sexual violence.

Courts and the justice system must be accessible and responsive to criminal and civil matters relating to violence against women. Women must be informed of their legal rights and supported to navigate the legal system.

And for this, we need more women police officers, prosecutors and judges, because we know that women serving on the frontlines of justice strengthen justice for women and children.

Preventing violence against women

When it comes to preventing violence, we must address the root causes of gender inequality and discrimination.

Evidence shows that where the “gender gap” is greater—in the status of women’s health, participation in the economy, education levels, and representation in politics— women are more likely to be subjected to violence. Especially important is economic empowerment as a prevention strategy

This means that we need to take a long-term, systemic and comprehensive approach that recognizes and protects women’s and children’s full and equal human rights.

We must promote a culture of equality between men and women through institutional and legal reform, education, awareness-raising and the full engagement of men and boys.

Honourable MPs,

Ending violence against women is one of UN Women’s key priorities and a critical part of UN Women’s mission to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Having said that, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about UN Women’s role in ending violence against women and some of our achievements.

A top priority right now is working with countries to implement the recent agreement from the Commission on the Status of Women.

I am very pleased that UN Women and the EU have agreed to work on this together. We hope, with your support, to collaborate with more regional and cross-regional bodies and groupings such as the African Union, the Latin American and Caribbean States and the Pacific Forum to follow up on the agreement from the Commission on the Status of Women to end violence against women and girls.

Today UN Women is working in 85 countries, including in many ACP countries, to prevent violence in the first place, to end impunity for these crimes, to increase access to justice and to expand essential services to survivors.

Through our global, regional and national programmes, we support the development of laws, national action plans and policies, and training programmes. We provide funding to NGOs and civil society, contribute to advocacy and awareness-raising efforts, and support local initiatives.

We work together with UNICEF and UN Habitat on the Safe Cities programme to promote the safety of women and girls in public spaces. We now work in over 20 cities around the world, and this number continues to rise. Let me share with you a few exciting examples.

In Kigali, Rwanda, a Safe City Campaign was launched by the mayor’s office and other partners. The city is advocating for reforms to an existing law on gender-based violence to include measures on sexual harassment and violence in public spaces.

In Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, bylaws on local markets now include articles which address women’s safety. Women vendors are returning to the markets following the first phase of physical and social infrastructure improvements, and a focused awareness campaign is underway on sexual harassment and sexual violence.

UN Women also administers the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. This is a leading global fund exclusively dedicated to addressing violence against women and girls. To date, the UN Trust Fund has delivered more than USD 86 million to 351 initiatives in 128 countries and territories, often directly to women’s organizations. The results have demonstrated many good practices that can, and should be, expanded.

Another global programme administered by UN Women is the Secretary-General’s UNiTE Campaign to End Violence against Women. Through strong advocacy, the campaign is mobilizing communities across the globe.

In Africa, the UNiTE Campaign organized the Kilimanjaro Climb hosted by Tanzania under the auspices of the President. This raised awareness of violence against women to the highest levels resulting in strengthened national commitments throughout Africa.

In the Pacific Region, the campaign succeeded in securing the “Pacific Members of Parliament UNiTE statement” – the first of its kind in the region, tabled at the Pacific Island Forum Leaders meeting in the Cook Islands.

In the Caribbean, 15 high-profile local artists produced a series of creative materials as part of the “Caribbean Artists, united to end violence against women” initiative, developed in the framework of the UNiTE Campaign. These materials were officially presented by the Secretary-General of CARICOM, Irwin LaRocque, last year during the gathering of CARICOM Heads of Government. This has contributed to give high visibility and strategically position the issue of violence against women in the region.

And UN Women’s COMMIT initiative has garnered new commitments by 58 Governments to prevent and end violence against women and girls. I applaud the ACP and EU member countries, and the European Union itself, for making commitments and encourage other countries to join them.

We must work together to seize the moment and move quickly so that the momentum is not lost. UN Women stands ready to assist Member States with other UN partners. We have already identified the key priorities and strategies we will be focusing:

First, Getting the Evidence: Data on Violence against Women Despite some progress in this area, there is still an urgent need to strengthen the evidence base as many countries still lack reliable and meaningful data. Actually, earlier this morning the European Women’s Lobby Centre on Violence against Women presented the findings from the 2013 Barometer focusing on rape in the EU.

In cooperation with our UN partners, we plan to build capacity in regions and countries to increase skills in data collection, analysis, dissemination and use, using the UN Statistical Commission Guidelines for obtaining data for the nine core indicators for violence against women.

Second, Strengthening Multi-sectoral Services for Survivors To this end, UN Women is working to devise globally agreed standards and guidelines on the essential services and responses that are required to meet the immediate and mid-term safety, health, and other needs of women and girls subjected to violence. I am very pleased that we are now working in partnership with UNFPA and other UN agencies to deliver this initiative.

Third, Preventing Violence against Women and Girls To this end, we will advocate for and work towards a shared understanding at the global level about what works, and provide guidance to States and other stakeholders on how to develop an holistic framework to prevent violence against women and girls; including by working systematically and consistently with male leaders and men and boys at all levels and by further strengthening women’s economic and political participation.

Fourth, Strengthening Partnerships We will continue to engage civil society and the private sector in ending violence against women and girls, working with survivors to empower them, making sure their experiences are taken into consideration in the development of responses; and working with those women and girls who suffer multiple and intersecting forms of violence who are particularly vulnerable.

Fifth and finally, we will continue to improve the knowledge base for ending violence against women by developing additional modules and updating our virtual knowledge centre.

Honourable Members of Parliament,

I would now like to take a brief moment to discuss the post-2015 development agenda, especially its role in addressing the issue of violence against women. I also had the occasion to deliver a video statement on this in your Women’s Forum which took place past Saturday and which concentrated on the post-2015 framework. I applaud the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly for regularly organizing such a Women’s Forum and strengthening this network.

UN Women is calling for a stand-alone goal on gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment and separately and concurrently gender equality mainstreamed across all goals. This is needed to address the structural foundations of gender-based inequality. To this effect, we are calling for the new framework to tackle three core areas: safety, access and voice, so women can live free of violence, enjoy equal access of opportunities and resources; and exercise their voice in leadership and participation.

In developing the post-2015 agenda and the 11th European Development Fund, we seek your support to ensure a strong focus on gender equality, women’s rights and empowerment and ending violence.

I thank you. All of us at UN Women look forward to strengthened collaboration with you and your countries through this forum to end violence against women and children.

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Counselor explains the importance of believing sexual violence victims amidst false claims

W ATERLOO, Iowa (KCRG) - A Waterloo man faces charges after police say he twice alleged a sexual assault that he quickly recanted... but it calls into question that gray area of dismissing claims of sexual abuse and whether any false claim further injures victims of very real sexual assaults.

And one counsellor says it’s better to believe all victims as police investigate their case. ..and that she doesn’t believe false claims impact real victims

Gwen Bramlet-Hecker is the Executive Director of the Riverview Center, which is an organization that helps victims of sexual violence.

She says that false reports are often used as a way to discredit victims as they come forward.

And although she says it’s controversial, she argues it’s more beneficial in the long run to believe everyone that claims they’re a victim, even if some of those claims end up being untrue.

“Does it happen sometimes? Yes, it happens. But such a small percentage of the time compared to the number of times women come forward and they’re not believed. That’s where our energy needs to be. What do we have to do to change cultural forces so that when a man or a woman or a nonbinary individual or a child or an adult comes forward and discloses, our automatic act is we believe them. " she explained.”

According to the organization “End Violence Against Women International”... false reports make up about 2 to 8% of sexual assault claims.

And Bramlet-Hecker says they can be unfairly used as a way to keep real victims silent.

She further explained thay by uplifting victims when they first come forward, it increases the likelihood that the victim will have a better, more successful healing process than if they’re met with shame and disbelief.