Rape Crisis Centers For Women

“Rape is unique. No other violent crime is so fraught with controversy, so enmeshed in dispute and in the politics of gender and sexuality… And within the domain of rape, the most highly charged area of debate concerns the issue of false allegations. For centuries, it has been asserted and assumed that women “cry rape,” that a large proportion of rape allegations are maliciously concocted for purposes of revenge or other motives.”

In the article “Athletic club weekend turns into a nightmare for college freshman” by Carol smith and Lee Van Der Voo, Emily Lorenzen shares her story of being a rape victim. Emily shares her account because she wants to help to prevent rape from happening to anyone else. After interviewing Emily the authors shared a statement expressing that “Emily lorenzen believes that if people hear her story, they will be more comfortable confronting the issue of sexual assault on campus. She wants more conversation, so that men get a clearer definition of rape, face stiffer penalties if they ignore it and administrators learn to reach out to women like her and show compassion. She especially wants bystanders to step up and protect people who are vulnerable.” Rape victims need support to not feel guilty or ashamed, and that is exactly what Emily and her father desire. On this topic, Shipman an influential contributor of the Spokane sexual assault

The EROC works to end sexual violence on campus by providing support for survivors and communities. Their aim is to prevent incidents through education, awareness and policy reform. Like many programs, EROC realizes the effects of sexual assault and rape on victims and how difficult it can be for a victim to come forward. These victims who should be deemed as survivors need support and respect. The issue is that many victims simply do not feel as if that support is there for them. These individuals desperately need support and respect. Developing a rape crisis center, like most college campuses have, or offering professional counselors who specialized in helping victims of sexual violence can lead to more individuals coming forward about the

African American women have been greatly oppressed for centuries. In some ways, they have built up resilience to this oppression, and have also built resilience to other traumatic events, such as sexual assault. Issues of resilience and coping strengthen African American women’s abilities to heal and thrive as survivors of child sexual abuse (Singh, Garnett, & Williams, 2012). This resilience helps them in other situations that may cause similar stress and confusion in their lives. The idea of oppression is key to understanding how the treatment of African American women plays a role in their resilience to sexual assault.

I was raised by a single mother in Massachusetts in the 1980s. In 1983, when I was five years old, I was “kidnapped” by the teenage nephew of our neighbors and held in their root cellar for roughly 12 hours. I write “kidnapped” because even though what happened to me was not technically a kidnapping – I wasn’t held for ransom or for more than twenty-four hours, it was the only word that I had at my disposal to describe my experience. Because I was five and no one had explained to me what sexual assault, molestation or rape was. In America it is estimated that nearly 1 in 5 women has experienced or will experience a rape in her lifetime (Black, et al. 2011). I am just one of the estimated 42 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse

As the issue of race and rape often entangled with one another, it was often observed that the issue of skin color greatly determined the punishment for crimes committed. White men on one spectrum were more than likely to not be convicted for the rape of an African American woman and were rarely convicted for raping white women. On the other hand, African American men were recommended for the death penalty if found guilty of raping a white woman; although most (if not all) were hung if even suspected of the act. The negative connotation of African Americans, more specifically African American women possessed by the Caucasian race can even be traced back into literature of the early 1900’s. An article published by a white southern woman in a periodical titled “The Independent” on March 17th, 1904 stated, “Degeneracy is apt to show most in the weaker individuals of any race; so Negro women evidence more nearly the popular idea of total depravity than men do. They are so nearly lacking in virtue that the color of a Negro woman’s skin is generally taken (and is quite correctly) as a guarantee of her immortality…I sometimes read of a virtuous Negro woman, hear of them, but the idea is absolutely inconceivable to me.”, (Cook,

As the author points out, “African American women were wanton, licentious, promiscuous. White men (who had obviously engaged in sexual acts with African American women over the decades, given the range of skin colors among African Americans) could not be accused of raping ‘bad’ women. ‘Bad,’ amoral women did not need or deserve protection” (30). The history became the past that kept hunting the black women. As the victims, instead of receiving a fair treatment from the community, they were blamed just because of the history that they did not have the intention for that to

The Centers for Disease control reports that one out of every five women will be sexually assaulted or raped during their lifetime with most victims being girls or younger women. According to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (https://www.rainn.org) which calls itself “the nation 's largest anti-sexual assault organization,” nine out of ten rape victims are women and there are more than 237,000 victims of sexual assault in the U.S. every year, with a reporting rate of only 40 percent. Eighty percent of victims are under 30. Two-thirds of all the reported assaults are by someone known to the victim and only 3 percent of rapists get any jail time. The effects of rape are long lasting and have public health and social welfare consequences. According to RAINN, victims of sexual assault have higher rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and drug and alcohol abuse than the general population. Rape is a personal issue because of the trauma it induces in its

Sexual assault is not just a crime against an individual, it affects families, the community, and society as a whole. In recent years, our society has shifted to one of rape culture and rape myth. Rape myths are erroneous, stereotypical, and prejudicial beliefs about rape victims and reasons of sexual assault. Rape myths can impact survivors of assault, as well as the behavior and effectiveness of family, friends, medical and social services, and law enforcement (Rape Victim Advocates, 2016). Rape impacts our society by attacking the cohesion and mutual protection that makes a society. When we allow such crimes to go without the most vigorous and vigilant investigation and punishment, we allow for whole segments of society to be diminished, we are sending the message that society is okay with rape (Abbey,

One in five women and one in seventy-one men will be raped in their lifetime. This type of statistic is nauseating. Senator Sanders states in his article “Man-and-Woman”, “Many women seem to be walking a tightrope now. Their qualities of love, openness, and gentleness were too deeply enmeshed with qualities of dependency, subservience, and masochism.” Within this article, sexual abuse and gender normalities are the big topics. Some men see women as an object or a toy that they can play with. However, women are needed so much more than just to fill the desires of a man. Another problem that not only grown women, but young girls face everyday is the event of cat calling. The Huffington Post’s Joan Marie states, “The first time I was catcalled, I was ten, at a family friend’s barbeque in a swimsuit, It was a drunk dad, who thought he was funny.” The woman in this article explains that she still remembers every inch of her body feeling hot with shame as everyone at the party looked at her. Women are blamed for these types of incidents. The man should have been the one who was ashamed, as a father of a child close to her age. Women continuously blame themselves for the traumatizing things that are said and done to them. Furthermore, there needs to be more support for women and help them to understand that they have a right to their body and it is not something to be ashamed

The culture of rape toward women of color especially have influenced many to believe the misconception and stereotype of black women sexuality. The authors minimize the history of enslavement and rape because they could not come up with a reasonable truth or reason as to why Haitian women and any color women were rape. Many held the position that women were responsibility for many of the white men action because they were taught to accepted the white men sexual advances and adapt the culture of enslavement and oppression. Their virtue was not their because they were not a human being in the eye of the white man. According to the book, white men felt empower and used excuses to justify their actions, “such attitudes helped justify and normalize

America has a proud history of being a country that has many different ethnicities and cultures living within its borders. But one of the most prevalent cultures is one that transcends race or country of origin, rape culture. The term used by modern day feminist and gender activist defines a culture which normalizes rape and sexual assaults because of the deeply rooted societal attitudes towards gender and sexuality. In a rape culture the instances of rape are accepted as everyday occurrences and even as the prerogative of men, resulting in the stigmatization and blame placing of rape victims. Although the phrase “rape culture” is relatively modern, the

This literature review provides a brief overview of six scholarly articles and other facts about sexual assault .This review will first define sexual assault as it is defined in these articles. It will analyze the strengths and limitations of the definition used and will discuss the occurrence of sexual assault in the general population.This review will also illustrate the protective factors, barriers to recovery , impact of development and the specific sexual assault population that are absent in these articles. Sexual assault is a societal issue that impacts men and women at every age in their life, it’s much more highly reported among college aged women. The majority of women who are victims of rape are

The Human Services Organization I analyzed is New Beginnings. New Beginnings is an agency that provides sexual assault support services in Daviess, Hancock, Henderson, McLean, Ohio, Union, and Webster counties. The clients of this organization have all been affected by sexual assault or child sexual abuse. Issues within clients are best described as acute trauma responses or chronic trauma, such as sexual difficulties or loss of trust. In order to analyze this agency as efficiently as possible, I interviewed Terri Crowe, the Advocacy Coordinator, from New Beginnings. Terri was able to provide very useful information regarding this organization and how it ticks. Although New Beginnings provides services to seven different counties, there are

Feminist scholarship has argued that rape ideology encourages and justifies sexual coercion, trivializes sexual violence and demeans and devalues women who have experienced sexual assault. The foundation of this argument is based on women's experiences in patriarchal societies. Due to the fact that