Research on Sexual Assault

Research on Sexual Assault

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

Introduction

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

Definitions

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

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

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

Thesis Statement

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

Background

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

Discussions

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

Though widely condemned, sexual abuses on children have been more prevalent than realized previously and the offenders do not admit to have committed the assaults. In such a situation only the child’s testimony can be the evidence. Children are believed that they cannot participate in suc.............