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106 CHA P TER four Rape and Sexual Assault But he would not listen to her; and being stronger than she, he forced her and lay with her. —2 Sam. 13:14 Sometime in the past, while on jury duty, I sat through the questioning of over twentyfive potential jurors for a case involving three counts of rape. The judge would always ask: “Have you, or any member of your family or a close friend, ever been the victim of a crime, including sexual assault?” “Yes, my sister was raped when she was thirteen. . . .” “I have a close friend who right now is dealing with the emotional problems she has because she was raped as a child. . . .” “Yes, my mother was raped when she was in her twenties, but she doesn’t ever talk about it, really. . . .” “I was raped when I was eighteen. . . .” “I have a cousin who was raped just last month. . . .” “I was raped a few years ago. . . .” “Yes, I was raped. . . .” The judge: “Did you report this to the police?” “Yes.” To another juror: “Was anyone arrested?” “No.” And to another: “Did they ever find the alleged perpetrator?” “No.” Again: “Did the police arrest anyone?” “Yes. There were three of them.” “Were these men ever prosecuted?” “No. The district attorney said there wasn’t enough evidence.” And again: “Was anyone arrested?” “Yes. A man who lived down the street from me.” “Was he prosecuted?” “Yes.” “What happened?” “He was acquitted. The D.A. said that the jury couldn’t find him guilty ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’” We rarely talk about rape, certainly not in social settings, and rarely in public—yet here were twenty-five strangers, revealing under oath how rape had touched their lives. Rape and Sexual Assault 107 The impact was staggering. Here was the living truth of statistics we usually read and wince about and set aside, a social truth that is usually covered over by silence, reticence, and denial. Statistics on rape and sexual assault are particularly difficult to pin down, because women are often reluctant to report their experiences to anyone, and because definitions and methods of data collection vary from agency to agency. However, the numbers we do have are astounding: the most comprehensive prevalence study of violence against women in the United States to date, the NVAW Survey (NVAWS), found that 17.6 percent , or one out of six women, has experienced an attempted or completed rape (defined as “forced vaginal, oral, or anal sex”) in her lifetime, and 3 percent of men, with 82 percent of total rapes “completed” (84 percent of female victims and 70 percent of male victims).1 A consensus view of professionals assisting rape victims is that even these numbers are low, and that one out of three women will be raped in her lifetime, both in this country2 and worldwide.3 Between 20 and 25 percent of college women may risk sexual assault during a five-year college stay,4 and a 2007 study found that nearly 14 percent of undergraduate women had been sexually assaulted in college.5 According to the National Crime Victim Survey (NCVS) of the U.S. Census Bureau, the rate of rapes and sexual assaults per one thousand people over age twelve has declined by 57 percent in the years between 1993 and 2009.6 This statistic demonstrates the importance of law enforcement giving increased attention to sexual offenses, a result of decades of advocacy by rape crisis workers. The number of rapes and sexual assaults reported to law enforcement has also dropped about 10 percent in the past decade.7 Nevertheless , the number of “forcible rapes” reported to law enforcement in the United States has averaged 96,258 since 1989 (ranging from approximately 89,000 to 109,000 annually according to the FBI),8 and all sexual assaults combined in the year 2007 alone numbered at 248,300 (according to the NCVS).9 Again, these official numbers are considered to be low—acccording to the NCVS itself, rape and sexual assaults generally continue to go unreported in as many as 60 to 70 percent of cases or more,10 making rape the most underreported crime in America each year except for thefts under $250.11 And as noted in the introduction, over 200,000 women are raped by an intimate partner each year (with an average of 1.6 incidents per year), resulting in over 322,000 rapes annually and 7.75 million women having been raped...

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