Every two minutes, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted. Two-thirds of these assaults are inflicted by someone with whom the attacked individual is familiar.
Forty-four percent are under age 18, 80 percent are under age 30 and 15 percent are under the age of 12. (Statistics provided by RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.)
Acts of sexual cruelty, long taboo in mainstream culture, have been brought to the forefront of legal and media outlets with high profile cases including Jaycee Dugard who was imprisoned for 18 years as a sexual slave from the age of 11.
This renewed attention to the horrors of sexual exploitation is without a doubt much overdue, but the topic must be approached with attention and respect for those who have endured the ordeals.
When an individual experiences sexual assault and/ or rape, often the first instinct of the individual is to not report or reveal the abuse for fear of retaliation.
A student who was willing to share her story on the condition of anonymity related her experience. Citing the years following the events proved more emotionally draining than the actual abuse itself. Raped by a family friend while on vacation, the student stated that she felt trapped by the stigma that surrounds those who experience abuse. “It was awful. I couldn’t tell my family, because I was afraid they would think I’m making it up, or they would treat me differently. I was afraid they would treat me like I was damaged and crazy.”
It is indeed the conflict many face as they attempt to reconcile the traumatic experiences for themselves. In addition to trying to come to terms with the events and dealing with the internal emotional (and oftentimes physical) scars, they are subject to the stigma mainstream psychology places on them, creating a stereotype of a “victim” that is unbalanced and damaged.
To call a survivor of sexual violence a victim carries an unfair negative connotation. The word itself implies the “victim” is helpless, fragile and to some extent, to blame. New fads such as “slut shaming” that target women posting provocative pictures on the internet link these pictures with acts of sexual violence, generalizing that women in modern society have, as a whole, become more risqué, and accordingly place themselves in a position of “having it coming”.
Educational institutions do little to aid in shattering this stigma, and arguably add to it when they try to intervene. With the expansion of general education standards throughout the U.S. school system, many institutions feel pressure to include psychology classes in their curriculum, with little time or resources to allocate to the classes. This causes the classes to present as much material as possible in a brief manner, an abbreviation of information that leaves complicated topics such as sexual violence reduced to 60 minute lectures.
“In psych[ology class], we learned that victims who get raped never want to be touched and usually, like, cut themselves and stuff. They aren’t normal after it,” stated a student who asked to remain unnamed due to the nature of the article.
It’s this inattention to teaching the full extent of the emotional processes and experiences survivors of sexual abuse go through that perpetuates the stereotype of “victims” of these crimes that are damaged, broken and pathetic, none of which could be further from the truth.
Individuals who live through the horrific experiences of sexual violence only to be cast as victims of their circumstances are condemned to stigma someone else inflicted on them. It is the greatest disservice and disrespect possible, not to acknowledge the inner strength of these individuals to pull through and maintain as normal a life as possible despite the trauma, yet society continues to perpetuate this view, keeping them in a cage of guilt from someone else’s sins. They feel the pity of family and friends that keep them from speaking freely about their experiences, if at all, for fear of making those they care so deeply about feel guilty for allowing the abuses to occur.
For this reason, and so many others, it’s time we start appreciating these survivors for their strength, and realize we are the only victims in these situations - of our own stigmas.
