The definition of rape
Rape is a type of a sexual abuse, as a rule, implying a sexual intercourse with a person by one or several people without a consent. The rapists, using a helpless status of a victim (unconsciousness, a strong alcoholic intoxication, a mental disorder, etc.), resort to a physical abuse or threat of its application and to a psychological pressure. They use economic, psychological or other dependences of a victim.
Childhood sexual abuse or pedophilia is an involvement of a child into a sexual contact with an adult in any form (sexual touches, oral genital stimulation, coitus, etc.). Even if there is no threat or obvious abuse, such a contact is admitted as compulsory and illegal one as a child is not considered mature enough to give the informed consent to the participation in sexual interaction. The informed consent assumes a sufficient degree of an intellectual and emotional maturity allowing realizing the sense and possible consequences of the committed actions to the fullest extent. (Sanderson, 2006).
The dynamics of rape
According to the statistics of the WHO, 75000 women become the rape victims annually in the USA. About 90% of rapists attack their victims of the same race, 50% of them are familiar with their victims. Moreover, a victim and a rapist often happen to be the members of one family, especially in cases of rape of children and teenagers. The majority of rapes are planned in advance; more than a half of attacks are made using weapons, usually knives. Approximately 50% of the raped women have symptoms of a physical injury, 10% need urgent medical service. The statistics shows that 61% of rapists are younger 25. Alcohol is marked in 34% of cases of all cruel rapes. (WHO, 2003).
Sexual violence is an aggressive act. The underlying factors in many sexually violent acts are power and control, not, as is widely perceived, a craving for sex. It is rather a violent, aggressive and hostile act used as a means to degrade, dominate, humiliate, terrorize and control women. Sexual violence violates a victim’s sense of privacy, safety and well-being (WHO, 2003).
Social/cultural factors
Social and economic reasons of rapes generate the unsatisfied social needs causing aggression. An absence of social and economic warranties of the right to work and worthy compensation causes uncertainty in the future, the feeling of exacerbation, a stressful status that attracts aggression and violence growth in society, including in attitude to women. A high level of unemployment among women, concentration of women in low-paid professions and a tender social and economic inequality cause an absence of respect for women that also promotes the growth of a number of rapes.
The social and cultural factors include a criminogenic influence of mass media advocating cruelty and violence, amoralism and pornography, degradation of a domestic culture, absence of a state policy in the cultural sphere and decrease of a morality level in society. The sexual and aggressive motivation, created under the appropriate conditions in violent sexual crime, is formed under the influence of a set of the specified factors.
Personal and psychological factors
The psychological factors, causing a rape, include a high threshold of tolerance to violence, a raised level of uneasiness in society and the atmosphere of social and psychological instability, vulnerability, as a whole, which promotes the growth of aggression which is displayed in violent sexual encroachments.
Among the personal factors, promoting violence, there are the shortcomings of a family and school education; shortcomings of the activity of educational bodies, cultures, health care in moral and sexual education of children, teenagers and youth; a high level of alcoholism and drug abuse among youth; monitoring shortcomings over a population shift; shortcomings of the activities of law enforcement agencies; absence of the system of victimized prevention of rapes; a victimized behavior of victims. The motivational factor of rape is the desire to satisfy the up-to-the-minute desires, based on the self-esteem by means of a sexual aggression. The most widespread victimized qualities of the victims of rapes are improvidence, imprudence and carelessness, characteristic for the majority of victims of rapes, especially at juvenile and teenage age.
Preventing date, acquaintance and other forms of rape
Date rape is a particular problem for teen girls and young women, especially college students who are away from home and on their own for the first time (Committee for Children, 2013).
The main directions of the implementation of the preventive measures of rapes are:
- An increase of a social status of women and support of the implementation of a principle of equity of women in social, economic and political spheres of activity;
- Elimination of the reasons of violence concerning women by means of a struggle against alcoholism and drug addiction, human trafficking and prostitution;
- An improvement of the work of law-enforcement agencies on registration, investigation and fair punishment of the guilty of sexual violence;
- Organization of the specialized trainings for the law-enforcement officers about the correct treatment of the victims of crimes.
The specifics of a struggle against rapes put the personal prevention, including conversation with a victim, her parents, and relatives. Moreover, the prevention measures include the preventive conversations with girls and women, leading an amoral way of life and capable to become the victims of rapes. Such prevention is especially necessary for the teenage girls possessing increased sexuality, trustfulness and insufficient life experience.
References
Committee for Children. (2013). Preventing Sexual Harassment and Date Rape. Web.
Sanderson, C. (2006). Counselling Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (3rd ed.). London: Jessica Kingsley.
WHO. (2003). Guidelines for Medico-Legal Care for Victims of Sexual Violence. pp. 6-16. Web.