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MYTH: Sexual
assault is a crime of passion and lust.
FACT: Sexual assault is a crime of violence.
Assailants seek to dominate, humiliate, control and punish
their victims.
MYTH: You
cannot be assaulted against your will.
FACT: Assailants overpower their victims
with violence or the threat of violence. In cases of acquaintance
rape or incest, an assailant often uses the victim's trust
to isolate.
MYTH: It
is impossible for a husband to sexually assault his wife.1
FACT: Regardless of marital or social
relationship, if a woman does not consent to sexual activity,
she is being sexually assaulted. 14% of women are victims
of rape committed by their husband.
MYTH: A
person who has really been assaulted will be hysterical.
FACT: Survivors exhibit a spectrum
of emotional responses to assault: calm, hysteria, anger,
apathy, shock. Each survivor copes with the trauma of the
assault in a personal manner. See
RAPE TRAUMA SYNDROME.
MYTH: Assailants
are usually crazed psychopaths who do not know their victims.
FACT: More than 70% of sexual assault
victims know their attackers.2 An assailant might
be someone known intimately. Assailants may be a co-worker,
a neighbor, a friend or a family member.
MYTH: In
most cases, black men attack white women.
FACT: In most sexual assault cases, the
assailant and his victim are of the same racial background.
MYTH: Only
young, pretty women are assaulted.
FACT: It can happen to anyone
at any time. Survivors range in age from infancy to old age,
and their appearance is seldom a consideration. Assailants
often choose victims who seem most vulnerable to attack:
the
elderly, children, the physically, emotionally or developmentally
disabled, substance abusers, and homeless people.
MYTH: As
long as children remember to stay away from strangers, they
are in no danger of being assaulted.
FACT: Sadly, children are usually assaulted
by acquaintances, a family member or other trusted adult.
Children are usually coerced by their assailant, and are manipulated
into silence by the assailant’s threats and/or promises.
Seventy percent of incarcerated sexual abusers knew their
victims.3
MYTH: He
or she enjoyed it.
FACT: No one enjoys being raped. Virtually
all victims report feelings of terror, humiliation and degradation.
MYTH: A
women cannot be raped if she really resists.
FACT: Lack of resistance does not imply
consent. Most adult victims do resist in some way. Women don’t
resist because the assailant overpowers them with force or
intimidation.
MYTH: Men
cannot be raped.
FACT: Approximately 10% of victims who
present at rape crisis centers are men. This statistic is
probably an under representation of the actual numbers because
of homophobia and the belief that rape is a crime of passion,
not power and control.
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