Sexual Assault in the News

Posted by AdrianacloseAuthor: Adriana Name:
Email: adriana@ofsexandlove.com
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About: Adriana is a young married woman and, most of the time, she enjoys it that way. What time she isn’t spending doting on her cats or bugging her husband, is spent doting on her countless blogs (where she tends to be a little too picky and a little too blunt) and lusting over sex toys. She enjoys reading, Sci-fi television and webcomics as well; it wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate to call her a geek. Website: http://ofsexandlove.comSee Authors Posts (17)

A Google search of the term “sexual assault” turns up an onslaught of results (8.82 million to be exact). There are more than 15,000 – yes, fifteen thousand – news articles alone for the past month. If you view further back in time, fifteen thousand starts to sound like a small number. Between the years of 2006 and 2009 there are nearly two hundred thousand articles. Browsing from 1920 to 2010 turns up a whopping 667,00 news pieces pertaining to the phrase “sexual assault”. Currently, the front page contains only articles about incidences of sexual assault in which persons of interest are being investigated or suspects have already been charged.

Now, I know that these numbers aren’t really statistically accurate. It is difficult to make any sort of judgment based on the number of articles but it is all too easy for me to start thinking. For instance, I know some of those articles speak of the same incidences and even making a wild guess at how many individual occurrences of sexual assault show up in the results is a task too daunting for this girl. Even after weeding through duplicate content, there are articles which are not about episodes of sexual assault. Certainly some might talk about rates of crimes (and the optimist in me hopes the rates are plummeting) or what is being done to prevent sexual assault from happening. Perhaps some articles talk about punishments given for crimes of a sexual nature and some might even be discussing the latest episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, for all I know. So even though these numbers are frightening, they cannot easily be taken at face value.
But still, I cannot help but think that even one article about a professional athlete assaulting a woman in a bathroom while his “posse” guarded the door is one article too much. I am sure I am not alone in this thought because who wants to know that people are molesting children, let alone read it as a sensationalized headline?

And yet. And yet, I know that no matter how many duplicate or non-incident articles there are, what may be most important about those results is what is not there. I am talking about years worth of sexual assault cases which may never be digitally archived. Files and folders which are covered in dust in some small town government basement. Cases which have been kept on the down low by manipulating attorneys. Information which has been lost to the abyss of time and which may only linger as some distant memory by an aging victim or law enforcement officer – if that. But that is only the tip of the iceberg.

As many cases which may have been brought to the public’s eye (if only the local public) and as many cases in which justice has been “served” (and some in which the system may have failed), I know there are so many more cases which have gone unreported or, just as worse, cases which have gone unbelieved by the authorities or even a victim’s own family. I cannot imagine the guts it must take for a person to admit that he or she has been sexually assaulted, especially when someone has drilled into the victim’s head that it is his or her own fault. And then to be told that you are mistaken or wrong? It must be the most difficult, trust and life shattering experience to exist. Somehow, amazingly, many of these victims learn to live productive lives. Are you one? I am not sure that I could. Or could I?

My point in all this? I’m not even sure I know except that just as frequently we run across articles like the ones I found online, we gloss over them. Perhaps we say that we don’t want to read all the bad news but isn’t it just as likely that we would prefer to think of this as “someone else’s problem?” But, if anything, the frequency of these cases and the occurrence of sexual assault which I know happens, even if I do not read it in a newspaper, seems to indicated that this is not someone else’s problem. This is a problem that is everywhere, a problem with infiltrates every neighbourhood, every cultural group and every financial class. It is a problem which affects people I know and love (or have known and loved or will know and love) and not just the victims, either. It is a problem which has a causative relationship with other problems. It is a problem of society and a problem which will continue to plague society until we all stop ignoring it.

So maybe it’s a good thing that sexual Assault Awareness Month is upon this April. Most of us could probably use a reminder that no matter how far away we turn our heads, sexual assault still exists and in abundance. I am sure that others will post their personal experiences with sexual assault (and I commend them for doing so) and I am sure we will be all reminded that not all of us have the luxury of forgetting about it, either.