I did a lot of research around Sexual Assault as its something that sits closer to home, I wanted to talk about cases that have happened in the past and the Sarah Everard case but also the smaller things that happen to girls on a day to day bases.
Sarah Everard went missing on Wednesday 3rd March, they found her remains a week later but the remains weren’t confirmed until the 12th . An often excuse for women being kidnapped usually by men is “they were asking for it” this excuse is also used when women are raped. Women that don’t wear many clothes are often seen as “asking for it.” However Sarah was wearing, leggings a coat and a warm hat, she was covering up which is what most people do in these situations and men and sometimes women still find a way to victim blame.
Moving onto statistics
15% of 12-17 year olds, 54% of 18-34 year old’s, 28% of 35-64 year old’s and 3% of 65+ year olds have been victims of Sexual Assault, and these are only the people who have come forward about it, this needs to change. And it is not just the women that are suffering, the men are too however when you look at in comparison, 1 out of 6 women have been the victim of a rape attempt, whereas its 1 out of 31 men that have been victims of attempted rape, and if that is not bad enough to make you think, 1 in 4 children are sexually assaulted before they reach the age of 18. Another disgusting set of statistics; 8 in 10 victims knew their attacker before the assault, 95% of assaults go unreported, every 21 hours someone on an American COLLEGE campus gets raped.
1 in 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her life.
Every 98 seconds (about 1 and a half minutes) an American is raped.
85,000 women are raped in Britian and Wales alone every year. (That is roughly 11 rapes – adult alone- every hour)
Approximately 90% of those women knew who raped them prior to the offense.
A third of people believe that women who flirt are partially responsible for being raped.
Women are more likely to be raped by someone they know, whereas men are more likely to get raped by strangers.
1 in 20 women that live in the EU have been raped after the age of 15 that’s around 9 million women.
Out of 134 complaints reported, only 14 happened in single sex changing rooms, the other 120 were in unisex changing rooms.
Six in ten women take precautions to avoid sexual assault.
2 in 3 LGBT+ workers have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace.
20% of women and 4% of men have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, equivalent to 3.4 million female and 631,000 male victims. (The Crime Survey for England and Wales 2017)
Of victims who experienced rape (including attempts) since the age of 16, almost half (49%) had been a victim more than once.
More than 4 in 10 were victimized by their partner or an ex-partner.
Knowing about these facts has meant I can look at how bad it is in America as well as in the UK, I wanted to get a wide variety of statistics so I can show everyone its a world wide issue, using statistics also means I can show people how bad it really is with actual facts. I think using stories from the past (for example I researched the Fritzl case) shows that this has been an issue for a long time and we can’t let it continue.
The Fritzl case is about Josef Fritzl who kidnapped his daughter Elizabeth after her 18th birthday and kept her hidden in their basement for 24 years, during this time she had 7 kids (he fathered all of them) one of which unfortunately passed away and Josef incinerated his body. Three of her kids lived in the basement with her where as the other three lived upstairs with her parents as Josef forced Elizabeth to write notes saying she was okay but didn’t have time to look after the babies begging her mum to look after them.
Its a horrifying case but in the end he was caught because Elizabeth’s oldest daughter fell Ill due to the lack of Vitamin D from being stuck downstairs, the daughter was taken to the hospital but after seeing her the nurse was worried about how pale she was so demanded to see the mother and Elizabeth told one of the Nurses everything and she and all of her children were finally set free. Josef committed suicide after being in Jail for a month. Josef also said at court (before he went to jail) that he believed he was born to be a rapist and dominate over his daughter.
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