| "What
happened to me? How did this happen to me? Why
did this happen to me? Why did I act the way
that I did while it was happening? What will
I do the next time I'm in a similar situation?"
These are the questions that many women who
have experienced sexual victimization ask themselves.
The process of answering these questions can
be very painful. So painful that often times
the woman chooses to sort through them with
the help of a psychotherapist.
To understand the plight of
a woman who has been sexually victimized one
must first understand the different terms that
describe the victimization. Sexual harassment
refers to any unwelcomed sexual advance, verbal
or non-verbal, of an offensive sexual nature.
Sexual assault is a form of sexual harassment.
It involves unwelcomed touching of another person.
It can be defined as any unwanted physical activity
forced by one person on another. Sexual battery
is a form of sexual assault. It entails a particular
type of touch, namely penetration. Sexual battery
can be defined as forced anal, oral or vaginal
penetration by any object, except when these
acts are performed for bona fide medical purposes.
Rape is a form of sexual battery because it
entails sexual intercourse. Rape can either
be at the hands of a stranger, an acquaintance,
a date, or committed against the victim by more
than one person (e.g., gang rape).
Sexual predators exist and
they hunt for people who will make for easy
prey. They hunt for women who appear to manifest
certain characteristics. Namely, they look for
those who seem to be (a) people pleasers (b)
unassertive (c) naïve about the adversarial
dynamics existing between men and women and
(d) drug and/or alcohol abusers. It is not difficult
for predators to find women matching these characteristics
on a college campus. In fact, research consistently
identifies freshmen women as the most likely
victims of sexual crimes on campus. However,
predators are not looking for freshmen per se,
they are people who appear to them to be safe
to victimize (e.g., the kind of person who will
not put up too much resistance and/or will not
give them trouble afterwards). This does not
mean that the victim is to be "blamed"
for having these characteristics. It only means
that she may be more vulnerable to exploitation.
She is not responsible for the assault, and
she did not "ask" to be harmed. The
predator is the one who is responsible for causing
harm. Also, not all perpetrators have to fit
the description of a predator. The young man
who gets drunk to celebrate some successful
experience and in a drunken stupor forces himself
sexually on a woman also contributes to the
rising number of victims.
What all forms of sexual victimization
have in common is that they psychologically
register as traumatic. A traumatic event is
experienced as sudden, threatening and overwhelming.
The reaction of people who are traumatized (due
to a rape, a robbery, a car accident, or witnessing
a tragedy) often reaches a threshold that warrants
the clinical diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD). Even if they have repressed
the event (or parts of the event), the people
who suffer from PTSD know something is wrong.
The key elements of PTSD are: (a) intrusive
thoughts and feelings (such as flashbacks and
nightmares) making it seem as if she is reliving
the event, (b) attempts to avoid experiences
that are reminiscent of the event or elicit
negative thoughts and feelings related to the
event, and (c) hypervigillence, i.e., constant
surveillance of the environment so that they
are not suddenly threatened and/or overwhelmed
again.
The treatment for PTSD primarily
involves grieving and making sense of what happened.
For many people the toughest hurdle to clear
entails accepting that bad things happen to
good people. The victim of a sexual crime typically
attempts to sort through who is to blame for
what happened. Often, the victim attempts to
regain control by erroneously taking responsibility
for events for which she had no control over
at the time. This leads to shame and self-blame.
It also means that she is less likely to confront
the perpetrator or pursue a chance at justice
via legal means.
The healing process is difficult
but possible. Support from significant others
is extremely important. The people the victim
lives with are the people most capable to detect
that something is wrong and to encourage her
to get help. Moreover, they can challenge any
self-blaming arguments. Sometimes the significant-other
is so close to the victim that they can be considered
a "secondary victim" and they too
may need to get help. Help is available.
Source:
University Counseling Center, University
of Notre Dame
http://www.nd.edu/~ucc/ucc_sexualvictimarticle.html
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