Introduction
Women are nearly always the victims of sexual assault, and female teens and young women are at the highest risk: Women among the ages or 16 and 24 are thought to be four times more possible to be sexually assaulted than other female in other age groups however while female are nearly always the victims of sexual assault, it can happen to anyone else even men. (Zhang, Welte and Wieczorek, 2002)
Statistics on drug-facilitated sexual assault:
About 25% of female report that drugs played a role in their assault
Most of assault crimes go unrecognized, not reported, unsolved, or even unproven
Adolescent girls (16-19 years) and adult women (20-24 years) are 4 times more possible to be sexually assaulted compared to women in other age groups.
Many sexual assaults are committed by an associate or date
It is estimated that approximately 75% of all rapes are date or acquaintance rapes
Alcohol contributes a lot to perpetuators assaulting female
Sexual Assault Still Not Being Reported
The National Crime Victimization Survey incorporated statistics on reported and unreported sexual assault crimes in USA. Sexual assault is among the highly underreported crimes, with over half still being unreported. Utilizing services such as
The National Crime Victimization Survey includes statistics on reported and unreported crimes in America. Sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes, with more than half still being left not reported. Zhang, Welte and Wieczorek, (2002) suggests that utilizing services such as The National Sexual Assault Hotline can help encourage victims to get help and report what has happened to them so that more perpetrators can be brought to justice. (Hoaken & Stewart, 2003)
More Than Half of Sexual Assaults Go Unreported
Drug-facilitated sexual assault happen a lot more often
Most of these sexual assault crimes are not reported to police, never resolved or never proven. There are many reasons why many women don't report the sexual assault to police. Many of the drugs taken in drug-facilitated sexual assault, which includes alcohol, can cause havoc on one's memory, and some women might never know for certain if they were sexual assaulted. A number of women might also think that the police will not believe them, or consider that it was partially their mistake. Others might just want to put the entire incident behind them. The majority of drug-facilitated sexual assaults committed to women are by someone the victim is familiar with or trusts and not by strangers: Many of these sexual assault crimes are crimes of opportunity - for instance, a man sexually assaults a female who is drunk or on drugs since he views her as an “easy target”. For such a reason, it's pretty ordinary for the victim assaulted to know the person who assaults them. Plenty of times drug-facilitated sexual assault is done by a friend or associate, boyfriend, a date and sometimes even by a husband. About 75% of all sexual assault are committed known persons. (Yu, (2001)
Drug related crimes
Drugs are correlated to crime in various ways. The most direct way, is a crime to use, own, manufacture, or dispense drugs classified as having a likelihood for abuse (such as cocaine, heroin, etc). Drugs are also correlated to crime via the effects they have on the user's activities and by creating violence and other unlawful activity in relation with drug use. The chart below gives a summary of the diverse ways that drugs and crime are correlated.
|
Table 2. Percentage of State and Federal prison inmates who reported being under the influence of drugs at time of their offense, 1997 |
||
|
Type of offense |
Federal prison inmates |
State prison inmates |
|
Total of all inmates |
22.4% |
32.6% |
|
Violent offenses |
24.5 |
29.0 |
|
Murder |
29.4 |
26.8 |
|
Negligent manslaughter |
* |
17.4 |
|
Sexual assault |
7.9 |
21.5 |
|
Robbery |
27.8 |
39.9 |
|
Assault |
13.8 |
24.2 |
|
Other |
15.9 |
29.0 |
|
* Too few cases in the sample to permit calculation. |
||
Drug/Crime Relationship must be interpreted cautiously
Drug/crime correlation is hard to quantify because:
Most crimes are an outcome of a range of factors (personal, cultural, situational, and economic); even where drugs are the basis, they are possibly to be only one factor amid many.
What is referred as “drug-related” vary from study to study; a number of studies interpret the sheer presence of drugs as having causal bearing while other studies understand the correlation more narrowly.
Reports of offenders concerning their drug use could exaggerate or reduce the significance of drugs.
In a study carried out in Texas s by The University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work regarding sexual assault it was found out that females are at a high risk of being assaulted than men. The main points of the study are outlined below. (Hoaken & Stewart, 2003)
Highlights of the study include:
Near to1.9 million adult Texans (1, 479,912 women and 372,394 men) or 12. 6% of Texans were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime.
The percentage of sexual assault is much high for females as opposed to males (20 % vs. 5 %).
Sexual assault crime affects all racial and ethnic communities. Though Anglos (14 % have the highest percentage of sexual assault and Hispanics (10 %) the lowest, the data points out that all racial/ethnic groups are at-danger.
Females in all age groups are at danger for sexual assault. Female victims, 9 % were sexual assaulted previous to the age of 14; 7 % between 14 and 17 and 10 % at age 18 and above.
Males below age 14 and over age 18 are at high threat for sexual assault than males amid the ages of 14-17 years.
The majority female victims are sexual assaulted by a male they recognize. More often this male is a family member or an acquaintance
Merely 18 % of victims report being assaulted to law enforcement. This comprises 20 %of females and 12 % of males.
Only 13 % of victims reported they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the moment of the assault.
Victims (19 %) are more probable to screen positive for a lifelong drug crisis than non-victims (9 %). Female victims (9 %) are more probable to screen positive for a lifelong alcohol issues than non-victims (4 %) and a lifetime drug issue (16 %) than non-victims (6 %). The number of cases is too little to report this data on male victims. (Hoaken & Stewart, 2003)
Sexual assault crime is a very grave social and public health issue in Texas which affects the lives of a considerable portion of citizens. Long-lasting effects which are connected with sexual assault requires a coordinated society response from all citizens, including efficient social policy priorities which support increased services for victims and answerability for perpetrators
Controlled Drug and substance act CDSA
The CDSA is the federal law which outlines which chemicals and plants Canadian citizens might not grow, purchase, sell, swallow, possess, or otherwise long for.
If you do grow, purchase, sell, swallow, possess or otherwise long for any of these chemicals or plants you might be arrested, given a fine, jailed, or all three. Also explained here are the U K Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA), United Nations Drugs and Substances under global Control, and U S Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
Bill C-22,
Bill C-22, An Act to revise the Criminal rules (age of protection) and to create substantial amendments to the Criminal Records Act, was first given a reading in the House of Commons on June 22, 2006 and was passed by the commons on 4 May 2007. The law amends the Criminal rules (1) to move up the age, from 14 to 16 years, at which an individual can approve to non-exploitative sexual acts. The present age of consent of 18 years for exploitative sexual acts will be maintained. This relates to sexual activities that involves prostitution, pornography, or where there is a association of trust, power, dependency or any other circumstances that is or else exploitative of a young person
Aftermaths
When a female is sexual assaulted these are some of the reactions that she will undergo
|
You might also experience some of these reactions: |
|
|
Physical sleep disturbances (nightmares, insomnia) eating pattern changes physical soreness tension |
Emotional heightened fear, related or unrelated to attack mood swings anxiety, confusion attempts to block thoughts about the assault feelings of powerlessness and dependence |
A lot of female victims of sexual assault resort to using drugs as a way of forgetting the trauma caused by the act. Studies show that those who are sexual assaulted usually have a low self, esteemed, suffer psychologically, feel rejected and loose trust in themselves and the opposite gender. Sexual assault leads to trauma. The trauma involves losing control of your body and probably fearing injury, disease or death. There are particular ways that individual react to trauma which are same for female and even male. “Rape trauma syndrome” is a phrase which mental health professionals apply to describe the common reactions that occur for both female and male after sexual assault. “Rape trauma syndrome” is not a sickness or irregular reaction; it is a usual reaction to an anomalous, traumatic event. However many females are unable to cope up with this trauma and end up abusing drugs in order to forget” the incident.
Conclusion
Women are nearly always the victims of sexual assault, and female teens and young women are at the highest risk. However, studies show that Most of these sexual assault crimes are not reported to police, never resolved or never proven. There are many reasons why many women don't report the sexual assault to police. In return many of them resort to abusing drugs as they suffer psychological, social and mentally. Even though, there are laws to protect young people and control drug use, the problem of sexual assault and drug abuse continue to be challenge to law enforcement agencies and the society as a whole.
Annotated bibliography
Hoaken, P. N. ., & Stewart, S. H. (2003): Drugs of abuse and the elicitation of human aggressive behavior; Addictive Behaviors, 28(9), 1533–1554.
The drug–violence connection continues being there for a number of reasons, some direct (drugs pharmacologically induced violence) and some other indirect (violence that occurs in order to achieve drugs). Furthermore, the manner of that correlation is usually complex, with intoxication, neurotoxin, and withdrawal outcomes often being or confounded and/ confused. The paper evaluates the existing literature concerning the degree to which different drugs of abuse might be directly connected with heightened interpersonal aggression. Alcohol is evidently the drug with most proof to support a shortest intoxication–violence connection. The literatures regarding benzodiazepines, opiates and phencyclidine (PCP) are characteristic but propose that personality factors might be as (or more) significant than pharmacological factors. Cannabis reduces probability of violence when intoxicated, but increasing evidence links withdrawal with violence. The literature on the connection between steroids and violence is mainly confounded. The paper concludes that drugs use increases the rate of crime.
Hong, L. (2000): Toward a transformed approach to prevention: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence. Journal of American College Health, 48(6), 269–279.
Men are excessively over-represented amid both perpetrators and victims of violent criminal acts. Researchers from the male’s studies group have documented a lucid connection between socialization into stereotypical customs of hegemonic maleness and an increased danger to experience violence. In spite of this evidence, many campus avoidance programs fall short of recognizing the relationship between male and violence prevention. Nearly all that on-campus prevention series offer self-defense tutorials for possible female victims of sexual assault and broad campus protection measures. In this journal, the author explains a wide-ranging, transformed way to violence (sexual assault included) prevention. Statistics from eight partakers in a year-long case research of Men Against Violence, a peer education organization at a large university in the South, reveal the viability of meaningfully intensifying male students’ conception of adulthood and suitable gender functions and thus, minimizing the probability of male’s taking part in sexually or physical violent actions. Results included major changes in the approaches, beliefs and behaviors of college men in connection to violence and conventional conceptions of manhood.
Zhang, L., Welte, J. W. and Wieczorek, W. (2002): The role of aggression-related alcohol expectancies in explaining the link between alcohol and violent behavior. Substance Use & Misuse, 37(4), 457–471.
Studies show that an acute cause of alcohol on violent manners. A remaining concern is the motivation of a number of offenders for taking alcohol before offending. A common explanation is founded on the correlation between day by day drinking habit and drinking before making an offence. Drawing onto the deviance disavowal supposition, the hearten hypothesis, and anticipation theories, the current research argues that alcohol perhaps used purposely to promote or justify the aggressive consequences of drinking. By using information from the 1993 Buffalo Longitudinal research of Young Men, the current study look at the autonomous effect of violence-related alcohol expectancies on drinking before offences and the interactive result of violence-related alcohol expectancies and on a daily basis alcohol use on drinking previous to offending. The results point out an important effect of violence-related alcohol expectancies on alcohol use previous to offending. This sustains the argument that drinking might be a ways for carrying out violent acts. A significant interactive effect was found between violence related alcohol expectancies and day to day alcohol use. &ldqu