Intern Blog Series: Sexual Assault Awareness Month

April is an exciting month as spring has officially made its presence and students are gearing up for the last few weeks of the semester.  But, it should also be said that April is also a very important month as it is named “Sexual Assault Awareness Month”.  This year the goal of sexual assault awareness month is to “engage new voices”.  The focus will be on involving coaches, faith leaders, parents, Greek Life, and bystanders with preventing sexual assault.  Most groups know what sexual assault is and that it is an issue but they do not know how to help prevent it from happening and how to get involved with efforts to help. Sexual assault can be defined as any sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the victim.  This may include attempted rape, unwanted sexual touching, forcing someone to perform sexual acts or rape.  Sexual assaults happen every 98 seconds.  It has been found that 7 out of 10 sexual assaults are carried out by someone that the victim knows.  In addition, only 6 out of every 1,000 rapists will go to prison. 

            There are many organizations and people working hard every day to help prevent sexual assault, change policies in government and provide support to victims of these horrific acts.  One, in particular, is RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  RAINN is credited with coming up with and running the operations of the sexual assault hotline.  They provide services for victims, public education programs, public policy outreach and consulting services.  While sexual assault is becoming more well-known and more policies are being passed to alleviate, it is still widespread across the world.  If you are passionate about this issue I encourage you to get involved with organizations such as RAINN and do more research on the issue to spread awareness, especially during this month.

Anne Marie