| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 445.2 | how they get the number | TLE::RANDALL | self-defined person | Tue Oct 16 1990 16:31 | 23 |
| Most of the time statsticians derive the 1/3 number this way:
Start with the number of reported rapes in a given time period.
Extraploate from that to the probable number of rapes that
actually occurred. Law-enforcement professionals don't agree on
what percentage of rapes are ever reported, but they do agree
that it's only a tiny percentage of actual rapes.
Extrapolate from that to the lifetime of an average woman. For
statistical purposes they usually assume no duplicate victims.
Most of the extrapolations I've seen come out with a number that's
more on the order of one out of four women raped during their
lifetimes, but they're all approximations. The one-third number
might attempt to include rapes in the context of a permanent
relationship.
Either way, it's a pretty scary number. Think of it this way: if
you look around you at work, and you can see four women, the odds
are that one of them has been or will be raped.
--bonnie
|
| 445.3 | 1 in 3 | COOKIE::CHEN | Madeline S. Chen, D&SG Marketing | Tue Oct 16 1990 17:30 | 8 |
| I agree with D!. I do not know a woman [over 21] who has not been
treatened with rape. As we get older, the threats might diminish.
1 in 3 as a statistic is probably not out of line.
-m
|
| 445.4 | and Herb, thank you for separating out the 2 topics | DCL::NANCYB | targets, not victims | Wed Oct 17 1990 00:48 | 50 |
| re: 441.2 (KYOA::NEWMAN) -< one-third???????? >-
> one-third of all women are raped in their lifetime?????
> Where does this statistic come from. It seems awfully high to me. Now
> don't get me wrong, I agree with the principle that as a society we
> need to stop violence against women( and everyone else), but I believe
> that exagerated statistics such as this do not help the cause.
Sometimes people seem to only think of rape as the
classic, jump_from_the_bushes type of rape, where the
woman has exhibited "utmost resistance", fought within
an inch of her life to defend her "honor" (in a valiant
attempt to maintain the virgin/Madonna image that DougO
talked about in another note today), against the mad,
frothing at the mouth, psycho rapist.
At least, this is what the (historically male-defined) legal
requirements for obtaining a rape conviction used to be.
If a woman didn't defend her honor to her utmost, she didn't
exhibit what those who drafted the laws considered to
be a "fair fight".
One example of what didn't hold up to a courtroom definition
of rape: (People V Taylor, Illinois, 1961 maybe(?)
A girl living in a foster home (over age of consent; not an
adult I think) was placed with a family. The father
told her that she would be returned to the foster home if she
did not have sexual relations with him. She did not forcibly
resist. He was eventually tried for rape and convicted.
The conviction was overturned in appellate court because it
was determined to not have been "forcible" rape.
Do _I_ think the rape was "forcible". Absolutely.
Did the criminal injustice system? No.
Judges seem comfortable with associating "stranger rape" as being
"forcible rape". Judges do _not_ seem comfortable with calling
"date rape" (or any rape where the rapist and victim had known
each other as friends or better) "forcible rape", **even if
there if __plenty__ of evidence of force on the victims body.**
Go figure.
Who's in power makes the rules. But things have gotten a little
better over the past couple years.
nancy b.
|
| 445.5 | I don't believe 1 in 3 will be raped. | BABBLE::MEAGHER | | Thu Oct 18 1990 00:22 | 18 |
| Three terms are used sometimes interchangeably: Sexual abuse, sexual assault,
and rape.
I definitely agree that 1 women in 3 in America is sexually abused at some
point in her life. So many females have been sexually abused some of them don't
even realize that it's happened to them. Sexual abuse can be almost anything,
but I define it as unwanted sexual contact (more than just a kiss).
Sexual assault: I guess that can be almost anything. Whenever I read in the
paper that someone was "sexually assaulted," I always want to know exactly what
happened, but never really know. Maybe in the legal/police world, it has a
distinct definition.
Rape to me is actual forced penetration.
I think the "statistic" that 1 woman in 3 will be raped is exaggerated.
Vicki Meagher
|
| 445.6 | For what it's worth... | SAGE::GODIN | Naturally I'm unbiased! | Thu Oct 18 1990 09:46 | 7 |
| According to an editorial in today's Boston Globe, the 1 in 3 statistic
is from the FBI.
Don't know whether that will make people feel more or less confident in
its accuracy.
Karen
|
| 445.7 | 1/3 correlates to my experience | CSG001::PWHITE | Just lookin' for a home | Thu Oct 18 1990 11:25 | 15 |
| I know a number of women over 40 who have been raped
sometime in their life. Disclaimer: I am not in any kind
of rape support group group - these are women in my family,
women I met through work, women in various organizations.
My rough estimate is 25% of the women I know well enough
to have been told about the experience have in fact been
raped.
On the one hand, I spend a lot of time with activist women,
some of whom may have self selected because of the anger
over rape. On the other hand, there are a number of women
who never tell even their intimate friends or close
relatives. One in three sounds plausible to me.
Pat
|