What is Sexual Assault/Sexual Harassment?
Sexual Assault: The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault defines sexual assault as “A violent crime in which the assailant uses sexual contact to inflict humiliation or to exert power and control over the victim.”
Sexual Harassment: Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment (from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission).
Domestic Violence: Any hurtful or unwanted behavior perpetrated upon an individual by an intimate or prior intimate. Includes physical, psychological and emotional abuse. Primarily a learned behavior whose effects, without intervention, become more destructive over time (from Turnaround, Inc).
Acquaintance/Date Rape: ANY non-consensual sexual activity between 2 or more people who know each other. Can happen between friends, classmates, spouses, girlfriends, and/or boyfriends, people who just met, etc., or could be the crime of forcing someone on a date to submit to sexual intercourse.
Stalking: (from the National Center for Victims of Crime)
A stalker is someone that:
- Repeatedly follows you, or shows up where you are
- Repeatedly calls you, including hang-ups
- Damages your property
- Sends unwanted gifts, letters, cards, or e-mails
- Monitors your phone calls or computer use
- Uses technology to track where you are or where you go
- Drives by your home, school, or work
- Threatens to hurt you, your family, friends, or pets.
- Finds out about you using public records or online searches, hiring investigators, going through your garbage, or contacting friends, family, neighbors, or co-workers.
- Other actions that control, track, or frighten you.
Indicators of Abusive Relationships
(from AARDVARK Org.)
Using Emotional Abuse
- Putting you down
- Making you feel bad about yourself
- Calling you names
- Implying that you are crazy
- Playing mind games
- Using guilt as a weapon of control
- Using humiliation
Using Privilege
- Treating you like a servant
- Making all decisions for the family or couple
- Acting like an owner or master
- Being the one to define and enforce roles
- Expecting you to obey like a child
Using Coercion and Threats
- Making or carrying out threats
- Threatening to leave
- Treatening to harm themselves if you leave
- Threatening to hurt other family members or pets if you leave
- Threatening to report you to police, child welfare, etc. to control you
- Threatening to file false charges against you
- Using threats to get you to drop charges
- Threatening to expose a secret
Using Intimidation
- Making you afraid - looks, gestures, actions
- Smashing things
- Abusing pets
- Displaying weapons
- Threatening to expose a secret
Using the Children
- Using the children to relay messages
- Using visitation to harass you
- Threatening to take the children
- Threatening to harm the children
Using Isolation
- Controlling what you do
- Controlling who you see or talk to
- Limiting your outside involvement
- Not letting you work
- Not letting you receive an education
- Using jealousy to justify actions against you
- Destroying your support system
Minimizing, Denying and Blaming
- Making light of the abuse
- Saying abusive behavior was not abusive
- Shifting the responsibility for the behavior to you
Common Feelings Following a Sexual Assault
(from the Rape Crisis Center of Collin County)
- Shock/Numbness - Feeling nothing, or frozen
- Shame/Humiliation - Feelings of personal violation and degradation
- Confusion - Memory may be incomplete, the event may seem fuzzy
- Anger - Both at the rapist and at the world in general, “Why me?”
- Guilt - Feeling it was somehow your fault or that you should have done something differently
- Powerless - Feeling of a loss of control
- Distrust - No longer trusting people around you, becoming “paranoid” or suspicious
- Sleep/Appetite Changes - Sleeping and/or eating more or less than usual
- Sexual Fears - Feeling that you will never be able to enjoy sexual intimacy
- Physical Ailments - Increase in physical symptoms such as headaches, stomachaches, backaches, nausea, etc. They usually appear to not be related to the sexual assault.
|
