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According to a rather disturbing study based on federal data estimates, the first sexual intercourse experience for one out of every 16 American women occurred due to coercion or physical force. Even today, in the age of #TimesUp and #MeToo, the findings of this study are nothing short of shocking.The average age of victims today is 15.5 years of age, and the median age for the men forcing these encounters is 27 years of age according to information published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal.
This is an issue that needs to be addressednow, each week thousands of women across the country are facing rape as their initiation to intercourse. Sexual violence is really about the imbalance in power between men and women. With the information provided in studies, like the one mentioned above, society is finding out more and more about how insidious this inequality is today.
To further prove the point that sexual deviance and forced encounters are a serious concern for women today, Hunter College, Harvard, and Cambridge Health Alliance joined forces to conduct a survey of more than 13,300 women between the age of 18 and 44. The information, which included several personal interviews, came from the National Survey of family Growth from the years of 2011 and 2017, which is a survey that’s conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This new analysis revealed that up to 6.5 percent of all respondents to the survey (the equivalent of 3.3 million women) stated their initial experience with intercourse was forced. Many of the women were raped. The coercion experienced by survey participants included scenarios that overlapped with rape in many cases.
In total, 46 percent of all the women stated they were physically held down during this experience, 27 percent stated they were threatened with physical harm, and 25 percent have stated they suffered actual physical harm. Half of the women stated the men who were involved were larger or older than them. More than 56 percent stated they were pressured verbally and over 22 percent stated they had been given a drug. It was recorded that women who stated their first experience was voluntary was significantly different from those who said their experience was coerced or forced.
Unfortunately, for many of the affected women, there were long-reaching consequences, including symptoms of PTSD. The symptoms of this condition include things like being easily frightened, feelings of shame or guilt, hopelessness, flashbacks, activities that cause memories of the event, nightmares and more. It’s clear that action needs to be taken to help prevent this harm and ensure that further women don’t have this introduction to intercourse.
While many preventative steps start with parents and educators, at some point, lawmakers have to step in as well, enforcing laws and ensuring women are protected from this type of encounter. While some efforts have been made, statistics show they aren’t enough to prevent the high number of forced intercourse scenarios. If a woman is a victim of this type of encounter, there is family law assistance available from services like ADZ Law where they can learn what rights and recourse they have against the perpetrator.
With the information and statistics above, it’s clear this epidemic is still present and that things aren’t going to change any time soon.
Contact Info:
Name: Tulin Ackalin
Email: Send Email
Organization: ADZ Law, LLP
Website: https://www.adzlaw.com/
Release ID: 88921423