Rape and crisis intervention

RAPE AND CRISIS INTERVENTION
Name
Institution affiliation
Course
Date of Submission
Background
We note systematic inequality every single time we are faced with the al important issue of rape because it is an almost entirely divisive topic in the community and nation as a whole. The levels of rape tolerance in the Canadian society today must be addressed and brought down as this is a disaster in the making (James & Gilliland, 2013).
Since rape cases have often and keep being reported to have occurred under a wide a array of guises and in several other contest it is our thinking of whether a sexual act is qualified as a rape case or not that shall continue to taunt us for some time. For example it a man across the street decides to sexually violate a woman they have just met on the other end of the street then there is a very big possibility that a majority of us would think of the assult as a rape case and we are ready to seek revenge and declare it an act of gross violation of the woman`s rights (Turell, 1999). On the other hand, if is established that their could have been a relationship going on between a suspected rapist and victim then the possibility that our focus could shift from the perception that tit could be a criminal violation to an investigation of the details of the allegations as well as the victim`s credibility.
Introduction
Sex-related crimes such as sexual assaults and rape are without a doubt some of the few categories of crime that end up adversely affecting the victims and the community by extension. We can see the impact of sexual assault crimes and rape everyday in our lives by the way various parents take extra precautionary measures to take care of their children and as a result we can note how stories and news of rape affecting our sense of security and safety (Turell, 1999). What is unknown to several people is that the combination of the community`s fear, the amount of emotions elicited, the victims suffering, with a couple of myths and stereotypes is what really makes this type of crime really complex to deal with. Furthermore, the interventions techniques that have been proposed by scholars that have been tried and tested and eventually approved are ideally enough to tackle the issues involved effectively.
Definition of Rape
As noted by James & Gilliland, (2013), many definitions of rape abound and some are based on legalities that are often derived from several other sources and as Brownmiller(1975) seeks to distinguish between a majority of the existing definitions with a legal dimension and what she has chose to refer to as woman`s definition. The writer is of the view that legal definitions tend give rape a meaning of "the forcible perpetration of an act of sexual intercourse on the body of a woman not one`s wife" (p. 380) and this she claims is a bit too narrow and aims at promoting male chauvinism because what the legal lingo is trying to allude to is the not so true fact that it can only stem from men. The preferred definition of Brownmiller is from a woman`s standpoint and she calls rape "a sexual invasion of the body by force, an incursion into the private, personal inner space with-out consent— in short, an internal assault from one of several avenues and by one of several methods [that] constitutes a deliberate violation of emotional, physical, and rational integrity and is a hostile, degrading act of violence" (p. 376). Rape as well as other forms of sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment appears to have been encompassed by this one definition in totality.
This paper will however adopt Koss and Achilles` (2008) view of rape "as an unwanted act of oral, vaginal, or anal penetration committed though the use of force, threat of force, or when incapacitated; sexual assault refers to a broader range of sexual criminal offenses such as sexual battery and sexual coercion up to and including rape" as also adopted by the U. S. Department of Education in 2011.
Rape/Sexual Assault in Canada
It is not exactly possible to establish the number of sexual assaultcrimes in Canada today. This is because quiet a number of cases have and will continue going unreported. Most of these crimes are within marriage and are perpetrated by either of the spouses on one another. May nore occur in relationships and this has led to an even lower chance of being reported (Bowles et al. 2009). It would be important to not that the ease in reporting the public may experience would highly be tied to whether the news or report of the crime incident may be let known to the police and as consequently to the national statistics agency through the publicly conducted surveys commissioned to UCR by Statistics Canada.
Sexual assault crimes in Canada are officially categorized into 3 groups or types by the law. This is largely based on the difference in the severity of the injuries or incidences where the act is reported to have occurred. The victim`s state also has a great bearing in the categorizing process of the sexual assault crimes.
By the December 2011, the Canadian police had recorded slightly below 22,000 sexual assaults with a majority of those (about 98%) being classified as level 1 sexual crime. Level crime is the least serious of sexual crimes as recognized by law in Canada. Notably, this was a decline from 2010 when the cases of the reported crimes were slightly 3% higher. Level 3 crime seems to have had the greatest surge at -23% as compared to the other 2 levels, level 1 and Level 2. All three, however, notably had reduced in the number of reported cases while ta the same time most of the Canadian provinces reporting a commendable slump in the number of reports regarding sexual assault that eventually reached the police department.
Prince Edward province is said to have reported the highest rise in reported cases at individual provincial levels at about 22% yet was still overall recording the smallest rate among the same provinces. It is however not clear whether this is an actual reflection of the reality on the ground or whether the Canadian citizenry, due to factors not yet researched, shied away from reporting these cases to the police. These can be claims yet to be refuted or substantiated. As the government notes, the number of reported sexual assaults are most likely just a n undercount of the exact tally of the instances of the crimes that occur in actuality and this is partly because data has consistently alluded to the fact that self-reported data of victimization occurrences held at the General Social Survey that most of these do not end up in the periphery of the police stations. (Perreault and Brennan 2010; Brennan and Taylor-Butts 2008).As noted, there are several reasons that the victims end up giving for failure of reporting these cases to the police department and one of them is that the victims didn`t think that the matter was as important to report at the time of the occurrence. The other more commonly given explanation for the failure of reporting was that they claimed the matter is a bit too private and that dealing with the misfortune in another personal way was more efficient than reporting to the police (Statistics Canada 2011, Brennan and Taylor-Butts 2008). This is what shows that the data could be more skewed.
According to the Justice Institute of British Columbia, there is a considerable chance for every single person to be a potential victim of rape regardless of their physical description, sexual orientation, gender, age, religion, race and education. The institute further reveals that a seventeenth fraction of the women population is actually raped at least once at a point in their lifetimes. A more glaring statistic is that for every 17 minutes in Canada, woman is reportedly raped or sexually assaulted or violated. While about 80% of these victims happen within the periphery of the Canadian homes it is appalling that girls and women aged from 15 to 24 are likeliest to be victims. 70% of the perpetrators are known to the victims which raises the moral concern of our families and safety of our children. Since approximately 505 of rapes occur during dates it is wise as a precautionary measure to avoid meeting strangers at hidden places and opt more for public spots because about 63% of victims are reportedly disfigured and or severely beaten up causing injuries that could be fatal. Statistics Canada has also established that 25% of young girls just like 12.5% of boys have been assaulted sexually or abused sexually at one point of their lives before they had attained the age of eighteen (Turell, 1999).
Crisis Intervention for Rape Victims in Canada and elsewhere
There has been growing recognition of the sexual assault and rape survivor`s unmet needs. The Emerging best practices guidelines are suggesting that the existing reproductive health interventions may as well positioned to play critical roles in meeting some of these victims` needs, that includes the treatment of any immediate injuries and manage trauma as wel...