Somewhere in the realm of the Great Calendar, a group of savants dedicated April as “Sexual Assault Awareness Month.” And why not. There is no doubt of the seriousness of the issue. Nor should there be any doubt that gender violence is an essential part of the fabric of society. The inequalities of gender, race/ethnicity, and class constitute the warp and woof of capitalism. The struggle against gender violence is a part of the struggle against all forms of inequality and oppression.

Like most men, I came to an understanding of the meaning of sexual assault fairly late. One incident stands out. It occurred while I was interviewing a woman for an article I was writing about ethnoviolence at the workplace. We had begun talking about her past encounters with violence and she began to relate to me an incident of sexual assault that had occurred almost 30 years before. I noticed as she spoke she became more animated, her face became flushed and her eyes watered. As we sat there, she was to a degree reliving that event, an event that took place 30 years before.

What is the extent of the problem? One common estimate is that physical abuse by an intimate partner ( husband, domestic partner, date, family member) is the leading cause of injury to women age 15 to 44. And while we think of homicides as majorly related to the drug trade, one criminologist has indicated that at least 25 percent of all homicides stem from domestic fights.

Let’s look at some of the hard figures provided by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center:
—In 8 out of 10 rape cases, the victim knew the perpetrator.
—Nearly 1 out 4 women may experience sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
—One in four girls (and one in six boys) will be sexually assaulted by the age of 18.
—Among adult American women who were raped, about one-third are physically injured and only half of those injured receive medical care.
—Each year, an estimated 25,000 American women will become pregnant following a rape. As many as 22,000 of those pregnancies could be prevented through prompt emergency contraception.

There is a psychological impact of sexual assault. Depression and anxiety are common. Further there is a 50 percent likelihood that a woman will develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD typically involves problems of sleeping, of eating, and substance abuse. Frequently, the victim mentally relives the incident over and over.

There are monetary costs as well. The Department of Justice estimates that the health-related costs of intimate partner assault exceeds $5.8 billion each year. Eighty percent of this is for direct medical and mental health care. The remainder, about $4 billion is for the costs of lost wages and productivity.

The interpersonal tragedy of sexual assault is that it primarily involves an intimate partner. Sixty-four percent of the women who report being raped were attacked by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend or date. It appears, also, that women who are assaulted by an intimate partner are more likely to be seriously injured than those assaulted by other perpetrators. While men are more likely to be victims of a violent crime, women are as much as eight times more likely to be victimized by an intimate partner.
Even pregnancy is not a barrier. Over 300,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during their pregnancy. Murder is, in fact, the leading cause of death for pregnant women.

Most of the figures come from surveys conducted over the last 10 years. While these figures may appear to be high, there is every reason to believe that they are under-stated particularly where the perpetrator is an intimate partner. Families customarily have operated in ways that are invisible to outsiders, and many women who would like to call for police assistance don’t do so because they do not want their partner arrested or incarcerated, they just want the partner to stop battering them. In general the police are not called because victims believe that the police can’t do anything or that they won’t do anything to help. When police reports are compared to personal reports in a survey, it appears that most victimizations by an intimate partner were not reported to the police.

Baltimore-based sociologist, Natalie J. Sokoloff, writing in the Women’s Studies Quarterly, provides a summary comment: “Domestic violence is part of the larger systems of violence (e.g., imperialism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, etc) and as such domestic violence must be attacked at its root causes: the socially structured systems of inequality....We need structural solutions to structural problems.”

************************

This report will be followed in subsequent weeks by Susan Pearce on domestic violence in immigrant communities and by Jason Weller writing on his five years work experience in battered womens’ shelters.

Readers are invited to add their comments, opinions, stories to this article.