Tips on Preventing Rape for National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month
In preparing for this years’s National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, we google-searched “how to prevent rape,” hoping to find motivational quotes that discourage sexually aggressive behavior. The top three results from the search included two websites about self-defense and one article critiquing the University of Colorado for telling its female students to urinate or vomit on their assailants to deter a potential rape.
A wikihow article, which topped the search, lists 25 steps on preventing a rape. Step 1, it says, is to “not be distracted, especially by technology.” Step 12 urges women to be “careful at dance clubs,” and Step 15 claims that “vans are the #1 vehicles used in rapes.”
These risk-reduction strategies get all the hype but are only a part of a larger, comprehensive approach to truly preventing sexually violent crimes, especially given the fact that only 25% of rape victims were raped by a stranger. That means focusing on what vehicles rapists drive or what time you should put your headphones away when you’re in public will not prevent the 73% of rapes that are committed by someone a victim already trusts.
In order to cultivate safer communities, we must do more than discuss how victims can avoid rape. We need to establish a culture in which the act of rape itself is deterred. Here are some ways to deter rape:
- Share this image. Like the wikihow article discussed above, this poster also offers tips on how to prevent rape. They’re better, of course. Tip #10 is: “Don’t rape.”
- Join San Francisco Women Against Rape. They provide community education and are building accountability models through their Community Initiatives Program.
- The Family Violence Law Center helps domestic violence and rape survivors in securing restraining orders to put batterers on notice that further abuse will not be tolerated.
- Help sue rapists in civil court. The Alipato Project needs your support to represent survivors of domestic violence and rape in tort action lawsuits against their batterers.
Since criminal courts require evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for a conviction, rape between intimate partners is often hard to prove. However, in civil court, all we need to demonstrate is evidence that it was more likely than not that a batterer raped his spouse in a particular case. Suing perpetrators for their money is an effective remedy and can deter future misconduct by putting rapists on notice that they can and will be held accountable for their actions.
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