The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defines harassment as “unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information.” The EEOC explains that this behavior becomes illegal when the offensive conduct is a condition of attaining or maintaining employment – that is pervasive in the workplace, creating a hostile, abusive or intimidating environment.
The Department of Justice defines sexual assault as “any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape and rape.”
The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network specifies that sexual assault is “unwanted sexual contact that stops short of rape or attempted rape.”
On the heels of the many media reporters and employees filing legal complaints of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape comes many credible women and men naming Hollywood’s elite of sexual harassing, assault and/or rape. Several people were under age 18 at the time of the harassment, assault and/or rape.
Too, often people think only women and girls are sexually harassed, assaulted or raped. On the contrary, while fewer men/boys experience sexual harassment, assault, or rape the number isn’t hugely less than women and girls.
US government statistics reveal:
· Every 2 minutes, someone in the US is sexually assaulted
· Each year, there are 207,754 survivors of sexual assault
· 44% of victims are under the age of 18
· 80% are under the age of 30
· Approximately 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the survivor
· 38% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance
When you see the statistic… every 2 minutes, someone in the US is sexually assaulted what comes to mind?
Does the number seem small, distant, and/or impersonal? Let’s do the math. There are 1,444 minutes in every day. The statistic reveals every two minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted or raped. Using simple math one can quickly determine 722 people are sexually assaulted/raped in a 24-hour period in the US. Allow that number to sync in. Now let’s go a step further using simple math how many people are sexually assaulted/raped in a week? The number is 5,054. Are you surprised, upset or wondering if this statistic is correct? What does this translate into per month? 20,216 Per year? I’ll wait while you do the math… The correct answer is 242,592. And the truth is many women. girls and especially men/boys, who are sexually assaulted/raped don’t report their harassment, assault or rape. Therefore, it is easy to state that more than 242,592 people are harassed, sexually assaulted or raped per year.
You can say these are only numbers, gathered together by an organization you know nothing about. You might ask how do they arrive at these numbers, or if, in fact, people digest their significance, let alone comprehend the severity of this abusive act?
Yet, statistics mean something, even though they can’t be exact, because of the lack of reporting. However, it is a snap shot of societies’ morality pulse, or lack thereof. Statistics give a sense of how many men, boys and women, girls have been sexually assaulted or raped. More importantly, they recap how spiritually deprived many people are and how we need to educate children, women and men how to protect themselves from sex offenders. It has been common knowledge that men were abusing women and less common for men. In today’s world it’s men abusing women, women abusing men, women abusing women, men abusing men, and the most horrendous of all crimes… the molestation or rape of a child, and robbing them of their innocence.
Few people fathom the emotional impact sexual harassment, assault or rape can produce in anyone’s life. The initial shock of it, the severity of pain, the denial of it, the betrayal, and the way it throws people off his/her center of reality.
There are no words to describe the devastation of sexual harassment, assault or rape. Family members are baffled by the survivor’s sometimes bazaar reactions or behavior. The best description of what a survivor feels in every cell, including the marrow of their bones and the blood in their veins is the act of torture by pulling the fingernails off all 10 fingers as fast as possible–watching the blood seep to the surface and drip on the floor-while feeling the throbbing pain on all 10 fingers simultaneously.
It’s about the repercussions, the aftermath, the insidious way the act seeps into every relationship, every feeling, every word, and every action the survivor manifests. What is most traumatic is that, regardless of whether the survivor remembers the incident or the survivor blocks it out – sometimes for years – it is what she/he experienced. The act shapes the person’s life – until one talks about it on the unconscious and soul level and unravels the episode(s), thus one heals all the ramifications, confronts the perpetrator(s) either face-to-face or telepathically, thus, letting go of the energetic connections, which opens the door to forgive oneself and the perpetrator.
For 30+ years I have assisted women, men survivors and sex offenders to heal their mental, emotional and physical trauma. The after effects of sexual harassment, assault and/or rape include, but are not limited to the following symptoms:
· Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
· Intimacy issues
· Suicidal tendencies
· Symptoms labeled Bi-Polar
· Feeling victimized
· Self-sabotage
· Eating Disorders
· Alcohol Abuse
· Drug Abuse
· Skewed self-image
· Inability to feel self-empowered
· Panic Attack
· Anxiety
· Migraine headaches
· Prone to self-cutting
· Lack of focus – often labeled ADD or ADHD
· Under achieving
· Over achieving
· Lack of trust
· Unable to trust
· Fear of trusting
· Self-loathing
· A distorted view of love
· Feeling like damaged goods
· Feelings of worthlessness
· Inhibited to engage socially
· Feeling violated
· Extreme vulnerability
· Feeling discounted, less than
· Feeling dirty
· Emotional instability
· Pervasively changed
· Emotionally imbalanced
· Paranoid
· Physical timidity
· Thinking their body is repulsive
· Stored anger
· Aggressive behavior
· Loss of control
· Physical pain
· Emotional pain
· Skewed boundaries
· Altered states of consciousness
· Lack of confidence
· Insomnia
· Shame
· Guilt
· Humiliation
· Detached
· Dissociative Identity Disorder
· Wounded warrior
· Thwarted communication
· Lack of initiative
· Feeling as if being followed by darkness
· Feeling deprived of love, attention, security, etc.
· Feelings of betrayal
· Broken heart
· Closed heart
· Heart attack prone
· Cancer prone
· Diabetes prone
· Afraid to commit
· Afraid to love
· Desperate to be loved
· Unable to accept love
As you can see, not all is black and white, nor are they consistent. The symptoms/behavior move around, from year to year, and seep into the crevices of the survivor’s life without invitation. They sabotage relationships, and create fractured egos.
Many survivors have wonderful successes in their life, but in between the high peaks of creative elation, there have been dark moods, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, sadness and restlessness. As I tell my clients, who are sexual abuse survivors, “You need to heal your mental, emotional and physical wounds enough to forgive yourself. You are not to blame for your past or what you did to survive. You are only to blame when you don’t take responsibility for the present and your future. Once you can forgive yourself, the healing takes a quantum leap so that you can be free of that part of your experiences forever. The after effects from sexual abuse have transformed into a sentence in a book that you read long ago. The mental, emotional and physical pain is gone forever, never to return.