Victims Of Sexual Assault Quotes

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.

I am a victim, I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that it is all that I am.

What was unique about this crime, was that the perpetrator could suggest the victim experienced pleasure and people wouldn't bat an eye. There's no such thing as a good stabbing or bad stabbing, consensual murder or nonconsensual murder.

It was a catch-22: If you didn’t put the trauma behind you, you couldn’t move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened.

Denial forces victims to retreat in lifeless existence, dieing in the shadows of buried trauma and painful memories.

Yes, I have been a victim of a sexual assault. Well, probably several really. Funny how we were conditioned to accept these situations as unpleasant instead of outrageous.

We mute the realization of malevolence- which is too threatening to bear - by turning offenders into victims themselves and by describing their behavior as the result of forces beyond their control.

People may not realize the damage that they are doing by placing the blame on the victim ~ but that doesn't lessen the damage that they cause by doing it.

The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.

Most women are all too familiar with men like Calvin Smith. Men whose sense of prerogative renders them deaf when women say, "No thanks," "Not interested," or even "Fuck off, creep.

Victims exist in a society that tells us our purpose is to be an inspiring story. But sometimes the best we can do is tell you we're still here, and that should be enough. Denying darkness does not bring anyone closer to the light. When you hear a story about rape, all the graphic and unsettling details, resist the instinct to turn away; instead loo closer, because beneath the gore and the police reports is a whole, beautiful person, looking for ways to be in the world again.

Victims are often, automatically, accused of lying. But when a perpetrator is exposed of lying, the stigma doesn't stick. Why is it that we're wary of victims making false accusations, but rarely consider how many men have blatantly lied about, downplayed, or manipulated others to cover their own actons?

If you have been raped or sexually assaulted and you have been blamed, or fear that you may be blamed, I just want you to understand this: You are not to blame. There is nothing you did to make someone hurt you, nor is there anything you could have done differently to prevent or stop it.

In addition to shaming sexual-assault victims, positioning abstinence as women's domain further promotes the notion that it's women's morality that's on the line when it comes to sex, men just can't help themselves, so their ethics are safe from criticism.

Feminists don’t single out rape jokes because rape is “worse” than other crimes—we single them out because we live in a culture that actively strives to shrink the definition of sexual assault; that casts stalking behaviors as romance; blames victims for wearing the wrong clothes, walking through the wrong neighborhood, or flirting with the wrong person; bends over backwards to excuse boys-will-be-boys misogyny; makes the emotional and social costs of reporting a rape prohibitively high; pretends that false accusations are a more dire problem than actual assaults; elects officials who tell rape victims that their sexual violation was “god’s plan”; and convicts in less than 5 percent of rape cases that go to trial.

The shame, embarrassment, feeling of low self-worth, and scores of "labels" we give ourselves are not fitting. I am beginning to see how I had no control over the situation. He was a big man, I was a little boy.

If telling men "don't rape" instead of telling women "don't get raped", is like telling thieves "don't steal" instead of home owners to "lock your houses", why don't we hear more victims of home invasion being told "you got what you deserved for having such a beautiful house on display for everyone to see" ???

Those who were molested or beaten as children or teenagers might later be vulnerable to sexual abuse or violence, because their natural impulses to protect themselves and protest (physical and verbal) were extinguished. Expectation of hurtful treatment by others or one's own failed capabilities can stubbornly persist despite overwhelming evidence that such is no longer the case.

We live in a world in which women are battered and are unable to flee from the men who beat them, although their door is theoretically standing wide open. One out of every four women becomes a victim of severe violence. One out of every two will be confronted by sexual harassment over her lifetime. These crimes are everywhere and can take place behind any front door in the country, every day, and barely elicit much more than a shrug of the shoulders and superficial dismay.

In the 1890s, when Freud was in the dawn of his career, he was struck by how many of his female patients were revealing childhood incest victimization to him. Freud concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major causes of emotional disturbances in adult women and wrote a brilliant and humane paper called “The Aetiology of Hysteria.” However, rather than receiving acclaim from his colleagues for his ground-breaking insights, Freud met with scorn. He was ridiculed for believing that men of excellent reputation (most of his patients came from upstanding homes) could be perpetrators of incest. Within a few years, Freud buckled under this heavy pressure and recanted his conclusions. In their place he proposed the “Oedipus complex,” which became the foundation of modern psychology. According to this theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for when they were children and that the women had come to believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the abuse perpetrated on them and outright discrediting of women’s and children’s reports of mistreatment by men. Once abuse was denied in this way, the stage was set for some psychologists to take the view that any violent or sexually exploitative behaviors that couldn’t be denied—because they were simply too obvious—should be considered mutually caused. Psychological literature is thus full of descriptions of young children who “seduce” adults into sexual encounters and of women whose “provocative” behavior causes men to become violent or sexually assaultive toward them. I wish I could say that these theories have long since lost their influence, but I can’t. A psychologist who is currently one of the most influential professionals nationally in the field of custody disputes writes that women provoke men’s violence by “resisting their control” or by “attempting to leave.” She promotes the Oedipus complex theory, including the claim that girls wish for sexual contact with their fathers. In her writing she makes the observation that young girls are often involved in “mutually seductive” relationships with their violent fathers, and it is on the basis of such “research” that some courts have set their protocols. The Freudian legacy thus remains strong.

There is healing in telling. There is healing in exposing abuse. There is healing in being truthful. There is healing in knowing you are not to blame. There is healing in standing up for yourself. There is healing in setting boundaries. There is healing in self-love. Hold onto hope that you will recover.

Oddly then, in our search for meaning, we often assign victims too much blame for their assaults, and offenders too little. Our inconsistencies do not seem to trouble us, but they are truly puzzling. After all, if the offender is not to blame for his behavior, why would the victim be, no matter what she did our didn't do? Our views make sense, however, if you think that we are trying to reassure ourselves that we are not helpless and, that, in any case, no one is out to get us.

I should meet many people who do not know anyone personally who has been raped or molested as a child. But I can't remember seeing a newspaper without a rape or molestation charge in it somewhere, and when I ask groups how many people know someone personally with a history of molestation, almost always, every hand in the room goes up.

My mom doesn't say anything. I don't say anything. Neither of us knows yet what you should say when rape victims blame themselves: 'It was not your fault.' It was not your fault, even if you were drunk, even if you were wearing a low-cut minidress, even if you were out walking alone at night, even if you were on a date with the rapist and kind of liked him but didn't want to have sex with him.

A man doesn't have to be evil in order to sexually assault women,” Vanessa said. “Most rapists don't look like what we're programmed to believe they should – they're not greasy-haired monsters who jump out from behind the bushes and tie up their victims in their basements. More often, they're someone's typical father, husband, brother, or son – but what they do to women is monstrous.

The United States Violence Against Women Act of 2005 requires that all victims of sexual assault be given free access to an evidence collection kit,

In all the interviews I have done, I cannot remember one offender who did not admit privately to more victims than those for whom he had been caught. On the contrary, most offenders had been charged with and/or convicted of from one to three victims. In the interviews I have done, they have admitted to roughly 10 to 1,250 victims. What was truly frightening was that all the offenders had been reported before by children, and the reports had been ignored.

People want this to be an anomaly.... we can handle monsters, we can't handle our neighbors doing these things. we can't believe these are the same people we see at Christmas parties, and basketball games.

Healing generational trauma takes courage and strength. It’s common for dysfunctional families to deny their abuse. They silence victims and dump toxic shame onto them. Complicit families keep abuse alive from generation to generation, until one brave survivor boldly ends the cycle of abuse.

I wonder if he has a sister, a wife, a woman. But it wouldn't matter if he did. To him, I'm not someone's family. I'm just a thing to be subdued, used, and discarded.

Some called it a witch hunt, said she’s after him. I ask, starting when. Mark the day. Trace it back. I can almost guarantee that after the assault she tried to live her life. Ask her what she did the next day and she’d say, well, I went to work. She didn’t pick up a pitchfork, hire a lawyer. She made her bed, buttoned up her shirt, took shower after shower. She tried to believe she was unchanged, to move on until her legs gave out. Every woman who spoke out did so because she hit a point where she could no longer live another day in the life she tried to build. So she turned, slowly, back around to face it. Society thinks we live to come after him. When in fact, we live to live. That’s it. He upended that life, and we tried to keep going, but couldn’t. Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.

It wasn't a sign of weakness to tell what happened to me. I feel guilt no longer, only regret. The other emotions are coming around too. How much further do I need to go? I'm not sure, but there is comfort in the fact that I am in the hands of expert guides, both in the doctor's office and at home with Sue.

Bravely, I broke the silence. I boldly shared the truth. I empowered myself to create healthy boundaries. I became a badass. I no longer tolerated being shamed, blamed, and manipulated.

over and over victims are blamed for their assaults. and when we imply that victims bring on their own fates - whether to make ourselves feel more efficacious or to make the world seem just - we prevent ourselves from taking the necessary precautions to protect ourselves. Why take precautions? We deny the trauma could easily have happened to us. And we also hurt the people already traumatized. Victims are often already full of self-doubt, and we make recovery harder by laying inspectors blame on them.

Acts of psychological abuse include berating or humiliating the victim; interrogating the victim; restricting the victim's ability to come and go freely; obstructing the victim's access to assistance (e.g., law enforcement; legal, protective, or medical resources); threatening the victim with physical harm or sexual assault; harming, or threatening to harm, people or things that the victim cares about; unwarranted restriction of the victim's access to or use of economic resources; isolating the victim from family, friends, or social support resources; stalking the victim; and trying to make the victim think that he or she is crazy.

Why didn't I report it? Because when you are sexually assaulted by a relative, it's terribly complicated. Initially, I felt shock, numb, and powerless. Keep in mind, sexual assault is an act of violence; not sex. In addition, sexual assault is about power. It's common for victims to feel helpless.

You have cast her as your beautiful victim and wilfully overlook those more shaded layers of her character, because it doesn’t comfortably fit your narrative. But this is the truth: Andie Bell was a bully who used emotional blackmail to get what she wanted. She sold drugs without care or regard for how they might be used. We will never know if she knew she was facilitating drug-assisted sexual assault, but certainly when confronted with this truth by her own sister she could not find it in herself to show compassion.

The idea that clothing choices can stop men from raping is a frustratingly common belief having nothing to do with sexual assault. According to a study by A Federal Commission on Crime of Violence, rapists could not remember what their victims were wearing. So why do people continue to blame the clothing choices of women?

Behind every man alive and kicking, there is a woman. Behind every woman abused and killed, there is a man.

The victim’s response to the trauma of a sexual assault shall not be used in any way to measure credibility.” —

Sexual assault is the single least-reported violent crime. And when it is reported, the victims are blamed and shamed. Or not believed. Or silenced. Punished. Or their attackers are never prosecuted at all.

Bit by bit, Dr. Driscoll helped me to peel away the layers of protection I had built up over the years. The process was not that unlike the peeling of an onion, which also makes us cry. It has been a painful journey, and I don't now when it will end, when I can say, “OK, it's over.” Maybe never. Maybe sooner than I know. I recently told Dr. Driscoll that I feel the beginnings of feeling OK, that this is the right path.

Similarly, Australia recently followed the path of President Obama and the Democrats, responding to a terrible shooting by banning handguns altogether. The results have been disturbing. Since banning handguns, sexual assaults and rapes in Australia have skyrocketed, because there are few things a criminal likes better than an unarmed victim.

It happened all the time in this city that encompassed seven hills, two continents, three seas and fifteen million mouths. It happened behind closed doors and in open courtyards; in cheap motel rooms and five-star luxury suites; in the midst of the night or plain daylight. The brothels of this city could tell many a story had they only found ears willing to listen. Call girls and rent boys and aged prostitutes beaten, abused and threatened by clients looking for the smallest excuse to lose their temper. Transsexuals who never went to the police for they knew they could be assaulted a second time. Children scared of particular family members and new brides of their fathers- or brothers-in-law; nurses and teachers and secretaries harassed by infatuated lovers just because they had refused to date them in the past; housewives who would never speak a word for there were no words in this culture to describe marital rape. It happened all the time. Canopied under a mantle of secrecy and silence that shamed the victims and shielded the assailants. Istanbul was no stranger to sexual abuse. In this city where everyone feared outsiders, most assaults came from those who were too familiar, too close.

Asked to elaborate, Lisak explained, “One of the things that is difficult for most of us, frankly, to understand about a rape, is that there doesn’t have to be a gun to the head, there doesn’t have to be a knife present, there doesn’t have to be a verbalized threat for the act itself to be enormously terrifying and threatening….There is a difference between sexual violence and other forms of assault. Sexual violence is so intimate.” When your body is penetrated by another person against your will, Lisak said, it often induces a uniquely powerful kind of terror. According to many peer-reviewed studies, a large percentage of the victims of non-stranger rapes “actually feared they were going to be killed,” even when “there was no weapon and no overt violence.

Child neglect and abuse is a hidden epidemic. The topic is taboo. Surviving abusive relationships, especially in the family unit, is complicated. Oftentimes, victims of child abuse, sexual assaults, domestic violence, and narcissistic abuse don’t report it. During my extensive research, I discovered that most children don’t disclose their sexual abuse, until late in life. On the website, Child USA, they share about delayed disclosure. “Most child victims of sexual assault disclose, if they disclose at all, during adulthood, with a median age of 48 and an average age of 52.

Females between sixteen and twenty-four years old face a higher risk of being sexually assaulted than any other age group. Most victims of campus rape are preyed upon when they are in their first or second year of college, usually by someone they know. And it’s during the initial days and weeks of a student’s freshman year, when she is in the midst of negotiating the fraught transition from girlhood to womanhood, that she is probably in the greatest danger.

From now on I’ve decided that my priority is to commit to being a genuine ally to the women I know. I want them to feel safe in my company, to know that if they are ever the victim of any kind of sexual harassment or assault, I’ll always be there for them. I’ll always believe them, I’ll never for a moment doubt the truth of anything they tell me in confidence. I’ll never try to minimise what they’ve gone through, or impute any responsibility to them, even if – especially if – I know the attacker. I want to tell them they’ll never have reason to fear that I’ll find an excuse for him, or that I’ve set my heart on staying in touch with him. I refuse to be one of those people who thinks that domestic assault, for example, is a question of ‘perspective’, or a private matter between the two parties.

The same people who wear shirts that read “fuck your feelings” and rail against “political correctness” seem to believe that there should be no social consequences for [voting for Trump]. I keep hearing calls for empathy and healing, civility and polite discourse. As if supporting a man who would fill his administration with white nationalists and misogynists is something to simply agree to disagree on. Absolutely not. You don’t get to vote for a person who brags about sexual assault and expect that the women in your life will just shrug their shoulders. You don’t get to play the victim when people unfriend you on Facebook, as if being disliked for supporting a bigot is somehow worse than the suffering that marginalized people will endure under Trump. And you certainly do not get to enjoy a performance by people of color and those in the LGBT community without remark or protest when you enact policies and stoke hatred that put those very people’s lives in danger. Being socially ostracized for supporting Trump is not an infringement of your rights, it’s a reasonable response by those of us who are disgusted, anxious, and afraid. I was recently accused by a writer of “vote shaming” – but there’s nothing wrong with being made to feel ashamed for doing something shameful.

All were dissected or decapitated or sexually assaulted after death. He cut leg meat from two of his victims into a macaroni casserole he prepared and ate. Kemper bludgeoned his mother with a hammer as she slept. He sawed off her head, had sex with her corpse, and carved out her larynx and shoved it down the garbage disposal.

What happens next is you’re more likely to be a victim of sexual assault,” he says, and I feel Alex tense beside me. “Girls, one in three of you.” He points right at me, Alex, Sara, Branley, and Lila. “There are five right here, so let’s be generous and say it’s just one. Which one of you will it be?” From the left a boy yells, “Please say it’s Branley,” followed by a chorus of laughter. “Let me guess, she’s the hot one, right?” Nolan says, smiling along with them. “Guess what—one of you is the one who’s going to do it.” That shuts it down, fast. “It’s a small town,” he goes on. “Ninety percent of rapes are acquaintance rapes—that means you know your attacker, girls. And guys, that means you know the girl you damaged physically, emotionally, and mentally. One in six of you boys is going to be sexually assaulted too, by the way.

Being indifferent about sexual abuse is an absolute assault on the truth of who the victim is!

Quantifying the prevalence of sexual assault is a highly speculative exercise because at least 80 percent of those who are assaulted don't report the crime to authorities. This book is an effort to understand what deters so many rape victims from going to the police, and to comprehend the repercussions of sexual assault from the perspective of those who have been victimized.

Lisak and Miller examined a random sample of 1,882 men, all of whom were students at the University of Massachusetts Boston between 1991 and 1998. Their average age was twenty-four. Of these 1,882 students, 120 individuals—6.4 percent of the sample—were identified as rapists, which wasn’t a surprising proportion. But 76 of the 120—63 percent of the undetected student rapists, amounting to 4 percent of the overall sample—turned out to be repeat offenders who were collectively responsible for at least 439 rapes, an average of nearly 6 assaults per rapist. A very small number of men in the population, in other words, had raped a great many women with utter impunity. Lisak’s study also revealed something equally disturbing: These same 76 individuals were also responsible for 49 sexual assaults that didn’t rise to the level of rape, 277 acts of sexual abuse against children, 66 acts of physical abuse against children, and 214 acts of battery against intimate partners. This relative handful of male students, as Lisak put it, “had each, on average, left 14 victims in their wake….And the number of assaults was almost certainly underreported.

End Violence Against Women International, the police training organization, has suggested that the most important factor in talking with victims is the engagement of the investigators. “What is absolutely clear is that an officer’s competence and compassion are far more important than gender in determining their effectiveness at interviewing sexual assault victims,” the organization emphasizes.

In our system of criminal law, the state, not the victim, is actually considered the injured party, and it is the state, not the victim, that has the exclusive right to take action against a criminal offender.

A cult is a group of people who share an obsessive devotion to a person or idea. The cults described in this book use violent tactics to recruit, indoctrinate, and keep members. Ritual abuse is defined as the emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive acts performed by violent cults. Most violent cults do not openly express their beliefs and practices, and they tend to live separately in noncommunal environments to avoid detection. Some victims of ritual abuse are children abused outside the home by nonfamily members, in public settings such as day care. Other victims are children and teenagers who are forced by their parents to witness and participate in violent rituals. Adult ritual abuse victims often include these grown children who were forced from childhood to be a member of the group. Other adult and teenage victims are people who unknowingly joined social groups or organizations that slowly manipulated and blackmailed them into becoming permanent members of the group. All cases of ritual abuse, no matter what the age of the victim, involve intense physical and emotional trauma. Violent cults may sacrifice humans and animals as part of religious rituals. They use torture to silence victims and other unwilling participants. Ritual abuse victims say they are degraded and humiliated and are often forced to torture, kill, and sexually violate other helpless victims. The purpose of the ritual abuse is usually indoctrination. The cults intend to destroy these victims' free will by undermining their sense of safety in the world and by forcing them to hurt others. In the last ten years, a number of people have been convicted on sexual abuse charges in cases where the abused children had reported elements of ritual child abuse. These children described being raped by groups of adults who wore costumes or masks and said they were forced to witness religious-type rituals in which animals and humans were tortured or killed. In one case, the defense introduced in court photographs of the children being abused by the defendants[.1] In another case, the police found tunnels etched with crosses and pentacles along with stone altars and candles in a cemetery where abuse had been reported. The defendants in this case pleaded guilty to charges of incest, cruelty, and indecent assault.[2] Ritual abuse allegations have been made in England, the United States, and Canada.[3] Many myths abound concerning the parents and children who report ritual abuse. Some people suggest that the tales of ritual abuse are "mass hysteria." They say the parents of these children who report ritual abuse are often overly zealous Christians on a "witch-hunt" to persecute satanists. These skeptics say the parents are fearful of satanism, and they use their knowledge of the Black Mass (a historically well-known, sexualized ritual in which animals and humans are sacrificed) to brainwash their children into saying they were abused by satanists.[4] In 1992 I conducted a study to separate fact from fiction in regard to the disclosures of children who report ritual abuse.[5] The study was conducted through Believe the Children, a national organization that provides support and educational sources for ritual abuse survivors and their families.

Rape. It brings with it connotations, assumptions, a whole steamer trunk full of other people's ideas of it, because other people only know it as a word. A concept that's discussed, argued, demonized. If you actually know what it is, if you live it and experience it and know what it is beyond a word, you have to carry that word with you. You're now 'rape victim', 'rape survivor'. Your identity is attached permanently to a word you hate.

Surprisingly, once she started working with professional counselors and advocates, Natasha’s opinion about the desirability of reporting rapes to the police changed. Her colleagues pointed out that for some victims of sexual assault, engaging with the criminal justice system could traumatize them severely all over again, so the staff at SFTS didn’t necessarily recommend it. Her colleagues definitely urged every victim to get counseling, however.

Stanford was offering $150,000 total, which would cover therapy for my sister and me for a handful of years. Victims receive heat when given any sum. Few acknowledge that healing is costly. That we should be allocating more funds for victims, for therapy, extra security, potential moving costs, getting back on their feel, buying something as simple as court clothes. As Michele pointed out, Preventing assault is so much cheaper than trying to address it after the fact.

When we deny victims the words to describe and define their own experiences, we actively disempower them and distance them from justice. We owe it to all survivors to start describing ‘groping’ and ‘fondling’ by their real name: sexual assault.

Law professor Melanie Randall writes: “[The] limited appreciation of the nature of traumatic responses is, undoubtedly, an expression of a broader lack of understanding of, and information about, the complexities of human psychology and human behaviour within the legal system. This failure is particularly sharp in terms of legal responses to sexual assault, as it is entrenched within the many myths about sexual assault, including conceptions of authentic and credible (read ‘ideal’) victims.

For those who are the most directly victimized, the complicity and silence of bystanders—friends, relatives, and neighbors, not to mention officials of the law—feel like a profound betrayal, for this is what isolates them and abandons them to their fates.

Victims of rape and sexual assault are mollycoddled by the press. We are perpetually infantilised by commentators, journalists, and the public alike. People who haven’t experienced rape (or sexual abuse of any kind) find the idea of survivors having great sex lives and moving forward triumphantly – worrying. It doesn’t quite fit with their perception of us and how they understand victims of sexual violence. In most cases, people prefer to stereotype survivors – viewing them as downtrodden victims but often this doesn’t align with the actual reality.

What happens next is you’re more likely to be a victim of sexual assault,” he says, and I feel Alex tense beside me. “Girls, one in three of you.” He points right at me, Alex, Sara, Branley, and Lila. “There are five right here, so let’s be generous and say it’s just one. Which one of you will it be?” From the left a boy yells, “Please say it’s Branley,” followed by a chorus of laughter. “Let me guess, she’s the hot one, right?” Nolan says, smiling along with them. “Guess what—one of you is the one who’s going to do it.” That shuts it down, fast. “It’s a small town,” he goes on. “Ninety percent of rapes are acquaintance rapes—that means you know your attacker, girls. And guys, that means you know the girl you damaged physically, emotionally, and mentally. One in six of you boys is going to be sexually assaulted too, by the way.” test

Every single emergency room in every single hospital adjoining or near a college campus stocks extra supplies on Thursday nights — rape kits for the sexual assault victims, IV fluids for those who are dehydrated from alcohol-induced vomiting, and blood for drunk driving accidents.”11

Because street harassment is perhaps the clearest manifestation of the spectrum of sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault that exists within our society. Yes, it starts out small; but allowing those ‘minor’ transgressions gives licence to the more serious ones, and eventually to all-out abuse. We’ve heard the same words and phrases crossing over and echoing and repeating, from women who are shouted at in the street to women who are assaulted and women who are victims of domestic violence in their own homes. The language is the same. And if we say it’s acceptable for men to assume power and ownership over women they don’t know verbally in public, then, like it or not, we’re also saying something much wider about gender relations – something that carries over into our personal relationships and our sexual exchanges. Because this is a line that doesn’t need to be blurred. It should be clear and simple. Take it from the women whose experiences started out with just a little ‘harmless’ street harassment – a sexual ‘compliment’ or a wolf whistle, or a ‘Hey baby’ – but then turned nasty, became full-blown attacks. Ask them what the problem is with a harmless bit of fun.

If you are, or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, please do not wait any longer, get help today. There are people who will help you. Please call. The National Domestic Abuse Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 The National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673 The National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline: 1-866-331-9474

Isn’t it sad that when a girl says she was sexually assaulted, our first instinct is to think she’s probably lying? Statistics and facts tell us the exact opposite. We demand “perfect victims” who better not have been drinking or hanging out at a party in a short skirt or revealing dress or have ever been known to enjoy sex.

That I would know how to handle being bullied?” I give a dark laugh, hardly able to believe it. “You brought your glorified sexual assault victim to teach your little sisters about…what? Standing up to assholes? Bringing them down? Shaking it off?” I shake my head. “Jesus, Tristian, Shakespeare couldn’t write this kind of irony.

I hear your soul cry. I know your shame. I understand your fears, tears, and trauma. Your story matters. Even if you tell it to one safe person, I encourage you to not keep it locked inside your heart. There is something empowering about having the courage to tell our story. To acknowledge, yes, it did happen. Yes, it really was that bad.

Discussions about rape are so often irrational, and sometimes outright bizarre. It's the only crime to which people respond by wanting to lock up the victims. It's the only crime that is so bad that victims are supposed to be destroyed beyond repair by it, but simultaneously not so bad that the men who do it should be treated like criminals.

He said that a killer comes to hunting humans gradually. The appetite builds from a young boy’s undifferentiated anger and morbidity of mind to a search for ever more violent pornography, the visual and written material that Ted believed had shaped and focused his fantasy world. Then comes the window peeping, followed eventually by crudely conceived and unsuccessful assaults. In Ted’s case, these gave way, over time, to a sophisticated taste for the chase and its aftermath: the selection of what he called “worthy” victims, pretty and intelligent young daughters and sisters of the middle class, nice girls whom Ted desired to possess, he said, “as one would possess a potted plant, or a Porsche.

A plain, brown paper-wrapped package came in the mail recently. Upon opening it, I saw that it was a patchwork quilt about four feet by five feet. Many little scraps of cloth, carefully joined by loving hands. Two squares have suggestions of a black cassock and Roman white collar. The maker of the quilt states, “In its variety, I feel it denotes confusion and the world “mixed” up. There are dark spots for the dark times and bright squares, so, hopefully, some good and brightness will come in the future. The other pieces of cloth were of happy times, mothers and children, peaceful settings, happy things.” A note inside stated that she felt we were “scraps,”—the “scraps” that the abusive priests treated us like. They would use us as a scrap is used and then simply toss us aside. I was moved to tears. Holding it in my hands, I could almost feel others' pain and suffering, as I touched each panel. It is a magnificent work, worthy of a prize. I was deeply humbled by the receipt of the quilt. This woman got it; she really got it. This woman got it; she really got it. She has a deeper understanding of what we have gone through. It is rare.

How often do we hear from the local diocesan people—the bishop, the communications director, the victim assistance coordinator, and others—that this abuse is not restricted to clergy, but, rather, it is a societal problem? It does occur outside in the public realm. When was the last time you heard of a sex offender not being held accountable for his actions once caught? The Church treated the abuse as a sin only and nothing more. Out in society, sex offenders are not moved to another community quietly. “But protest that priests are 'no worse' than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although the extent of the problem will continue to be debated, sexual abuse by Catholic priests is a fact. The reason why priests, publicly dedicated to celibate service, abuse is a question that cries out for explanation. Sexual activity of any adult with a minor is a criminal offense. By virtue of the requirement of celibacy, sexual activity with anyone is proscribed for priests. These factors have been constant and well-known by all Church authorities” (Sipe 227−228).

I was sure that if I kept acting like a trauma victim, that’s what I’d become the effects would be even worse and would last longer. Meanwhile my body knew exactly what was going on. I told Clara: there’s no way to ignore the blood, there’s no way to ignore the fear of being in my apartment. I can’t ignore the fatigue that is a side effect of my medication, or the marks on my body, or the way my heart races when I’m walking down the street at night by myself and someone, a man, walks up behind me and I’m scared by the sound of his footsteps. But I knew I had to lie to myself. I don’t mean that lying was a solution, and I don’t know whether this would work for anyone else, but what I needed was to pretend with all my might that I wasn’t traumatized, to tell myself I was all right, even if that was a lie.

Rape and sexual assault are unusual, if not quite unique, in that often, the only real evidence of a crime is the victim's testimony. Physical evidence might demonstrate that a sexual encounter took place between two people, but even cuts and bruises can't definitively prove lack of consent on one person's part. Especially if the accused is the alleged victim's friend, lover or spouse, or someone with whom they freely chose to leave a party. Ultimately, in the absence of photographic or video evidence, it comes down to one person's word against another's. The most obvious tragic result of this fact is that nearly half of rapes are never reported, fewer are prosecuted, and even fewer lead to a felony conviction. Victims wonder what the point of reporting uncorroborated sexual violence is, and they're not wrong.

That is exactly what teenagers of ass sexualities need: ongoing discussion and education that addresses pleasure, mutuality, safety, love, intimacy, and self-discovery. They need to understand the potential to either be the perpetrator or the victim of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. They need to have agency over their bodies. And for all of them, adult denial puts them at risk of physical and emotional trauma.

Well before she became famous — or infamous, depending on where you cast your vote — Loftus's findings on memory distortion were clearly commodifiable. In the 1970s and 1980s she provided assistance to defense attorneys eager to prove to juries that eyewitness accounts are not the same as camcorders. "I've helped a lot of people," she says. Some of those people: the Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Oliver North, Ted Bundy. "Ted Bundy?" I ask, when she tells this to me. Loftus laughs. "This was before we knew he was Bundy. He hadn't been accused of murder yet." "How can you be so confident the people you're representing are really innocent?" I ask. She doesn't directly answer. She says, "In court, I go by the evidence.... Outside of court, I'm human and entitled to my human feelings. "What, I wonder are her human feelings about the letter from a child-abuse survivor who wrote, "Let me tell you what false memory syndrome does to people like me, as if you care. It makes us into liars. False memory syndrome is so much more chic than child abuse.... But there are children who tonight while you sleep are being raped, and beaten. These children may never tell because 'no one will believe them.'" "Plenty of "Plenty of people will believe them," says Loftus. Pshaw! She has a raucous laugh and a voice with a bit of wheedle in it. She is strange, I think, a little loose inside. She veers between the professional and the personal with an alarming alacrity," she could easily have been talking about herself.

I don’t know you. I’m not going to sleep in a small, confined tent with a man I don’t know.” She’d sleep next to her knife anyway, but if he decided to attack her, hopefully the zipper would provide an early warning. His shoulders relaxed. “I hadn’t thought about that.” Of course he hadn’t. Men didn’t constantly make decisions to minimize their risks of sexual assault. Not that all men were bad or men weren’t victims, but the majority of them lived life blissfully unaware of things like rape culture and victim blaming.

(From the Q&A with the author at the end of the book.) Have any readers ever asked questions that shocked you? I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped. The first dozen times I heard this, I was horrified. But I heard it over and over again. I realized that many young men are not being taught the impact that sexual assault has on a woman. They are inundated by sexual imagery in the media, and often come to the (incorrect) conclusion that having sex is not a big deal. This, no doubt, is why the number of sexual assaults is so high. I am also shocked by adults who feel that rape is an inappropriate topic to discuss with teenagers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18 and 46 percent of those victims are between the ages of 12-15. It makes adults uncomfortable to acknowledge this, but our inability to speak clearly and openly about sexual issues endangers our children. It is immoral not to discuss this with them.

Consider the following: More than 40 percent of women in the United States have likely been the victim of violence, including childhood sexual abuse (almost 18 percent), physical assault (more than 19 percent), rape (more than 20 percent), and intimate partner violence (almost 35 percent).4 Some 6 percent of all pregnant women experienced violence during their pregnancies as well.5 Despite the widespread violence against women, less than 10 percent of primary care physicians normally screen for domestic violence during routine office visits.6 Yet if the violence is not addressed, it

One tweet includes a photo of her at fourteen, skinny and smiling through braces in her field hockey uniform, the text screaming, THIS IS HOW OLD TAYLOR BIRCH WAS WHEN JACOB STRANE ASSAULTED HER. I try to imagine the same line paired with the Polaroids Strane took of me at fifteen, my heavy-lidded eyes and swollen lips, or with the photos I took of myself at seventeen, standing before a backdrop of birch trees, lifting my skirt as I stared at the camera, looking like a Lolita and knowing exactly what I wanted, what I was. I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me.

In criminal court, the defendant is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. These two cornerstones of criminal law, the presumption of innocence and the requirement of a very high standard of proof, are designed to tip the scales of justice in favor of criminal defendants, in recognition of the tremendous imbalance of power between individual citizens and the state. But no equivalent consideration is given to the safety and well-being of crime victims who bear witness in court, despite the very real imbalance of power that so often obtains between victim and perpetrator.

Our society doesn't allow any foreign objects. I've always suffered because of that," Shiraha said, drinking jasmine tea made with a teabag from the drink bar. I was the one who had gotten the jasmine tea for him since he didn't make any move to get anything for himself. He just sat in silence, and when I placed it in front of him he started drinking it without even saying thank you. "Everyone has to toe the line. Why am I still doing casual work even though I'm in my mid-thirties? Why haven't I ever had a girlfriend? The assholes don't even bat an eyelid when they ask whether I've ever had sex or not. And then they laugh and tell me not to include prostitutes in the count. I don't make trouble for anyone. But they all seem to think nothing of raping me, just because I'm in the minority." I considered him one step short of being a sex offender. But here he was casually likening his own suffering to sexual assault, without sparing a thought for all the trouble he'd caused for women store workers and customers. He seemed to have this odd circuitry in his mind that allowed him to see himself only as the victim, and never the perpetrator, I thought was I watched him. "Really," I said, even wondering whether he made a habit of being self-pitying. "That must be hard.

Why would women fear rape from strange men when most rapists are men they know? Why don’t women show greater fear of rape from acquaintances since they make up the vast majority of perpetrators? And why would so many women fear that their rapist would murder them when the conditional probability of “if rape, then murder” is so small? In short, why do women appear at first glance to be miscalibrated in their rape fears? One possible solution to this mystery is an evolutionary mismatch. Perhaps over human evolutionary history the rates of stranger rape and rape followed by murder were much higher than they are today. For thousands of years, small-group warfare often left a trail of female victims in its wake.

I am not beautiful, quiet and devastated in my pain like a heroine in a Shakespearean drama; I am no Ophelia quietly lying down in the river with my pain, there is no bravery or greater symbolism to the hardships I experience. My existence as a survivor is inconvenient at best and a constant act of defiance at worst because I reject the two choices I am given by society; the ‘perfect survivor’ and the ‘bad survivor’. Neither choice is real although it is instilled in us from an early age that they are, but it is useful to apply these labels as a way to describe this dichotomy. The term ‘victim’ is not one I apply to myself, as many other survivors of sexual assault do not. We see ourselves and choose to describe ourselves as survivors. The

In their book Warrior Lovers, an analysis of erotic fiction by women, the psychologist Catherine Salmon and the anthropologist Donald Symons wrote, "To encounter erotica designed to appeal to the other sex is to gaze into the psychological abyss that separates the sexes.... The contrasts between romance novels and porn videos are so numerous and profound that they can make one marvel that men and women ever get together at all, much less stay together and successfully rear children." Since the point of erotica is to offer the consumer sexual experiences without having to compromise with the demands of the other sex, it is a window into each sex's unalloyed desires. ... Men fantasize about copulating with bodies; women fantasize about making love to people. Rape is not exactly a normal part of male sexuality, but it is made possible by the fact that male desire can be indiscriminate in its choice of a sexual partner and indifferent to the partner's inner life--indeed, "object" can be a more fitting term than "partner." The difference in the sexes' conception of sex translates into a difference in how they perceive the harm of sexual aggression. ... The sexual abyss offers a complementary explanation of the callous treatment of rape victims in traditional legal and moral codes. It may come from more than the ruthless exercise of power by males over females; it may also come from a parochial inability of men to conceive of a mind unlike theirs, a mind that finds the prospect of abrupt, unsolicited sex with a stranger to be repugnant rather than appealing. A society in which men work side by side with women, and are forced to take their interests into account while justifying their own, is a society in which this thick-headed incuriosity is less likely to remain intact. The sexual abyss also helps to explain the politically correct ideology of rape. ... In the case of rape, the correct belief is that rape has nothing to do with sex and only to do with power. As (Susan) Brownmiller put it, "From prehistoric times to the present, I believe, rape has played a critical function. It is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear." ... Brownmiller wrote that she adapted the theory from the ideas of an old communist professor of hers, and it does fit the Marxist conception that all human behavior is to be explained as a struggle for power between groups. But if I may be permitted an ad feminam suggestion, the theory that rape has nothing to do with sex may be more plausible to a gender to whom a desire for impersonal sex with an unwilling stranger is too bizarre to contemplate. Common sense never gets in the way of a sacred custom that has accompanied a decline of violence, and today rape centers unanimously insist that "rape or sexual assault is not an act of sex or lust--it's about aggression, power, and humiliation, using sex as the weapon. The rapist's goal is domination." (To which the journalist Heather MacDonald replies: "The guys who push themselves on women at keggers are after one thing only, and it's not reinstatement of the patriarchy.")

Batley insisted that no cult existed but the jury found him guilty of 35 offences including 11 rapes. three indecent assaults, causing prostitution for personal gain, causing a child to have sex and inciting a child to have sex. The three women, who got Egyptian Eye of Horus tattoos apparently to show their allegiance to their organisation, were found guilty of sex-related charges. Young boys and girls were procured by cult members to take part in sex sessions, the trial heard. The group preyed on vulnerable youngsters, impelling them to join with veiled death threats. Batley was accused of forcing a number of his victims into prostitution. (Morris 2011) There are, after all, no paedophile rings; there is no ritual abuse; recovered memories cannot he trusted; not all victimization claims are legitimate. (Pratt 2009: 70)

The saddest things about these [sexual assault] cases, beyond the crimes themselves, are the degrading things the victim begins to believe about her being. My hope is to undo these beliefs. I say her, but whether you are a man, transgender, gender-nonconforming, however you choose to identify and exist in this world, if your life has been touched by sexual violence, I seek to protect you. And to the ones who lifted me, day by day, out of darkness, I hope to say thank you. … When I’m afraid, all I have to do is think of the two of them [Peter Jonsson and Carl Arndt]. I think of how I want to return the favor; to pull the heaviness off you, to be the one yelling it is not okay, pinning your demons down in the dirt, so you suddenly find yourself free, given the chance to begin your journey, growing on your own, uncovering your voice, finding your way back. I want to stay and fight, while you go.

The psychological devastation women experience stems in part from damage to a woman’s sexual reputation. This reputation, in turn, is formed and driven by two key evolutionary forces of sexual selection—men’s mate preferences and women’s intrasexual competition. Men worldwide prioritize sexual fidelity in long-term mates. Men interpret cues to perceived promiscuity as compromising prospects for fidelity in a committed partner. In contrast, men are attracted to cues of a woman’s perceived promiscuity when they seek casual sex partners because these cues convey information about their chances of succeeding sexually. So victims of revenge porn suffer damage to their long-term mate value in the eyes of men. Women perceived as promiscuous, even if that perception is entirely erroneous and based on images they themselves have not posted, also tend to be slotted in the male brain as potential short-term mates.

As I let it out, layer by layer, Dr. Driscoll helped with the bumps and valleys. He knew just how much to draw out of me and how much I could handle. He is such an expert in his profession. He told me that the guilt I was feeling was not guilt, but regret. Guilt is a good thing. It is a mechanism by which we shouldn't make the same mistake twice. If you do something questionable, then the next chance you get to do it, guilt should stop you. I had no guilt. I had regrets, many regrets, but no guilt. It took some convincing, but he prevailed. There was always a nagging in my head, that if only I had had the guts to kill Neary myself, it would have stopped him from harming others, but that was not to be as a small boy. It does hurt that, maybe, just maybe, if I had carried out one of my many plans to kill him and myself then I could have saved victims younger than I. As victims come forward from almost all the churches where he served—and some are twenty—five plus years my junior—I feel that they would have been spared, if only I hadn't chickened out as a boy. Therein lies the answer; I was a little boy, a ten—year—old boy. Other victims of Neary were as young as six.

Our speed-dating lab study of the sexual over-perception bias led to several fascinating findings. We had women and men who had never met interact with each other for five minutes and then evaluate the other on their sexual interest in them and report on the level of their own sexual interest. Then interaction partners rotated, chatted with a new person, and did the ratings again. Each person interacted with a total of five members of the other sex. Our first finding confirmed the sexual over-perception bias—men over-inferred a woman’s sexual interest in them compared with women’s reports of their actual interest. Not all men, however, are equally vulnerable to the bias. Some proved to be accurate at inferring women’s interest or lack thereof. Men who scored high on narcissism and who indicated a preference for short-term mating were exceptionally prone to this bias—an inferential error that presumably promotes many sexual advances, even if many of them are not reciprocated. Narcissistic men apparently think they are hot, even when they’re not. Not all women were equally likely to be victims of the male bias. Rather, women judged to be physically attractive by the experimenters were especially prone to evoke men’s sexual over-perception. The irony is that attractive women, because they receive a larger volume of male sexual attention, are precisely the women who, on average, are least likely to reciprocate men’s sexual interest.

Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression." TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy. Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know -- TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases. Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false. TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible. Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling. TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind? Freyd: Does that happen? TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.

The largest and most rigorous study that is currently available in this area is the third one commissioned by the British Home Office (Kelly, Lovett, & Regan, 2005). The analysis was based on the 2,643 sexual assault cases (where the outcome was known) that were reported to British police over a 15-year period of time. Of these, 8% were classified by the police department as false reports. Yet the researchers noted that some of these classifications were based simply on the personal judgments of the police investigators, based on the victim’s mental illness, inconsistent statements, drinking or drug use. These classifications were thus made in violation of the explicit policies of their own police agencies. There searchers therefore supplemented the information contained in the police files by collecting many different types of additional data, including: reports from forensic examiners, questionnaires completed by police investigators, interviews with victims and victim service providers, and content analyses of the statements made by victims and witnesses. They then proceeded to evaluate each case using the official criteria for establishing a false allegation, which was that there must be either “a clear and credible admission by the complainant” or “strong evidential grounds” (Kelly, Lovett, & Regan,2005). On the basis of this analysis, the percentage of false reports dropped to 2.5%." Lonsway, Kimberly A., Joanne Archambault, and David Lisak. "False reports: Moving beyond the issue to successfully investigate and prosecute non-stranger sexual assault." The Voice 3.1 (2009): 1-11.

when you speak about feminism they like to hit you with things i call 'what about's– what about women in the middle east what about women in third world countries what about focusing on them and not the problems here and this all sounds good in theory yes we need to help them yes we need to help young girls trapped in child marriages yes we need to help women marred by acid attacks yes we need to help victims of human trafficking yes we need to help women who wil be imprisioned beaten killed for speaking out about their sexual assault for getting an abortion for leaving an abusive husband yes we need to help them of couse we do it is our job as decent humans to help them but we can help them and help ourselves at the same time we can help young girls in child marriages and we can fight to end the objectification of young girls here we can help women marred by acid attacks and we can work harder to arrest abusers and assailants here we can help victims of human trafficking and we can stop stigma and violence against sex workers here we can help women who will be imprisioned for speaking out about their sexual assault beaten for getting an abortion killed for leaving an abusive husband and we can also help women who will be imprisioned for killing their pimp and captor beaten for refusing to have sex killed for rejecting a man here women are still getting hurt here there is still not total equality here they say what about this what about that what about them i say well what about here they say nothing because that they mean when they say what about the middle east what about the third world countries what about them is what about sitting down what about shutting up what about not saying anything at all

Rape has been described by victim advocate and former police officer Tom Tremblay as “the most violent crime a person can survive.”10 Those who have not been sexually assaulted can perhaps most clearly understand the experience of a survivor by thinking of them as having survived an attempted murder that used sex as the weapon. Sexual violence often doesn’t look like what we think of as “violence”—only rarely is there a gun or knife; often there isn’t even “aggression” as we typically think of it. There is coercion and the removal of the targeted person’s choice about what will happen next. Survivors don’t “fight” because the threat is too immediate and inescapable; their bodies choose “freeze” because it’s the stress response that maximizes the chances of staying alive . . . or of dying without pain. Trauma isn’t always caused by one specific incident. It can also emerge in response to persistent distress or ongoing abuse, like a relationship where sex is unwanted, though it may be technically “consensual” because the targeted person says yes in order to avoid being hurt or feels trapped in the relationship or is otherwise coerced. In that context, a survivor’s body gradually learns that it can’t escape and it can’t fight; freeze becomes the default stress response because of the learned pattern of shutdown as the best way to guarantee survival. Each person’s experience of survival is unique, but it often includes a kind of disengaged unreality. And afterward, that illusion of unreality gradually degrades, disintegrating under the weight of physical existence and burdened memory. The tentative recognition that this thing has actually happened incrementally unlocks the panic and rage that couldn’t find their way to the surface before, buried as they were under the overmastering mandate to survive. But survival is not recovery; survival happens automatically, sometimes even against the survivor’s will. Recovery requires an environment of relative security and the ability to separate the physiology of freeze from the experience of fear, so that the panic and the rage can discharge, completing their cycles at last.

Is he a psychopath?” “The relationship between psychopathic and serial killers is particularly interesting. All psychopaths do not become serial murderers. Lucky for us, because there are a lot of them out there. But serial murderers may possess some or many of the traits consistent with those of a psychopath. Psychopaths who commit serial murder do not value human life and are extremely callous in their interactions with their victims. This is particularly evident in sexually motivated serial killers who repeatedly target, stalk, assault, and kill without a sense of remorse. However, being a psychopath alone does not explain the motivations of a serial killer. Psychopaths are not sensitive to themes such as sympathy for their victims or remorse or guilt over their crimes. They do possess certain personality traits that can be detected, particularly their inherent narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. Psychopathy is a personality disorder manifested in people who use a mixture of charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others, in order to satisfy their own selfish needs.

Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who made waves as an activist against sexual assault, ended her school year as she began it: carrying a mattress. Ms. Sulkowicz carried her mattress around campus throughout her senior year to raise awareness to her school’s handling of sexual assault. On Tuesday, she brought it with her to her graduation ceremony, and walked with it during the processional. Four fellow female graduates helped her carry the mattress as she walked across the stage to cheers from the audience. Ms. Sulkowicz has said she was raped in her dorm by a classmate who was later cleared of the crime in what she said was a flawed university disciplinary proceeding. She has spent approximately the past nine months carrying her mattress on campus as part of a school-sanctioned art project, “Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight),” vowing to carry it as long as she and the accused student attend the same school. The project sparked debate on and off campus. In January, Ms. Sulkowicz was the guest of New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand at President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. The accused student, Paul Nungesser, and Ms. Sulkowicz both graduated Tuesday. Mr. Nungesser has said he didn’t rape Ms. Sulkowicz and last month filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court against Columbia for allowing what he says is sustained harassment against him. As part of the lawsuit, his attorney requested that Columbia bar Ms. Sulkowicz from carrying the mattress at graduation. The school almost did. On Monday, it sent out graduation guidelines that said: “Graduates should not bring into the ceremonial area large objects which could interfere with the proceedings or create discomfort to others in close, crowded spaces shared by thousands of people.” Students saw the guidelines as a reference to Ms. Sulkowicz, they said. But she showed up on Tuesday, mattress in hand. Some students wore red tape on their graduation caps in solidarity with Ms. Sulkowicz, referencing No Red Tape, Columbia’s anti-sexual-assault activist group. Mr. Nungesser’s attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, criticized Columbia. “Once again, Columbia has irresponsibly allowed Ms. Sulkowicz to create a spectacle, the purpose of which is to vilify and humiliate Mr. Nungesser,” Mr. Miltenberg said. “Shame on Columbia for forcing the entire class of 2015 to bear silent witness to the victimization of Mr. Nungesser, on a day set aside to celebrate their academic achievements.” Ms. Sulkowicz, who graduated magna cum laude, and her

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had authorized the study.92 It concluded that 95 percent of American dioceses had at least one complaint of a sexual assault by a priest against a minor (the authors did not count incidents before 1950).93 During the five-plus decades, 4,392 priests had been accused of abusing 10,667 children, a figure that in some years was as high as 10 percent of all priests.94 At least 143 were serial molesters who carried out their attacks in multiple dioceses.95 Four out of five victims were minor boys.96