Rape Crisis In America

From the study, “The history of the rape crisis movement in the United States is also a history of the struggle of African American women against racism and sexism. During slavery, black women were often at the mercy of white men since the rape of slaves was both common and legal, and many masters raped slaves to produce more slaves” (Heldman 2). This proves that there was prevalence of sexual violence among women from long period. The recent data shows that young before the age of eighteen are the majorities of rape victims. Although, women are unprotected in any situation, a college campus has been on the top list to increase the rates of sexual assault, and it has been considered as “an epidemic health problem on college campuses. Research …show more content…
One reason to consider this issue a problem is because it affects women for a long time, even a lifetime. The other reason is it does not just affect victim, but affects both communities and families around them. This issue is also considered as a public health problem because with the immediate trauma, victims face the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. They can also face long term effects such as depression and anxiety. This all means destroying health of an individuals is same as destroying health of an entire population. Victims adopt substance abuse to harmed their own health to relieve pain in their brain and substance abuse is very harmful. Victims also try to commit suicide or killed themselves because of lack of confident to fight against their assailant. And, also, like other effects, students also bear enormous economic costs which affects their college careers and often their lifetime earning capacity. The survivor students may end up their classes dropping out because of higher sexual assaults brought bad images of the college campus among students and this negatively affect their financial aid or tuition reimbursement. Also, one article by Buchanan, et al. stated that Sexual Harassment and Racial Harassment in college are stressful, and stress has been found to worsen the appraisal of additional stressors, which exacerbates the negative effects on well-being (269). This illustrates that sexual assaults should be considered as a serious problem because it creates many negative effects on individual life, heath, and economy. However, the problem is big but this can be solved through different ways. One important way to solve this problem is conducting awareness program inside the college with training regarding sexual assault. So, this solution seems to be effective and beneficial to reduce the risk of sexual assaults on college