A quarter. It’s not much. 25 cents, one fourth, 25%, however you want to put it. But it only takes four quarters to make a dollar, a whole, while it takes ten dimes to make a dollar. One quarter actually isn’t so small. The point I’m trying to make is that one quarter is a huge fraction, 25% is a huge percentage. One out of four college aged women will be sexually assaulted. That means if you have three friends and include yourself, statistics say that one of you has been sexually assaulted. That scares me. I cannot imagine how many girls I have met, and to think that 25% of them have been sexually assaulted scares me. It scares me because that is a huge number, yet sexual assault isn’t talked about much, and that makes me angry. It makes me angry that a quarter of the girls at Rhodes, at any college, have to live with the consequences of someone else’s actions. It makes me angry that only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail. It makes me so incredibly furious that these assaulters get away with what they’ve done, while the assaulted deal with the every day struggle of trying to cope with what happened. Victims of sexual assault are 3 times more likely to develop depression, 6 times more likely to develop PTSD, 13 times more likely to abuse alcohol, 26 times more likely to abuse drugs, and 6 times more likely to contemplate suicide than those who have not been sexually assaulted. Again, imagine you and your three friends. Chances are that one has been sexually assaulted and it is more likely that they are depressed, have PTSD, are abusing alcohol and drugs, and is thinking of killing themselves. Now that breaks my heart. It also makes me want a change. Sexual assault shouldn’t be something you learn about once during orientation, then forget about. Sexual assault is something a victim never forgets about, never stops thinking about, so we as a college community should never stop talking about it. Sexual assaults happen everyday, and that disgusts me. But maybe ongoing conversations about it could prevent some sexual assaults. One prevented sexual assault could change, or not change, someone’s life forever. And that, my readers, makes me joyful and hopeful.
I’m Natalie Richmond, and if you haven’t guessed, I will be writing on sexual assault. Please feel free to email me at ricnc-18@rhodes.edu if you ever have any comments for me. I would love to speak with anyone interested in sexual assault problems, anyone dealing with sexual assault, or any corrections that I should make. I am also interested in sharing sexual assault survivor stories, so the campus can know that sexual assault isn’t a foreign concept that would never happen to them. You will be anonymous, unless you choose otherwise. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful week.
Sources
http://www.rccmsc.org/resources/get-the-facts.aspx
http://www.sarsonline.org/resources-stats/reports-laws-statics
https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims