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Crimes

Rape costs survivors stress, trust, sleep and about $122,000

Anne Godlasky
USA TODAY
A woman holds a sign reading "End Rape Culture" during a march for International Women's Day on March 8, 2017 in Oakland, Calif.

In the year since the last Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the public may have become more "aware" of the issue than ever before, due in part to several watershed moments that have sparked national dialogue.

"In the past year it was a topic that came up in so many ways and forms, and there was a lot of public awareness and outrage, ranging from the Stanford rape case all the way to our own national election," said Laura Palumbo of the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. A survey released Monday by the center found that 84% of U.S. adults recognize acts such as sexual intercourse without a partner’s consent as sexual assault and 83% identify unwanted touching, groping or fondling as such. These percentages may seem low to some people, but Palumbo says that "given long-standing cultural perceptions of sexual assault this is actually a strong level of awareness."

Every time sexual violence is in the news, it can add to that awareness.

In just the past year

May 2016: Video showing the gang rape of a 16-year-old in Brazil is tweeted. Seven men were later charged, though on the tape male voices say roughly 30 people had sex with her.

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• June 2016: "Emily Doe" delivers an impact statement to her Stanford assailant Brock Turner. The unmatched eloquence and significance of her letter leads to it being shared around the world. Many survivors recognize themselves in her words and share their own stories as a result.

• July 2016: Roger Ailes, one of the most powerful men in media, resigns as CEO of Fox News after denying sexual harassment claims levied against him by Gretchen Carlson and later Megyn Kelly, who said he tried to grab and kiss her.

• August 2016: Birth of a Nation director Nate Parker reacts on Facebook after learning that the woman who accused him of rape had committed suicide. The event took place at Penn State when Parker was 19. He was acquitted, but a teammate who was also accused served six months.

• September 2016: A motion asking for a new sentencing hearing for Cory Batey is released and the sentencing of Brandon Vandenburg is delayed. Both former Vanderbilt football players had previously been found guilty in the rape of an unconscious woman in 2013, but advocates pointed to the many delays and the many times the victim had to testify as an example of one reason why more women don't report sexual assault.

(Two in three rapes go unreported, according to the Department of Justice.)

• October 2016: A 2005 video of Donald Trump saying he can grab women's genitals without consent comes out. The campaign repeatedly dismisses it as "locker room talk." A dozen women came out alleging sexual misconduct by Trump, who denied it. Before the second presidential debate, Trump went on Facebook Live with four accusers of President Bill Clinton. The pervasiveness of the coverage as well as the doubts cast on the accusers by both sides disturb many survivors whose angst spills over into November.

• November 2016: Like many others, Westworld star Evan Rachel Wood came out as a rape survivor in November. In a tweet about it, she says: "the pressure to just get over it already should be lifted ... the trauma of a few minutes can turn into a lifetime of fighting for yourself."

• December 2016: Lady Gaga says that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of being raped at age 19. CNN commentator Piers Morgan takes his skepticism to Twitter.

Nearly all women (94%) experience PTSD symptoms in the two weeks after a rape and 30% report PTSD symptoms 9 months later, according to RAINN.

• January 2017: A lawsuit alleges that Baylor football players committed 52 rapes in four years.

• February 2017: Casey Affleck wins the Oscar for best actor with relatively little attention to the sexual harassment lawsuits he settled. Bill Cosby scored a big win when a judge ruled that only one accuser — out of a total of 13 sought by prosecutors — would be allowed to be called to testify in the sexual assault trial.

• March 2017: An alleged gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in Chicago was livestreamed on Facebook Live. It's not the first Facebook Live rape.

Woven into this violent tapestry were hundreds of other cases that made the news. And thousands that didn't.

One in six women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape. That means if you look up from this text, whether you're at the office, a restaurant, in school, on public transit — or even at home — the odds of one of the women around you having a rape story are about as good as the odds of an adult with a tattoo regretting it  or the odds of a pack-a-day smoker dying from a disease caused by cigarettes.

But you wouldn't know it. Unlike tattoos and cigarettes, many survivors don't wear this on their skin or let it hang from their lips. Many suffer in silence — sometimes for months, sometimes for decades.

Why it's so hard to 'move on'

Triggers like the stories above are just one reason among many that sexual violence can be hard to shake.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm. If you’re trying to design a traumatic experience that would really stick with a person, it’s hard to think of a worse one than sexual violence,” said Seth J. Gillihan, who runs a clinical practice and researched PTSD with the University of Pennsylvania.

"It’s the most potent traumatic event in terms of leading to PTSD and long-term disruptions," Gillihan said. "It has all the ingredients – it’s interpersonal, rather than impersonal (like being in a car accident or fire or natural disaster), and the intimacy means it breaks trust in a major way, especially if it’s someone who was supposed to be taking care of the person."

The unpredictability of it, the young age of most victims, the lack of control and the difficulty in talking about it are other "ingredients" that can make the effects of sexual assault long-lasting, Gillihan said.

These are "issues that don’t come up as often as in other types of crime," said Scott Berkowitz, president of RAINN.

"It’s one of the most traumatic things that can happen to somebody, and most people will recover from that but the speed at which they do ... vary from person to person," Berkowitz said.

It goes beyond mental health

The lifetime economic burden of rape per victim is $122,461, according to a 2017 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that takes into account the cost of physical and mental health treatment, lost work productivity and other factors.

"It can definitely often have negative repercussions on all the important areas of your life: school, work and family," Berkowitz said. "I think that the reaction of most people is the expectation that you’re going to be back to normal soon thereafter, so I don’t think there’s as much appreciation as there should be about how difficult this is to deal with and the long-term effects this can have."

Nearly 40% of victims of sexual violence experience problems at work or school as well as difficulty in relationships with friends and family, according to RAINN.

Sexual assault can also affect a survivor's long-term physical health.

"We see this in challenges of substance abuse, eating disorders and other health issues — even chronic pain issues and irritable bowel syndrome have a correlation to people's experiences of trauma," Palumbo said.

What survivors should know

The most important thing for a survivor is "to know that what has happened to them is not their fault," Palumbo said, adding that survivors should get that message from local or national rape crisis centers or therapists as well as friends or family who "are non-judgmental and effective at listening." One benefit of sexual assault being so prominent in the news is it may be easier to spot an ally based on their reactions on social media.

Another point: "There's no such thing as normal when it comes to the time and process of a survivors' healing," Palumbo said.

Anxiety, anger, guilt, nightmares, distrust, hypervigilance and lack of interest in sex are all normal reactions. Feeling numb or practicing avoidance instead? That's common, too.

"The memories and triggers are painful, so it’s not uncommon to want to push those away and bury them," Gillihan said. "I don’t want to give the impression that a person has to go through some sort of lengthy therapy to put it to rest, but at the same time, when we bury these things, often they come back."

Luckily, these common symptoms diminish over time for many people and one of the best ways of dealing with them is to talk, according to Gillihan.

"There’s this idea that people who’ve been through trauma are fragile, but by definition they’re survivors," Gillihan said. "They’re people who’ve gone through what no one should have to go through and … these people learn they’re strong, and they learn that they’re whole, so I always like to emphasize the hope that’s available."

What confidants should know

All of the experts agreed that the reactions of the first people a sexual assault survivor trusts with this information have an enormous effect on how well and quickly they are able to process the trauma.

"We’ve found speaking to loved ones of survivors, they overwhelmingly have a desire to help and say the right thing and be supportive, but they don’t know how, so often what you’ll see is they go into information-gathering mode and start asking questions — what were you doing there? how much did you have to drink?  — that to the victim sound very much like they’re being blamed even if that’s not how the questions were intended," Berkowitz said.

The commonness of assault — both statistically and in the news, movies and on TV — can also lead to misunderstandings among people who have not been through it, Gillihan said.

"Callous and dismissive reactions are often experienced as kind of a second trauma," Gillihan said. "Being a warm, compassionate human being is 99% of what’s helpful."

The National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7: 800-656-HOPE (4673) or via online chat: online.rainn.org

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