Marital Rape: An Underreported Crime with Long-term Effects

Marriage is a union between two individuals that love, trust and respect one another. It is sharing your dreams and planning for a future. Unfortunately, marriage is not always what is portrayed in the movies. The 19th century brought awareness and change to laws pertaining to domestic violence. Today, domestic violence awareness continues to grow and laws pertaining to physical family violence are being amended. On the other hand, marital rape is a less noted topic that does not receive as much attention as domestic violence. There are several types of marital rape, all which are underreported. Martial rape remains an underreported crime that leaves the victim suffering from long-term emotional and psychological effects.
Rape can be described

It is not a rare or uncommon crime; it is just rarely discussed. Even with approximately 293,000 reported rape cases per year, 68% of all rapes are unreported (Rape, 2016). Rape is most likely to occur between intimate partners than by a stranger (Mahoney & Williams, 1998). Of all categories of rape, marital rape is the lease reported in the United States. Statistics from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) state 18% of victims said the sexual act was witnessed by their child/children. It is also reported by 5% of the women, that children were forced to participate in the sexual act. A study by Bergen (1996) shows 83% of marital rape victims are raped more than once. Another statistic shown in the NCADV report “found that women who had killed their husbands

Per Martin, Taft, and Resick (2006), most women do not leave their abusive relationship immediately after the offense (Para. 8). Most women choose to seek help after noticing a change in the frequency and severity of sexual abuse, at the point where they felt the husband was going to hurt someone else or she was going to hurt him. Many women fear reporting marital rape and seeking help for a countless number of reasons. Martin, Taft, and Resick (2006) list some of those reasons as “fear of retaliation, helplessness, embarrassment, self-blame, and the belief that marital rape is not a serious problem (para. 8). Counseling is recommended for all rape victims. Per Mahoney & Williams (1998) “raped wives need different types of support than the battered only wife (Bowker, 1983) or the raped woman” (p27). The victims of wife rape need to address the incident itself as well as seek counseling for body issues, sexuality and physical abuse. Two methods of treatment have been suggested for marital rape victims; stress inoculation therapy and cognitive processing therapy. “Stress inoculation therapy (SIT) facilitates physiological, cognitive, and behavioral coping for fear. There are two phases in SIT. Phase one focuses on education and the identification of fears, and phase two teaches patients adaptive strategies for dealing with anxiety” (Martin, Taft, and Resick, 2006). The second method of treatment,