Psychological Effects Of Rape

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Rape No, means no. It doesn’t mean whatever someone wants to hear. Rape, by definition, is sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim. “Rape is among the more horrific violations of human dignity imaginable,” (Napolitano). Thousands of perpetrators walk away from their crime without any punishment from the legal system all the time, leaving their victims behind with prolonged psychological and physical effects. Instead of interrogating rape victims, society should be helping them and counseling them to make sure they’re OK.
Rape culture is hardly recognized and people don’t seem to understand how huge of a crime it really is. The House Bill no. 4727 considers rape a lesser crime than drug related offenses. …show more content…

I developed patterns of trying to please… tolerating verbal and emotional abuse,” (Goldblatt). Rape has profound psychological effects on the victims such as these. The victim's confidence levels start to crumble and their self esteem withers, all because they went through a trauma. The victims often feel as though they can’t trust other people and that no one will understand. About 80% of victims enrolled in postsecondary institutions (colleges) and 67% of victims not enrolled don’t speak up or report the incident because they’re afraid of being labeled as “over exaggerating” or “asking for it” and because they don’t think their attacker will be brought to justice (Estimated). It took Janet Goldblatt 30 years before she finally felt like she was able to speak up about what happened to her. She also says in her article, “I hoped if I pretended it hadn't happened, the complexity of feelings would dissolve,” (Goldblatt). Rape victims mental health is declining and the government isn’t doing much to help. The crime of rape leaves almost all victim’s feeling humiliated and ashamed. It can be so uncomfortable for people to discuss, that in most cases, news organizations such as The New York Times will often not provide names when discussing a rape case. According to the article written in the New York Times itself titled “When Rape Victims Speak Out,” they do this because most of the victim’s feel that society blames them for the attacks. Once society starts to realize that rape is a violent crime caused by a violent criminal and not by the victim, then more people will start to speak up and get the justice they deserve

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