CAUTION: This article contains graphic language. The author, an attorney and child advocate, speaks frankly as the law states it. It is not the intent of the author or Glory and Strength to be offensive, but to reach out and help those who have suffered.
By Laurie A. Gray, JD © 2012
A
simple question: Have you ever been raped? Yes or no? We are conditioned to
sort and label our experiences in black and white, true or false, but what
seems like a straightforward question can be confounding to someone who has
been sexually assaulted. Who gets to decide whether or not it’s really rape?
The two people involved in the action? Local law enforcement? A jury? Each
state has its own criminal code definition, but for society at large rape is becoming a catch-all term for
sexual assault.
Sexual
assault runs a gamut of seeming opposites, often driven by unclear facts and
innuendo. On the one side is legal, moral, consensual, pleasurable sexual
contact; on the other is criminal, immoral, nonconsensual, devastating sexual
contact. Our social expectation of right and wrong, our personal judgments
regarding good and bad, and our individual experience of pleasure and pain are
all loaded into our perceptions regarding sexual contact. The more able a
person is to give consent, the greater our expectation for physical violence to
show lack of consent. When a person is unable to give consent, we are more apt
to recognize the violation regardless of physical injury, as we do in statutory
rape cases.
