Global Context
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
A poll, carried out by YouthSight [in the UK on January 2015], the specialist research group, showed that as many as half of female students and a third of their male counterparts knew of a friend or relative who had experienced intrusive sexual behavior ranging from groping to rape.
It found that 31% of female students... said [that] they had been the victim of “inappropriate touching or groping” and around one in 20 had experienced more intimate but unwelcome advances or been pressurized into sexual activity. Overall 34% indicated they had experienced some form of assault or abuse. 1 On January 2011, four Russians gang-raped an 18 year-old student at a south-East London college. Norayr Davtyan, Gregory Melnikov, Armen Simonyan, and Oleg Ivanov filmed the assault during a dorm party and celebrated the crime by showing the video to their friends.
Throughout the ordeal, the 4 men viewed the victim as an object and disregarded her plead for them to stop. In the video she was heard saying "no" numerous times. "Whatever the case of her condition, it is clear, as I think it must have been to the defendants, that she was in no position to decide whether to consent or not to consent or to resist what was going on," Judge Peter Murphy, accountable for the trial said. Davtyan, 22, was sentenced to 10 years for two counts of rape, while Melnikov, 23, was jailed for nine years for one count of rape and one of attempted rape. Simonyan, 19, and Ivanov, 23, each received eight years for one count of rape. 2 SpainIn a study conducted to analyze the strategy of college men who give alcohol to women to facilitate their acceptance when pursuing sexual relationships, it was revealed that alcohol was in fact used for obtaining non-consensual sexual relations with Spanish university students.
During this study, the role of rape myths in the social perception of the process was also examined. The sample included 349 heterosexual students (154 men and 195 women) from the University of Granada. 28% of males reported having given alcohol to females in order to have sexual contact with them, while 44% of females acknowledged having suffered this practice. Men, compared to women, were more favorable to this practice; yet, this effect was moderated by their rape myths endorsements. It was also found that males and, in general, those participants who endorsed rape myths, tended to consider that girls who accept alcohol in their interactions with boys are promiscuous. 4 |
New Zealand"In a survey [from 1991] of New Zealand undergraduate university students, 51.6% of 347 women revealed that they had experienced some form of sexual victimization using the Sexual Experiences Survey of M. P. Koss and C. J. Oros, and 25.3% had either been raped or experienced attempted rape. This prevalence data is almost identical to those found using the same instrument with a national sample of US university student women studied by Koss et al. The men in the New Zealand sample, however, reported perpetrating considerably less sexual aggression than their American counterparts. Most of the sexual victimization reported by women occurred within heterosexual relationships." 3
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1 Goodhill, Olivia, and John Bingham. "One in Three UK Female Students Sexually Assaulted or Abused on Campus." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 14 Jan. 2015. Web. 15 Mar 2015. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11343380/Sexually-assault-1-in-3-UK-female-students-victim-on-campus.html>.
2 "Jail for Men Who Raped Student and Filmed Attack - BBC News." BBC News. 23 Aug. 2011. Web. 15 Mar 2015. <http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-14635938>.
3 Gavey, Nicola. "Sexual Victimization Prevalence among New Zealand University Students." APA PsycNET. American Psychological Association, 2012. Web. 15 Mar 2015. <http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1991-27640-001>.
4 Romero-Sánchez, M., and J.L. Megías. "Alcohol Use as a Strategy for Obtaining Nonconsensual Sexual Relations: Incidence in Spanish University Students and Relation to Rape Myths Acceptance." National Center for Biotechnology Information. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, Nov. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20977034>.
2 "Jail for Men Who Raped Student and Filmed Attack - BBC News." BBC News. 23 Aug. 2011. Web. 15 Mar 2015. <http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-14635938>.
3 Gavey, Nicola. "Sexual Victimization Prevalence among New Zealand University Students." APA PsycNET. American Psychological Association, 2012. Web. 15 Mar 2015. <http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1991-27640-001>.
4 Romero-Sánchez, M., and J.L. Megías. "Alcohol Use as a Strategy for Obtaining Nonconsensual Sexual Relations: Incidence in Spanish University Students and Relation to Rape Myths Acceptance." National Center for Biotechnology Information. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, Nov. 2010. Web. 15 Mar. 2015. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20977034>.