Frequency of sexual assault

[janetmendoza]

Are there any women at all who have never been sexually assaulted? Even in the uk at this point in history I think it is absolutely rife. I have only just started thinking about this and I would have said previously that I had never been assaulted, but thinking about it now I definitely have.
I think I have got off lightly but I can still list
Aged about 8 a man on a beach said he would teach me to swim and put his hand inside my bather as he was pretending to hold me in the water. My dad stormed over and hit him. I had no idea what was going on.
Aged about 14 a man with learning disabilities put his hand up my dress. My Mum told him off.
Aged about 20 a man managed to undo my bra on a bus in Italy and tried a bit of a grope. I got off the bus
Aged about 22 a man knocked me to the ground in a dark street and I think he intended to rape me. Luckily passers by arrived and he fled. I didn't report it.
So that's just me with my very sheltered life. I am interested to see if there is anyone at all who can say it has never happened to them. Is it something that can ever be eliminated?

I once had a conversation with a male work colleague. I insisted there were few to no grown women who had never been fondled, harassed or sexually assaulted. He refused to believe me. I told him to ask his wife. I knew what the answer would be and I think he was shocked.

I know a woman who says she hasn't been. I didn't push to find out if she meant 'well except for someone rubbing up against me on the tube/pinching my bum at a disco'.

I have never been harassed, assaulted or anything remotely inappropriate other than lame pick up lines. But even when approached by men no one has ever touched me or made me feel unsafe and uncomfortable.

Too many to count. Beginning at 5. I learned too soon than ANY man is capable of it, including your Nigel.

I have had " lovely, respectable, happily married men" feel me up under the table with their clueless wives right there beside them.

I have been groped on public transportation, and shoved into an empty room and had a tongue rammed down my throat at work,

A gynaecologist assaulted me under pretext of "examination".

I don't spend the night at other people's homes anymore because of experiences I have had with friends' husbands.

I know my father and brothers have been equally disgusting with women.

Too many men I have trusted despite all my negative experiences have let me down. My former partner forced himself on me.

And I consider myself very lucky because I have never been battered or experienced a violent rape.

Lots of times, mainly gropes but one more serious event.
I don't know of any women who haven't been groped/assaulted.

4 very serious incidents, 2 not very nice and countless gropes in nightclubs in my university town. As in tens, maybe 100.

And I still count myself lucky, because none involved a weapon.

Never reported to the police. I'd have been considered the wrong type of victim. But I don't think my experiences were especially unusual. I wish there was a record of it all somewhere that women could point to, to say look, this is what we deal with. We're not even even asking for justice at this point. Just scrabbling around trying to piece together our tattered rights.

Nothing beyond catcalling. It's not something my friends have talked about experiencing either. Of course, it may well be their choice not to talk about it, though I feel one might have said something. Which is all not to say I have any doubts about how prevalent it is. I think I've just been very lucky.

Yes I can join you here.

Sexually assaulted as a 4 yr old by son of neighbour;
Man tried to grope/snog me at a party when his wife was downstairs (apparently he had form for this sort of thing but clearly had never been taken to task for it);
Man groped my tits - ditto above known to have form but no-one did anything about it;
2 men could have ended up raping me but I managed to diffuse the situations.

Makes me too ill to think about but the worst was at a festival, when someone grabbed my hand and was surrounded b y a group of men whose language I didn't understand, who argued amongst themselves. I was with a friend and it happened so quickly that I was pulled along for what seems like ages. I was so frightened and was trying to get away and call for my friend. One of them brought up my left hand to show the others and they instantly let me go and carried on walking. I think they decided they didn't want a married woman.

I am lucky. Never been raped or seriously sexually assaulted.

But had two boys try to pull my trousers and pants down, aged 10. Fought like a mad thing, managed to kick them off me and make a run for it. Had a shop keeper corner me in the back of a shop and stick his tongue in my mouth, aged 15. Groped on the arse on an escalator on the underground aged 15 (rather proud of that one - turned round and kicked him bloody hard on the shins - the look of utter surprise on his face!) As student, ended up drunk and crashed at male acquaintance's place - he swore blind he'd sleep on the floor, then climbed into bed with me and grabbed my hand and put it on his cock. I think I only got out of that one by bursting into tears. (Late 80s when men still cared about that sort of thing - with the rise of violent porn, these days I fear that would be taken as an invitation to rape me.)

And although I file it under "chancing their arm" rather than "minor sexual assault", I have lost count of the number of friend's partners and husbands who've made passes at me. And I'm not Helen of Troy, by any stretch of the imagination - they're just oversexed, immoral bastards.

I've also lost count of the number of female friends (and a couple of male friends) who, once they'd got to know me well enough to know I was safe to talk to rather than a victim blaming gobshite, have disclosed past rapes to me.

Thank god for the menopausal cloak of invisibility. It doesn't remove the risk entirely, of course, but it sure as hell reduces it.

I've been raped twice, neither was violent though one of the men had a small knife. Forced to give a bj. Countless sexual assaults. I love the peace of being older.

Yes it is really common.

I'm always surprised when I read posts from women on here who have had nothing. And happy for them obviously! It's not the experience of me or the women I know well enough to talk about it with/ or the girls I grew up with.

I do wonder if some of it is down to where you grow up, there seen to be differences in different parts of the country and maybe smaller towns Vs cities etc. I'm in London and there's so many people and so many places to go it's all very anon and not local at all iyswim. There's also the luck element and then even stuff like how you got to/ from school, where you went out at night etc.

The other thing I think is that it's nice to think things aren't that bad/ or not see certain things as 'counting'.

So for sexual assault, people (women) often think of pretty extreme stuff. And not the flasher on the way home from school, the scary experience with the man trying to get you into his car, the man who followed you on the train etc.

And yes some of the these are illegal and some not, and what constitutes assault is a different thing. IE its hands on, and anything not hands on is not seen as so bad. But I think the laws are all based in the things men are likely to experience or straight up violence. They don't address eg the man driving slowly next to you in his car when you're walking somewhere and saying really scary things. That sort of stuff.

The point about men not believing is very true as well. And the thing is, they don't actually want to. Because then they might have to do something, individually or as a group. It suits them that women and girls tend not to tell about this stuff to blokes. We tell each other, if we tell anyone at all.

When metoo happened in general you he response from a lot of chaps seemed to go quickly from

Omg that's terrible why didn't women say anything (erm we've been banging on about it forever)
To
That's an awful lot. Can't be right. There's must be some exaggeration/ lies/ overreactions in there
To
I can't even look at a woman any more!!!

Fact is and the reason we don't tell is probably that deep down we know they don't want to know. It'll upset them. They don't know what to do. If it's a bloke they know then tricky. And etc etc etc.

So yes a host of problems.

I think the root is that many see it as natural for some men to behave this way and it's up to women and girls to somehow avoid it. And if it happens well, was it really so bad? It's not like you got punched in the face. And what were you doing there anyway?

Too many times to count getting flashed at or folloewed or touched, starting well under the age of 10. One serious assault at about 12, one date rape, one violent assault causing injuries. Other than the last one, I don’t think that’s an unusual list.

Bicycling to school when I was eight, I was called over by a man in a car stopped by the road. He showed me his erection and asked me if I thought he was fit to drive in that state: having two much older brothers and being fairly bomb-proof I looked him in the eye and said I wasn't an expert but I suggested he ought to ask a psychiatrist about his condition, then cycled off sharpish down an alley too narrow for a car.

At nine I was raped in a field by a man of perhaps seventeen.

I've lost count of the number of suggestive remarks made to me when I was in the street, and of men indulging in frottage on the Tube during rush-hours though I found that shouting about it usually got other men in the carriage angry with them and of being crudely propositioned at parties, and of being backed against walls and leered at at work ... all the usual stuff which mostly a woman ignores unless she is feeling particularly pissed off for some reason, and does some shouting.

I have been threatened with rape when I was in someone's car and got out of it (I stuck his knife in his shoulder and ran like hell) and when I was walking home at about eight one evening and was dragged into a garden (I was carrying a rolled-up newspaper so I hit him as hard as I could in the throat with it at a full lunge, because I was a fencer, and then stamped on his ribcage as hard as I could as I left because he fell over between me and the street at that point and I had to get past him) and when I was on my way to visit a friend just before chucking-out time (I caught his wrist with the cigarette he was brandishing at me and aimed the lit end at his eye, then ran away as he started to scream). Yes, I am reasonably large and was fit and able, but I just have aggressive reactions for some reason: maybe there was something inside saying, "No. Never again" and taking revenge for the frightened nine-year-old me. I don't regret any of these occasions; I hope maybe those thugs may have learned from them not to do it again.

There was someone on a twaw rant the other day saying she'd never been abused or afraid of men and that fear of men was irrational. She got cross when I put airquotes around her she pronoun. It was a b**y thing to do but I just don't buy a real woman would have those opinions.
Off the top of my head:
Age 17 another teen wrecked my friend's flat when I wouldn't have sex with him in a communal room. I'd never met him before and he'd spent half an hour before rubbing up behind me in a bed and putting precum all over my skirt ( I was trying to sleep and it was a house party so bed sharing was offered as a norm).
In Turkey our cave guide took me into a dangerous area for my husband to play a game and find me. I didn't scream because it started out as what could be accidental touching. By the time he was kissing my neck I was worried as DH (boyfriend) at the time was following to try find me and I was worried about him falling down a hole or something. My husband (bf) tipped him before I was able to let him know. I was deliberately picked as wearing hot pants and no wedding ring.
Later in India I wore a fake wedding ring and full head to toe covering. Still got chased around a mosque and ass pinched in crowd. I slapped the man who did the latter and DH and I had to leave sharpish.
All these things I would never have thought of as abuse before me too. Just one of those things about being a woman.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime
That's awful, but I am so glad you have not held back when defending yourself. Hopefully the offender thought twice about it the next time.

Buffster, I am still liable to start to shake when I recall what happened and what I did -- because it could so easily have gone wrong, and I could so easily have ended up being badly hurt or even killed. It's just that I didn't even consciously think, on any of the occasions; in fact I only really worked out what had actually happened when it was over and I was some distance and time away, feeling sick and shaking and with tears running down my face.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime that sounds awful, sorry you went through that and it's still affecting you. It's very admirable that you are willing to share it, as silence around abuse enables abusers.

Sexually abused at 7. First time I got shouted at by adult men in the street I was 12. Lots of being groped in secondary school. Friends brother behaved inappropriately to me. First boyfriend would never stop when I asked (it was a very short relationship!). Sisters boyfriend got too close once.

"Minor" incidents of creepiness over the years, personal space being deliberately invaded - sitting too close on public transport, brushing against me in pubs - being shouted at in public, including when I was very heavily pregnant which was scary.

Work incidents, some of which I don't think were sexually motivated, but were more about putting me in my place perhaps?

I raised the issue once when at school with a group of maybe 8 girls - we would have been 13/14 at the time. We had all had experience of unwanted touching/groping/flashing. All of us. And this, of course, is when we were children.

I think it's pretty rare to have avoided it, really.

When 'me too' happened and women were openly sharing their experiences, I was totally baffled that men were shocked. I had honestly thought sexual abuse/assault/harassment was just par for the course - I can't imagine anyone not experiencing it, nor being aware of its prevalance.

I think men who didn't do it themselves were not aware of how many others did; I'm fairly sure too that a lot of them put much of the boy-bragging that certainly went on into the "yeah-right" category and didn't really believe what the braggsters said. I remember a boyfriend when I was about fifteen saying as much; he was shocked by the amount of sex everyone else in his year at school claimed they were getting, and was sure most of it was simply lies.

But the culture among girls was often not to believe it either, or say that the girl who'd talked about an assault was "just boasting, what makes her think anyone would be interested in her?" Fairly horrible.

All minor but yes.
Men don't get it.

But then even I was surprised by the metoo as I never had issues in work, I worked in male dominated industry as well. (Tbh I still can't get over how awful BBC sounded in the 80s, I think I always thought middle class institutions would be less dodgy, how naive indeed.)

Maybe, Asking. I suppose if no women had spoken up before they may not have been aware. Just seems such a pervasive part of our culture, like the air we move about in. Can't imagine it not being visible .

The official stats for rape and sexual assault are roughly 1 in 5 women.

'In the UK, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse and 1 in 5 sexual assault during her lifetime.'

homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/03/07/violence-against-women-and-girls-and-male-position-factsheets/

England and Wales figures

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/an-overview-of-sexual-offending-in-england-and-wales

(I don't know what percentage may be unreported, nor the criteria for sexual assault.)

Ah, okay, here is a bit on that, from second link:

'Around one in twenty females (aged 16 to 59) reported being a victim of a most serious sexual offence since the age of 16. Extending this to include other sexual offences such as sexual threats, unwanted touching or indecent exposure, this increased to one in five females reporting being a victim since the age of 16.'