Minimizing the Risk and Impact of Sexual Assault

This paper argues that intervention programs for both the victims or survivors of sexual offence and the sexual offenders are needed to minimize the risk and impact of sexual violence. Various literary sources have been used in this study in order to explore the areas of interventions mainly regarding psychological therapies.

Running head: MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
Minimizing the Risk and Impact of Sexual Assault

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
Abstract
This paper argues that intervention programs for both the victims or survivors of sexual offence
and the sexual offenders are needed to minimize the risk and impact of sexual violence. Various
literary sources have been used in this study in order to explore the areas of interventions mainly
regarding psychological therapies. Finally, the study recommends that social, mental, monetary,
legal support and psychological treatment are needed to treat the victims. The study also
illuminates the fact that a strong legal system along with the identification of the behavioural
patterns of the sexual offenders can be helpful in minimizing the risk of sexual assaults.

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
Minimizing the Risk and Impact of Sexual Assault
Sexual assault is one of the most terrifying social evils that can be recognized as a global
issue affecting a huge amount of people across the world every day. The implication of the term
‘sexual assault’ can be so varied that it is difficult to define this with limited words. In simple
words, any kind of forceful sexual or physical contact or any sort of sexual act without the
consent of the persons involved can be termed as sexual assault. However, the degree of being
sexually assaulted can be varied but the effect of even an unwanted physical closeness can haunt
the victim for a long time or forever. So, irrespective of if its rape or physical abuse or unwanted
fondling, what matters is how the incident affects the victims. Apart from the physical impact of
any kind of sexual assault, mental impact can be haunting and dangerous that can be a lifelong
burden fir the sexual assault victims. So, the main focus of this study is to explore the possible
processes of intervention, including medical, psychological and social interventions that may be
helpful for the victims of sexual assault to live a normal and happy life without stress and
lingering trauma. The study also focuses on how psychological and legal intervention programs
for sexual offenders that can be useful for reducing the risk of sexual assaults in the coming days.
As mentioned above, the impact of sexual assault can be of varied degrees and that has
nothing to do with how slightly or severely the victim has faced assault. Severe sexual assault
such as rape, sexual abuse of children and sexual violence from partners, need to be treated
mostly through medical interventions that include both physical and mental treatment. However,
there are certain kinds of sexual assaults that cannot be cured through treatment of the body. It
has been noticed that, people become victims of stalking, sexual manipulation, incest and so on
that are other forms of sexual violence or assault. In this regard, this can be mentioned that

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
women happen to be more sexually violated than men and this trend has been continuing through
ages. According to a report by department of justice, 25% women face sexual assault in their
lifetimes while 6% men become victims of sexual assault (Habigzang et al. 2009). On the other
hand, one woman among five face various forms of sexual assault in their lifetimes (Amenu &
Hiko, 2014). Another report shows that 40% women have been raped before they cross their
teenage years (Breiding, et al. 2014). However, high amount of older women, men, boys,
transgender people, homosexual people and even children experience terrible sexual assaults and
many of the victims face sexual assault multiple times in their lifetimes.
As a result, it can be assumed that women face impacts of being sexual assault more than
what men do. For that reason, a majority of women fall prey to Post traumatic stress disorder,
depression, suicide tendencies, fear of building stable relationships, physical and mental
disorders, sexually transmitted infections and so on. So, it is important to identify the victims of
sexual assaults so that they can be helped with advance psychological therapies and other kinds
of intervention plans. However, curing the victims is not the only solution of reducing the impact
of sexual assault. This is so because until and unless the behaviours of the sexual offenders
cannot be controlled, people can be still under the risk of getting sexually assaulted. One sexual
offender can be expected to harm multiple people in their lifetime and thus it is important to
intervene to modify their behaviour patterns in order to prevent this social evil as much as
possible.
Cognitive behavioural therapies help in bringing specific behavioural changes in the
patients who mainly suffer from mental diseases like depression, PTSD, eating or sleeping
disorders, drug addiction and so on. There are various kinds of CBT treatments although the

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
main purpose of them is to lessen the overwhelming issues that the patients deal with. This
therapy and the adjoining treatments can be very helpful for treating the victims of sexual
assaults (Belleville, Dubé-Frenette & Rousseau, 2018). This is so because it has been noticed
that sexual assault victims face more risks of getting into various kinds of mental trauma that
takes form of different mental diseases over the course of time. The main reason behind this is
that victims of sexual assault are seen to be repressing their traumatic feelings with others and
even if they share their stories with others, they feel that none can relate to what they have been
going through.
As a result, they go through different levels of mental anxiety. According to Habigzang et
al. (2009), cognitive therapy has been proven to be helpful in reducing the symptoms of mental
anxiety seen in sexual assault victims. Moreover, as per the effect of CBT in patients of mental
diseases, it can be assumed that this therapy can be used for treating victims of sexual assault as
well. As mentioned by Dolan (2009), cognitive therapy can also be used to treat sexual offenders
through various processes like relapse prevention. Apart from that, pharmacological treatment
and neuro-cognitive brain anatomy can also be effective in minimizing tendencies of violent
behaviours and in preventing offence recidivism (Mpofu, Athanasou, Rafe & Belshaw, 2018).
Other behavioural therapies like dialectic behavioural therapy can be utilized for treating
the victims of sexual assault. Apart from the above mentioned aftermaths of being sexually
assaulted, the victims can also suffer from Post traumatic syndrome disorder as well. According
to Steil et al. (2018), dialectic behavioural therapy has been proven to be useful in reducing the
symptoms of personality disorders and PTSD found in sexual assault victims. The advantage of
using this technique is that DBT looks at individual problems closely and try to solve them

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
keeping the background of the victims in mind. This is important because different victims face
different forms of PTSD that need to be dealt with special care. On the other hand, behavioural
therapies like Pavlovian conditioning can be used to treat the abnormal sexual perversion of the
sexual offenders (Hoffmann, 2017). For that reason, masturbatory and aversive reconditioning of
the offenders can be controlled using psychological conditioning interventions.
The victims, who go through mental and physical trauma after getting sexually assaulted,
not only mental support but also monetary support from the governmental bodies or social work
institutions. Sexual victims can be legally instructed to pay money besides going through other
legal procedures for sexually offending people. Monetary support is highly needed for the sexual
assault victims so that they can overcome the period of severe mental and physical trauma with
the help of medical and social interventions (van Dijck, 2018). On the other hand, it can be
assumed that the pace of living or working gets affected because of the pain that the victims go
through. Thus, they need compensations or other monetary benefits in order to fend for
themselves and for their families. According to Geneva (2013), in many cases, victims suffer
from sexual abuse that comes from their partners. In that case, it is very difficult to handle the
whole situation independently without getting monetary assistance. So, it can be said that
monetary help is needed to maintain a normal physical and mental condition and to live a
productive life.
Apart from mental and monetary support, social care and support is equally important to
heal the unexplainable pain and suffering that the victims of sexual assault go through. One of
the common aftermaths of sexual assault is that victims isolate themselves from the society and
even from their family members and friends (Littleton, 2010). In many parts of the world, the

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
victims of sexual assault use to be accused or shamed by the society after they face sexual
violence. All these circumstances highly impact the living standards of the victims and push
them towards darker edges of hopelessness. According to Quinlan, Clarke & Miller (2016),
social support is one of the primary solution to relief the sexual assault survivors. Social and
personal care is important not only to maintain a healthy social life but also to increase the
broken self esteem after the sexual assault. According to Sigurvinsdottir & Ullman (2015), the
victims need to cope with their mental trauma and that can be adjusted with the help and support
from companions. Thus, it can be said that having social support is as essential as having legal
justice from the court for the victims of sexual assault.
Finally, one of the primary necessities in dealing with both the victims and the sexual
offenders is to take legal help. This implies that transformative and reparative legal justice is
very much needed to not only punish the culprits but also to give a strong sense of mental
satisfaction to the victims (Boutilier & Wells, 2018). According to Amarata (2018), giving
transformative justice has a higher rate of success in treating both the sexual offenders and the
victims. On the other hand, providing legal justice is an effective way of maintaining the social
order and to set an example for the people with maladaptive sexual urges. As stated above, it is
as important to reduce the risk of sexual offences as to minimize the impact of them. Thus, a
strong legal step as an intervention can lessen the emotional breakdown that the victims go
through.
So, in this study, various intervention plans have been explored that can be helpful for
treating both the victims and the sexual offenders. For that reason, the impact of sexual assault
has been identified and it has been found that victims go through a long term mental trauma and

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
other mental disorders apart from the physical injuries. On the other hand, they bear the stigma
of being assaulted throughout their lives. So, psychological interventions like cognitive
behavioural therapy, legal interventions like transformative justice and other kinds of support
like social and monetary support are highly necessary for the victims to survive. However, the
researchers and psychologists may come up with new approaches that can help the victims
better. The legal system and the psychologists need to treat the sexual offenders more seriously
so that their behaviour patterns can be decoded and can be treated accordingly. Moreover, this
can be said that maybe it is impossible to eradicate the social evil called sexual assault from the
world but at least the impact and risk of it can be minimized giving mental, emotional, social and
monetary relief to the victims.

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MINIMIZING THE RISK AND IMPACT OF SEXUAL ASSAULT
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