Rape Support Group
If you or someone you know has been the victim of rape, this is the place to find support and get advice. If you want, discuss your experience, share your feelings, and meet others going through a similar situation.
Do you think if the terms the judicial system uses were changed that the taboos would go away? That more people will report. By changing the term sexual assault to personal assault would help more people not be afraid to tell. If someone gets hit in the face they are more likely to say it is an assault. We are all taught that sexual is private and a matter that we should not talk about or a matter that we keep behind closed doors. If we use personal assault with different degrees like: by use of a weapon, by touch, by force, by restraint, by coercion, by overpowering, by fear of death, or by insertion (listing medical terms) and leave the term sexual out will that help us recover as-well? Should we put sex back where it can ba special again. The terms we use now are so powerful that most of us can not speak or write them.
I think people need to understand how serious the offence is, there's already too many misconceptions out there among the general public. But that's just my opinion.
At any rate in my case it wouldn't have mattered, my attacker was my husband, repeatedly. I could have reported it, but I would have faced shame and scorn because we were married, I've seen several national and local cases of marital rape and none I've seen have equaled a conviction, or it was such a light sentence it was a joke...
But, but, but, but.....I see a danger here in removing the word sex from the terminology. Here's why: think of the Clinton era and what Bill's inability to admit oral sex was sex has done to an entire group of young people who are now confused as to whether oral copulation is indeed sex. For me, oral sex is a much more intimate form of sexuality. Young people who believed Bill, or who choose to use his excuse as their's will say to put one's mouth on the privates of another is not a sexual act, REDEFINING what we have all known as a sexual act for eons.
So, for me, there is a definite problem with reoving the term sex from a sexual assault, even though we know sex isn't the intent - control is...sex is the weapon.
For the victim, it is a wonderful and kind thought you have here....to aid a victim in describing their assault without the detriment of the term denoting sexual activity. ALSO, aiding the victim in years to come, in defining legitimately what transpired as an act of violence NOT sex. Hooray! Yes, this would be great for all victims. But, my fear is that our system has yet to recognize the victim, and still, to a major degree, panders to the criminal's "rights". I can see the removal of the term 'sex', and the intimate connotation being used to aid the offender rather than assist the victim.
In a perfect world....in an honest society, one that holds the value of human life as a moral imperative - your idea would be sublime.
Rape is ugly. Rapists are criminals. Control is their intent, but sex is their weapon, so I cannot agree that removing the word from the act would have the intended effect you describe, but I really applaud you and your thought process here! I don't know you, but I like the way you think!
Also, if I think of what had been done to me as a personal assault rather than a sexual assault, I may have been more likely to tell, maybe not my family (I wasn't supposed to be seeing my rapist/boyfriend anymore as my parents had forbidden me to b/c they didn't like him), but I probably would have told a friend or two and had support at the time instead of holding it inside myself for so many years.
I do see Phoenix07's point though. It may not seem like such a harmful or horrible crime to those who hadn't been through it themselves if it were labeled "personal assault" instead of "sexual assault".