Sexual Victimization

Deviant sexual behavior often results in violent forms of sexual victimization such as rape and child sexual abuse (often as incest) that are increasingly brought into public focus by the media.

Rape and Incest are not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV).

Rape

There can be no two opinions about the criminal nature of rape. It is a heinous sexual abuse that can never be justified and should never go unpunished. Though the legal definition of rape varies in different countries,  

Rape is broadly understood as sexual intercourse that occurs when one person is forced or compelled into the sexual act.

Types of Rape include:

Stranger rape — rape by an unknown attacker.

Statutory rape—when anadult has sexual intercourse with an under-age person with or without consent.

Acquaintance/Date rape—when a known person forces the victim into having intercourse. Rohypnol (flunitrazepam), gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and ketamine hydrochloride (Special K) are known to be mixed with alcohol to induce a “dramatic high” in an unsuspecting person, especially at a party or a date, to facilitate rape. The result has proved fatal in many cases all over the world.

Wartime rape: Throughout history the obnoxious crime of wartime rape has been seen as a strategy of war. Records of mass rape of women abound in recent times—be it the ethnic cleansing in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia that saw atrocities perpetrated on women in the 1990s, the thousands of women and young girls raped in the 1994 war in Rwanda or the horrors that still continue for women in the Darfur issue in Africa.

Incest

Incest is sexual contact between two people who are closely related (other than husband and wife)—between siblings, between children and their parents, grandparents, uncles or aunts. There may be slight differences in how different cultures interpret “close relatives” but incest is most certainly one the world’s most prohibited sexual behaviors. Child sexual abuse is often a fallout of incest and it leaves the child traumatized and often, emotionally disabled during the adult years.