The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) defines sexual assault as “sexual contact or behavior that occurs without explicit consent of the victim.” They identify several types of sexual assault:
Rape, i.e. forcible penetration of the victim’s body
Unwanted fondling or sexual touching
Forcing a victim to engage in sexual acts
Forced sexual acts include:
Being forced to give or receive oral sex
Being forced to penetrate the perpetrator’s body
Now let’s look at the latest statistics on the prevalence of sexual assault in the U.S. We’ll preface this with a figure from a study from 1998, which indicated that at that time, an estimated 17.7 million women had been victims of rape or attempted rape.
