Sexual Assault Awareness Month; complex trauma and sexual victimisation; EU survey findings

The US annual Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) takes place in April.  The 2014 campaign focuses on healthy sexuality and young people.

SAAM campaign resources and materials on healthy adolescent sexual development, and engaging youth in sexual violence prevention, are available on the campaign website. These include guides for adults, teens and youth activists. Campaign materials include planning resources and visuals, a social media toolkit, tips for partnering with youth-serving organisations and tips for medical professionals, parents and caregivers.

Other new resources on sexual violence include a paper addressing the complex trauma of sexual victimisation from the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA). Acknowledging complexity in the impacts of sexual victimisation trauma authored by Liz Wall and Antonia Quadara seeks to "provide an overview of complex trauma as a concept for classifying a varying range of symptomatology that is also a pervasive driver of need for many users of human services." The full text of this article is available from the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse Library.

Finally, a report released on International Women's Day, by the European Union (EU) Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), illustrates the extensive nature of violence against women across 28 EU nations. The Violence against women: an EU-wide survey asked 42,000 women about their experiences of physical, sexual and psychological violence, including incidents of intimate partner violence. The survey found:

• 8% of women had experienced physical and/or sexual violence in the last 12 months before the survey was conducted;
• One in three women had experienced some form of physical and/or sexual assault since the age of 15;
• One in 10 women had experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 15;
• Of women sexually assaulted by a non-partner, one in 10 indicated more than one perpetrator was involved in the most serious incident.

The study surveyed a minimum of 1,500 women between 18 and 74 years across the 28 EU countries who spoke at least one of the official languages. The FRA group's director Morten Kjaerum said "What emerges is a picture of extensive abuse that affects many women's lives, but is systematically under-reported to the authorities ... violence against women, and specifically gender-based violence that disproportionately affects women, is an extensive human rights abuse that the EU cannot afford to overlook."

Based on the findings, the FRA suggests a number of ways forward to effectively recognise and respond to violence against women. Fact sheets by country, the study summary report and main study publication are available on the FRA website.

Media:

American Samoa: AFSF Launches Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Pacific Scoop, 09.04.2014

Survey suggests 9 million women in EU rape victims, NZ Herald, 06.03.2014

One-third of EU woman abused: report, Newstalk ZB, 05.03.2014

Nine million EU women victims of rape - survey, TVNZ, 05.03.2014

Image: Always Kiss Me Goodnight by Courtney Carmody Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)