The epidemiological assessment of sexual assault

Document Type : Brief Report

Authors

1 Associate professor of forensic medicine, Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran

2 Psychiatrist, Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran

3 MD, Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran, Iran

4 Assistant professor of community medicine, School of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Science, Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: The present study was conducted to determine the epidemiological characteristics of rape victims and rapists.
Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 68 examined cases of sexual violence in Shiraz Legal Medicine Organization during 2013-2014. Victims were referred from the judicial authority or deputy. The file information of referred cases was extracted without a name and a unique code for each file.
Results: All cases in this study were female victims. The mean age of the victims was 21.39 ± 6.11 years. The majority of cases were single (94%). Of all cases in the study, 63.2% and 30.9% had middle and low socioeconomic status, respectively. Someone's home was the most frequent place of rape (54.4%). In 58.8% of cases, victims and assailants knew each other. There was a single perpetrator (59.7%) most of the time, but in 19.4% and 11.8%, respectively, there were two and three perpetrators concurrent. In 76.5% of cases, victims mentioned that they were under verbal threats, 8.8% were under gun threats, and 28% were under knife threats. Completed rape happened in most of the victims (98.5%).
Conclusion: The results of this study emphasized the priority of sexual assaults prevention and increasing public awareness of these violations as a legitimate public health issue.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Fundamentals of Mental Health
Volume 24, Issue 1
January and February 2022
Pages 61-65

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