What's in a Label? The Impact of Media and Sexual Assault Characteristics on Survivor Rape Acknowledgment

The Media and Sexual Violence Among Adolescents: Findings from a Qualitative Study of Educators Across Vietnam

Growing access to technology and media has presented new avenues of influence on youth attitudes and norms regarding sexuality and sexual violence, as well as new technological pathways through which to perpetrate sexual violence. The aim of this research was to understand contextual influences on and needs for scale-up of sexual violence prevention programming in the media-violence context of Vietnam. We conducted 45 interviews with high school teachers (n = 15), university lecturers (n = 15), and affiliates from youth-focused community service organizations (n = 15) from across Vietnam. Additionally, we conducted four sector-specific focus groups with a sub-sample of interview participants (k = 4, n = 22). Media and technology were brought up consistently in relation to sexual violence prevention and sexual health information. Key informants noted that, in Vietnam, generational differences in acceptability of sex and lack of comprehensive sexuality education intersect with new technological opportunities for exposure to sexual information and media. This creates a complex landscape that can promote sexual violence through priming processes, instigate mimicry of violent media, and presents new opportunities for the perpetration of sexual violence though technology. Development of comprehensive sexual education, including violence prevention education, is imperative, with consideration of age-specific needs for Vietnamese youth.

The Role of Social Reactions to Disclosures in the Relationship Between Sexual Assault Acknowledgment and Psychological Symptoms

Following a sexual assault, women experience a host of negative psychological consequences. While some survivors label their sexual assault experience as such (i.e., are acknowledged survivors), other survivors do not. The effect of acknowledgment of sexual assault on postassault outcomes has yielded mixed findings. It was hypothesized that social reactions may account for the relationship between acknowledgment status and psychological symptoms. Results indicated that acknowledged survivors reported more severe posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, which were partially accounted for by turning against social reactions. Future studies should explore the mechanisms responsible for these relationships and analyze the individual social reactions.

Unacknowledged and missed cases of sexual victimization: A comparison of responses to broad versus behaviorally specific questions

From the beginning of systematic research on sexual victimization, it has been recognized that a substantial proportion of women report nonconsensual sexual experiences meeting the defining criteria of rape in response to behaviorally specific items, but do not acknowledge their experience as rape in response to broad questions about whether they have ever been raped. Recent studies suggest that rates of unacknowledged rape may be as high or even higher among men than among women. This study examined rates of unacknowledged female and male victims of rape and sexual assault by comparing responses to behaviorally specific items of the Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale (SAV-S) with responses to broad questions using the labels of sexual assault and rape (SARA) in 593 participants (303 women) in Germany. As predicted, more women and men were classified as rape victims based on behaviorally specific items than on the basis of the broad rape item. The rates of unacknowledged rape were about 60% for women and 75% for men. The gender difference was not significant. Against our prediction, no significant differences in acknowledgement of sexual assault were found in relation to coercive strategy and victim-perpetrator relationship. Few cases of rape and sexual assault identified by the SARA items were missed by the behaviorally specific questions. The implications for establishing prevalence rates of rape and sexual assault and for comparing victims and nonvictims in terms of vulnerability factors and outcomes of sexual victimization are discussed.

Community intervention programs for sex offenders: A systematic review

Sexual violence is a phenomenon that negatively impacts the victims' physical and psychological health and well-being. Sex offenders tend not to take responsibility for their actions, have difficulties in emotion regulation and impulse control, paraphilias or other disorders, so they are a difficult group to treat. In addition, the available psychological treatment programs tend to have inconsistent and, sometimes, undesirable results. This systematic review aimed to analyse the recidivism rates of sex offenders treated in community settings. According to the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic search in three databases, EBSCOhost, PubMed, and Web of Science, and a manual search was performed. A total of 319 empirical studies using quantitative methodologies were identified, 27 of which were selected for full-text analysis. In the end, 15 studies were included, published between 1996 and 2020. The objectives, intervention approach, instruments used, and the main results and conclusions were extracted from each study. The studies explored different types of sex offenders, such as: violent sex offenders (e.g., rapists), child abusers, and child abusers with pedophilia (and/or other paraphilias). Results showed that most of the programs had a cognitive-behavioral approach (n = 13). Overall, the interventions appear to be effective in reducing recidivism rates, and some of them led to improvements in other outcomes, such as cognitive distortions, accepting responsibility, victim awareness and empathy, emotional regulation, and offense supportive attitudes. Limitations and implications for future studies were discussed.