Consider this: Sexual assault is one of the most costly crimes to society. As I had mentioned in a previous blog post, it is an issue that is not exactly among the top priorities of key policy and decision makers. Perhaps after this, you will realize just how far reaching the costs of sexual assault are to your society. Not only do the victims of sexual assault who choose to take action pay for it out of their own pockets, but public and private funds are also spent on various crisis and medical treatment services, as well as criminal justice responses. Needless to say, more often than not, workdays are lost because of mental trauma, injury or illness. Businesses forgo money because of this absenteeism, as well as sexual harassment suits. In addition to that, there are phenomenal costs for the incarceration, probation, or rehabilitation of the perpetrator. I realize that that data I’m about to present is mostly reflective of first-world/developed countries, but I think it can also speak for other societies, cultures, and tribes in similar terms of costliness.
In the United States for example, rape is the most costly of all crimes to the victim. The total cost of rape is approximated at $127 billion a year – and that’s not including the cost of child sexual abuse. Each sexual assault costs approximately $110,000. In fact, in 2002, the total cost of sexual assault to the victims was $18 million.
Because many rape victims are usually subjected to more than one instance of sexual assault, the cost per rape is approximately $87,000. The cost for sexual assault entails $500 for short-term medical care, $2,400 for mental health services, $2,200 in foregone productivity and $104,000 for pain and suffering (which includes rape trauma syndrome, emotional breakdowns, and lifelong physical manifestations of sexual trauma)
The costs don’t stop there…
The typical Fortune 500 company bore costs of up to $6.7 million a year ($282 per employee) for sexual harrassment in 1988. That said however, I’m sure the cost may have gone down since then due to the introduction and investment in more sophisticated sexual harassment policies, procedures and programs.
The data goes on, but I think we all get the picture here…
There is a big need for governments to start paying more attention to this issue and making investments into research, prevention programs and media campaigns. I’m not sure what the legislation permits or not, but there definitely needs to be a lot more of these on prime time television all over the world…
These ads are fantastic, but I feel that they are still throwing out too many statistics and not educating the public on strategies/precautions to avoid sexual assault. My guess is because the smartest strategies might be to limit one’s freedom a little bit (ie: “don’t do this, don’t do that, instead do this”). Perhaps an initiative like that is in order… Obviusly, it can’t really happen from a government standpoint, only from a public standpoint. Why hasn’t anybody come out with a sexual assault prevention ad like those awesome non smoking ads???
June 14, 2009 at 3:12 PM
Your first youtube video is interesting as it talks about the objectivity of women. However, the only people i see objections from are men. Don’t you think women are at fault too when they portray themselves as sexual beings? Beyonce, Rihanna etc. dress in next to nothing to appear sexy- then we are aloud to object when Buck Cherry and Nelly talk about it?
Thoughts?
June 15, 2009 at 6:58 AM
I wholeheartedly agree with what you’re saying. I would consider that the way women dress is also part of a cycle that they and the media are perpetuating. People dress the way they do because the media says it’s ok, and the media wouldn’t say it’s ok if they didn’t see that it was socially acceptable to do so in the first place. It boils down to a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Yes, these women need to realize that perhaps what they are doing to feel and look sexy is related to how other women are being objectified and assaulted. These are the women that are helping to perpetuate this social norm of women only feeling important or attractive if they are scantily clad or provocatively dressed (which I absolutely disagree with!). Naturally this is attractive to men, but in a very tempting and perverse sense. What’s worse is that some women tend to thrive off reactions like that and I hope that is something that will change if we are to begin to solve sexual assault at all.
These are the kinds of things that are influence society in terms of the acceptance of objectification and so on.
June 15, 2009 at 7:02 AM
PS: I definitely think we need to start thinking of ourselves and the rest of humanity as something with a fundamental dignity that should not be compromised, as opposed to reducing ourselves to something animalistic.