Sexual Violence
Sexual violence includes abusive sexual contact, making a woman engage in a sexual act without her consent, and attempted or completed sex acts with a woman who is ill, disabled, under pressure or under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.
Rates of sexual violence are difficult to establish because in many societies sexual violence remains an issue of deep shame for women and often their families. Statistics on rape from police records, for example, are notoriously unreliable because of significant underreporting.
Young girls forced into marriage and into sexual relations may suffer health risks, including exposure to HIV/AIDS, and limited school attendance. One effect of sexual abuse is traumatic gynecologic fistula: an injury resulting from severe tearing of the vaginal tissues, rendering the woman incontinent and socially undesirable.
Rates of sexual violence are difficult to establish because in many societies sexual violence remains an issue of deep shame for women and often their families. Statistics on rape from police records, for example, are notoriously unreliable because of significant underreporting.
- According to the World Health Organization, the proportion of women suffering sexual violence by non-partners after the age of 15 varies from less than 1 per cent in Ethiopia and Bangladesh to between 10 and 12 per cent in Peru, Samoa and the United Republic of Tanzania.
- In Switzerland, 22.3 per cent of women experience sexual violence by non-partners in their lifetime.
- In Canada a study of adolescents aged 15 to 19 found that 54 per cent of girls had experienced “sexual coercion” in a dating relationship.
Young girls forced into marriage and into sexual relations may suffer health risks, including exposure to HIV/AIDS, and limited school attendance. One effect of sexual abuse is traumatic gynecologic fistula: an injury resulting from severe tearing of the vaginal tissues, rendering the woman incontinent and socially undesirable.