“The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Statistics on Preventative Action
81% of women who ran away prevented sexual assault
68% of women who used physical resistance prevented sexual assault
63% of women who yelled prevented sexual assault.
75% of the above cases are stopped during the “feeling out” stage if there are firm boundaries set through body language, tone of voice, and a certain use of language.
80-85% of men who attack women are known to the target—in cases of attempted rape, more than 85%.
(Stats are from the National Institute of Justice in the USA)
According to a national survey on crime victims in the US, 75% of assaults and over 70% of crimes are perpetrated by people in the same societal sector as the target.
Every 68 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted.
Every 9 minutes, that victim is a child.
Only 25 out of every 1,000 perpetrators will end up in prison.
Each year 80,600 Inmates are sexually assaulted or raped.
In a year 60,000 children were victims of substantiated or indicated sexual assault.
433,648 Americans 12 year old or older were sexually assaulted or raped.
In the military 18,900 people experienced unwanted sexual contact.
Women who resist an attack using verbal and physical skills significantly reduce the risk of a successful rape, and do not significantly increase the risk of injury. Certain actions reduce the risk of successful rape by more than 80%, as compared to cases in which there was no resistance. The most effective actions are fighting back, running away from the location of the incident, or verbally warning the attacker. In attacks against women, most of the self-defense tactics reduce the chance of injury, as compared to non-resistance. The only self-defense tactics that appear to increase the risk of injury are those that are vague, confusing, and not powerful, such as—cooperation, screaming in fear or anger, evasiveness, or “buying time”.
(Information was from the El Halev: Building Safer Communities workbook and were originally from studies done by National Institute of Justice in the USA, 2005)
“The centrality of physical movement and tools in feminist self-defense courses is based on an understanding that when living in a violent society, everyone—regardless of their relationship to power—incorporates to varying degrees the presence and potential of violence into their sense of self, their feelings, and their bodies. For women and girls, embodied vulnerability may be a result of gender expectations that limit their physical activity and heighten attention to their appearance.” ~Empowering Self-Defense Training, Martha E. Thompson
“Over 40 years ago, Pascalé, Moon, and Tanner (1970) stressed the importance of women and girls learning self-defense for their own safety and for developing their full potential. Indeed, self-defense training was considered in the 1970s to be integral to stopping rape and ending men’s societal power over women (Matthews, 1994; Searles & Berger, 1987). However, as government and social service agencies responded in the 1980s to feminist demands for rape victim services, social service professionals replaced feminist activists on the frontlines of anti-rape work (Martin,2005; Matthews, 1994), shifting the work from “stopping rape to managing rape,” and thus, gradually marginalizing self-defense training in the movement (Matthews, 1994; Searles & Berger, 1987.” ~Violence Against Women 2014, Vol. 20(3)