RESEARCH FINDINGS ABOUT WOMEN RESISTING ASSAULT
Only you can decide how best to respond to a particular assault situation. The following information from research studies, however, serves to remind us of just how powerful women’s determination to protect themselves can be.
Resistance is effective, more often than not: it can decrease the chance of completed sexual assault by 70 to 80%. (1)
A study of resistance strategies (2) found that:
- 81% of women who ran avoided sexual assault
- 68% of women who used physical force avoided
sexual assault - 63% of women who yelled or screamed avoided
sexual assault.
Physical resistance is more often associated with avoidance than with physical harm. (2)
The more strategies a woman uses, the more likely she is to be effective. (3)
The more suspicious a woman is and the more quickly she responds to a situation, the more likely she is to be effective. (3)
Doing nothing increases the likelihood that a sexual assault will continue. (4)
Knowing self-defence is associated with assault avoidance. (5)
(1) Based on results of studies done by the U.S. Justice Department Bureau of Statistics and the Center for Disease Control.
(2) Pauline Bart and Patricia H. O’Brien, Stopping Rape: Successful Survival Strategies (Oxford, 1985).
(3) Bart and O’Brien; Queen’s Bench Foundation, Rape Prevention and Resistance (San Francisco, 1976); Jennie McIntyre. "Victim Response to Rape: Alternative Outcomes," National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.)
(4) Bart and O’Brien; William B. Sanders, Rape and Woman’s Identity. (Beverly Hills, 1980).
(5) E. Cohn, H. Kidder and J. Harvey, "Criminal Prevention vs Victimization Prevention," Victimology (1981).