This is a page I decided to make as part of both a healing process for myself and help for other people who have experienced the same pain as I have myself. I would like to thank some of the ppl that have allowed me to use their information for this page. Most of the facts and figures have either came from Pandora's Aquarium, Aprodite Wounded or from From Surviving to Thriving. Links to their sites are on my page. They are a wealth of information and support.
"Partner Rape aka Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is actual or threatened physical or sexual violence or psychological and emotional abuse directed toward a spouse, ex-spouse, current or former boyfriend or girlfriend, or current or former dating partner. Intimate partners may be heterosexual or of the same sex. Some of the common terms used to describe intimate partner violence are domestic abuse, spouse abuse, domestic violence, courtship violence, battering, marital rape, and date rape (Saltzman, et al. 1999).
CDC uses the term intimate partner violence because it describes violence that occurs within all intimate relationships. Some of the other terms are overlapping and may be used to mean other forms of violence including abuse of elders, children, and siblings."
Facts:
Approximately 1.5 million women and 834,700 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000a).
Nearly two-thirds of women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, or stalked since age 18 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000a).
Among women who are physically assaulted or raped by an intimate partner, one in three is injured. Each year, more than 500,000 women injured as a result of IPV require medical treatment (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000a).
As many as 324,000 women each year experience IPV during their pregnancy (Gazmararian, et al. 2000).
Firearms were the major weapon type used in intimate partner homicides from 1981 to 1998 (Paulozzi, et al. 2001).
Where partner rape is acknowledged as having happened, it is often not seen as a 'real' trauma. Yet studies indicate that women can be severely traumatized for a long time after. Their pain, and what they struggle with, often carries longer and graver implications than for women raped by strangers (Finkelhor, D.and Yllo, K., License to Rape: Sexual Abuse of Wives, The Free Press, New York 1985; Russell, Diana E.H., Rape in Marriage, Indiana University Press, USA 1990).
If you are a survivor of rape/sexual assault by an ex/partner, you probably don't need me to tell you this.
Women raped by partners often face the prospect of ongoing contact with their rapists via school, shared children or other. Sometimes, they deeply and genuinely love the perpetrator, and struggle to come to terms with the magnitude of the betrayal. They balance this with fear of recurrence. Women being raped by their partners are also statistically more likely to be murdered by them (Bergen, R, Wife Rape: Understanding the Response of Survivors and Service Providers, Sage Publications, California, 1996)
