A guide to advocating for the prevention and elimination of sexual violence.

The Endemic of Sexual Violence

 In order to tackle the endemic sexual violence that pervades our society, one must first define it. The United Nations defines violence against women and girls as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”

Sexual violence is defined as “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting. It includes rape, defined as the physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration of the vulva or anus with a penis, other body part or object, attempted rape, unwanted sexual touching and other non-contact forms”.

Violence against women and girls is prevalent in a multitude of circumstances. In fact, there is not one environment wherein women and young girls are sufficiently able to say they enjoy protection from this seemingly inevitable fate.

It would appear women and girls remain vulnerable to sexual violence and abuse, not only in conflict zones and remote and marginalised communities but also in religious, state, and educational institutions.

The endemic faced here is not only the result of a complete breakdown in societal functions, and hence a ‘disorganisation’ of constraints, yet also the result of systemic injustice, and consistent failures by State bodies to invest in transformative ‘solutions’.

Global Data

According to a 2018 analysis of data conducted by the World Health Organisation, from 2008 to 2018, and across 161 countries and areas, it was found that nearly 30% of women worldwide have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence.

Over 25% of women aged 15-49 years, who have been in a relationship, have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner at least once in their lifetime.

Globally, as many as 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate partners. In addition to intimate partner violence, globally 6% of women report having been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner, although data for non-partner sexual violence are more limited.

 

The IICSA Inquiry

In the United Kingdom alone, 1 in 6 girls and 1 in 20 boys in the United Kingdom alone, experience sexual abuse before the age of 16.[1] The sexual abuse and exploitation of children pervades all strains of society, be it through religious institutions, educational establishments, care homes, family homes, places of recreation, and in more recent years, online.

The devastation caused by childhood sexual abuse and violence is deep-rooted and often lifelong. According to the report produced for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, 94% of Truth Project participants report that child sexual abuse has had a profoundly negative impact on them, whilst some report that the impacts extend so far as to dictate the trajectories of their entire lives.[2]

‘Words do not do justice to the scale of the impact. It has affected and continues to affect every aspect of my being, body, mind and soul. I was so young that I will never know who I could have been had it never happened.’

-       The Truth Project -‘Celeste’; IICSA Report[3]

The IICSA report makes it clear that mental health, relationships, physical health, education, sex and intimacy, employment, and parenting, are aspects of survivors’ lives heavily affected by their experiences of having been sexually abused[4].

Notwithstanding the undeniably ravaging effects of sexual abuse, accompanied by previous experiences of being silenced and subjected to further detriment following disclosures of abuse, survivors participating in the inquiry courageously came forward with their experiences, in hopes of preventing the children of today and future generations from experiencing the same fate.

The inquiry resulted in 20 recommendations and attempted to bring to the government’s attention that child sexual abuse is in no way, an issue of the past to be cast aside. The extent to which the issue resigns itself was rightfully described by IICSA as an ‘endemic’ within England and Wales.

Yet Another Systemic Failure

It was most unfortunate and deeply dismaying, that despite the courageous efforts made by survivors to address the need for therapeutic support and to prevent further systemic failures from desecrating childhoods, the response furnished by the government and the Home Secretary failed to address the need for immediate action.  

On a general note, the responses provided by the government to 19 of the 20 recommendations, though from afar appearing to accord with the recommendations, were insufficient and performative in nature.

The sweeping aside of the recommendations, with the assertion that these have already been incorporated into systems already existing, appears to be an attempt by the government to prioritise its institutional reputation above the welfare of those it is bound by duty to protect.

‘Recognition’ Does Not Equate to Action

The mere ‘recognition’ of an issue does not serve as adequate in addressing the needs of the 7,300 victims and survivors who participated in the inquiry[5], and the 3.1 million adults in England and Wales who have experienced sexual abuse before the age of 16.[6]

It does not serve as any guarantee that systemic abuse shall be prevented, to the 13 million children in England and Wales who remain inherently vulnerable to abuse on the basis of their age.[7]

The government’s response to IICSA is lacking in action, urgency and understanding. In lieu of demonstrating a genuine understanding of the prolonged effects of child sexual abuse and exploitation, by way of immediate action and admittance of the systemic shortcomings currently existent, it is apparent the government has instead elected to undermine the potential benefits of the recommendations, and thereby the basis upon which the recommendations were formulated, that being the extensive research undertaken throughout the course of the seven-year inquiry.

The inadequacy of the government’s response serves as yet another example of a systemic failure to address the concerns so eloquently and boldly laid by those having been affected by the endemic of sexual violence and abuse.

  

Factors Exacerbating Sexual Violence

The onus is far too often, unfairly placed unto women and girls for the prevention or end of sexual violence and abuse.

Women and girls are burdened with the task of achieving ‘liberation’ from violence and protection from abuse, a task rendered unachievable owing to the systemic failings of State bodies to address their plights for assistance and change. We are made to be held responsible for the elimination of this ‘phenomenon’ of sexual violence, in a society that enables its continuation.

The World Health Organisation non-exhaustively lists the following as factors with the potential to increase the vulnerability of women and girls to sexual violence and abuse.

·      “lower levels of education (perpetration of sexual violence and experience of sexual violence);

·      a history of exposure to child maltreatment (perpetration and experience);

·      witnessing family violence (perpetration and experience);

·      low levels of women’s access to education and paid employment

·      low level of gender equality.”[8]

 

Factors specifically associated with sexual violence perpetration include:

·      “beliefs in family honour and sexual purity;

·      ideologies of male sexual entitlement; and

·      weak legal sanctions for sexual violence.

·      Gender inequality and norms on the acceptability of violence against women are a root cause of violence against women.”[9]

 

Sexual violence and abuse against women and girls shall continue to persist as an inescapable and destructive aspect of society, for as long as State bodies ignore demands for substantive equality.

According to OCHR WRGU ‘Laws that discriminate against women’, ‘Substantive equality demands that consideration be given to the ways in which the different roles and position of men and women in society, generally known as gender, impact upon women’s ability to claim and enjoy their human rights’. (Dr Fareda Banda, OHCR, 6 March 2008)

 It is recognised that without ‘substantive equality’, women and girls will not be in a position to enjoy fundamental freedoms guaranteed to them by law and protection from abuse and sexual violence.

It is not until States actively monitor, through quantifiable indicators, the impacts of ‘laws, policies and action plans and evaluation profess achieved towards the practical realization of women’s substantive equality with men’, that we will see a substantial fall in the instances of sexual violence and its global prevalence. [10]

It was of course noted by the Human Rights Committee, that the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of sex is an immediate not progressive obligation, yet it is not until State bodies act in this regard, that change will occur.

 

 CHARITIES TO SUPPORT

·      END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

·      WOMEN’S AID

·      SUPPORT FOR SURVIVORS

·      SURVIVORS’ TRUST

·      CHILDLINE

·      AGAINST VIOLENCE AND ABUSE

·      REFUGE

·      WOMEN AND GIRLS NETWORK

·      SOLACE WOMEN’S AID

·      ABIANDA

·      IMKAAN

·      CENTRE FOR WOMEN’S JUSTICE

·      FORWARD UK

·      ASHIANA NETWORK

·      SOUTHALL BLACK SISTERS

·      NATIONAL CENTRE FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

 

[1] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – HC 720

[2] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – HC 720

[3] IICSA; Experiences Shared – Celeste (https://www.iicsa.org.uk/experiences-shared/celeste)

[4] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – HC 720

[5] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – HC 720

[6] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – HC 720; The Office for National Statistics

[7] The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – HC 720; The Office for National Statistics

[8] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women

[9] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women

[10]https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/laws_that_discriminate_against_women.pdf