What is Sexual Assault?
Definition: Sexual Assault is any unwanted sexual activity that one person forces upon another. Any kind of sexual contact without both people fully agreeing to it – from unwanted touching to intercourse – is sexual assault. And it is against the law.
Here are some examples of sexual assault:
- Sexual invasions of space: obscene phone calls, sexual harassment, looks/leers, catcalls, jokes
- Unwanted physical touch: grabbing, brushing against body, patting, pinching
- Unwanted sexual touch: fondling of breasts and genitals, molestation, forcing someone to perform sexual touch
- Non-violent rape: sexual intercourse against a person’s will without physical violence or force, using drugs or alcohol to impair a person’s judgment, using power, age status or verbal threats to keep a person quiet, showing weapons to scare a person, using one’s own body weight to overpower someone.
- Violent rape: sexual intercourse against a person’s will using physical violence or force. Using one’s body to do violence beating, strangling, choking, punching, kicking. Using weapons to do violence – slashing, cutting with knives, beating with other weapons, wounding or killing with gunshots.
Sexual assault is not about having sex, but rather about gaining power over others by humiliating, overpowering and physically harming others.
