Property crimes occured at an approximate rate of 160 in 1,000 households and violent crime occured at a rate of about 1 in every 40 people. These statistics are most likely underinflated due to unreported cases that occur in schools, home and the workplace but which are covered up or not reported for various reasons

Three areas have received particular attention: violent victimization and PTSD (including psychology of rape), domestic violence (particularly battered spouses) and sexual harassment

The extent of injury and feeling (or lack of feeling) of control are two critical factors in PTSD development. Surprisingly, having crime victims relive similar situations proves to typically be fairly effective treatment for PTSD and also for its prevention

Symptoms include learned helplessness, lowered self-esteem, impaired functioning, fear or terror in various situations that may recreate similar situations to being beaten, loss of the assumption of invulnerability and anger/rage

One of the major changes was getting rid of the requirement of resistance as sometimes resistance is not displayed by the raped party. Differing levels of sexual assault were also created and intimate partners can now be charged with rape as well. States also have rape shield laws which prevent the defense attorney from questioning the raped party from being questioned about their sexual history

One area of research has looked at what potential victims can do to decrease their chance of being raped. Other treatments such as chemical castration and behavioral therapy have shown moderate effectiveness

Quid pro quo harassment has to do with demands made as requirements for benefits of some sort. The other kind deals with the creation of a hostile work environment which involves demeaning comments, acts of attempted intimacy and the display of provacative photographs or other material at work

Abuse excuse is a legal tactic by which a person charged with a crime claims that past victimization justified his or her retaliation

Acute stress disorder is the development of anxiety, dissociative and other symptoms that occurs within 1 month after exposure to an extreme traumatic event and whose duration is between 2 days and 4 weeks

Battered woman syndrome is a collection of symptoms, many of which are manifest in women who have suffered prolonged and extensive abuse from their spouses

Borderline personality disorder is a personality disorder characterized by impulsivity and instability in moods, behavior, self-image and interpersonal relationships

A cycle of violence involves a pattern of periodic violence in a domestic context, often exhibited by baterers, that makes their victims even more feaful of the battering they believe is inevitable

Hate crimes are criminal acts which are intended to harm or intimidate people because of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or other minority group status

Hostile workplace harassment is a form of workplace harassment that does not involvea specific response, but instead involves gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention resulting in an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment

Post traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder in whcih the victim experiences a pattern of intense fear reactions after being exposed to a highly stressful event

Quid pro quo harassment is an implicit or explicit bargain in which the harasser promises a reward or threatens punishment in exchange for a specific response (often sexual in nature) from a workplace supervisee

Rape shield laws are laws that prevent or restrict the questioning of an alleged rape victim during that person's time on the witness stand; specifically, questioning about the alleged victim's past sexual activities is prohibited or limited

Rape trauma syndrome is a collection of behaviors or symptoms that are frequent aftereffects of having been raped

Secondary victimization is a process in which post-event negative experineces with legal and medical authorities increases a victim's symptoms

Self-defense is a legal defense relied upon by criminal defendants typically charges with homicide; it asserts that the defendant's actions were justified by a reasonable belief that he or she was in imminent danger of death or bodily harm from an attacker

Spousal rape is rape against a spouse; one form of intimate partner abuse

Victimization is the study of the process and consequences of victim's experiences including recovery

People tend to feel the need for a just world and that what happened was a means of justifying the pre-existing conditions (for example, if a woman was raped while dressing very promiscuously)

Identity theft, cyberstalking and cyber bullying have all developed along with technology

People who were victims of abuse of neglection as children were much more likely to commit similar crimes as adults

Symptoms can range from flashbacks of the event and persistent avoidance of similar stimuli to increased physiological arousal which results in startled responses or difficulty sleeping

Resnick found that 12% of female individuals from a sample had at some point in their lives suffered from PTSD while 4.6% were currently suffering from it. War on Terror veterans were estimated to have an occurance rate of anywhere from 12-20%

Women who were victims of crime were three times more likely to develop PTSD (about 9% vs. 26%)

People who experience acute stress disorder typically have much more social support over the matter than people with PTSD do. Isolation in places such as military settings has been seen as a major reason behind PTSD prevelance in war zones in comparison to the rate of acute stress disorder

1. Education about common psychological reactions so that people know that their reactions are natural 2. Training in relaxation skills amongst other areas 3. Emotionally reliving the trauma to allow the defusion of their emotions 4. Cognitive restructuring to help them replace their negative beliefs with more realistic approaches

About a third of all guys and about a quarter of all women

30%

They're typically unemployed, less educated, members of minority groups and lower socioeconomic groups and tend to have suffered abuse as children or saw an abusive relationship with their parents

Batterers typically have poor self-concepts, aren't good problem solvers, often have limited verbal skills and are prone to extreme jealousy

There is the tension building phase (characterized by increased criticism), an acute batterign incident (where the woman has become too dependant on the man to break the relationship) and the contrite phase where the man promises to never do it again and that he has changed

About 40% of batterers have borderline personality disorder

1. Learned helplessness 2. Domination by the male in the relationship 3. Lowered self esteem on the part of the woman 4. The woman becomes hypervigilant

These women are typically convicted of murder and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences as a result

The US has one of the highest rates of forced rapes amongst industrialized countries and 75 to 85 forcible rapes are reported annually to police

17.6% of all women reported ever being raped while 21.6% of that reported being raped at 12 or younger

About 18 million total have been raped

Only about 19% of women and 13% of men actually reported their rape which means that many rapes went unreported

They may believe that reporting won't help, they would suffer embarassment by reporting (especially men), law enforcement officers would not believe them and that their attacker would be likely to retaliate

About three fourths of rapes are committed by acquaintances and because both parties know each other, the raped party is less likely to report the incident for one of various reasons

22%

Date rapes typically happen between 10PM and 1AM on weekends and usually involve alcohol and/or drugs but are less likely to involve weapons

There is the acute phase during which the person tries to regain control and understand what is going on in the present; the period of false recovery puts victims in the state of denial; finally, there is acute crisis phase during which phobias and changes in eating and sleeping habits occur

Being raped puts one at much higher chances of being depressed and anxious; people raped multiple times showed the greatest extent of depression and generalized anxiety

The language was changed from terms like "rape" to "sexual assault" to denote a hint of violence in the situation