Charlotte: A Face of Rape Statistics

The purpose of this research is to examine rape and sexual assault as discussed in the literature including by not limited to the evolution of definitions pertaining to rape and sexual assault; the role of law-enforcement in re-victimization of victims through aggressive questioning tactics; the perpetuation of victim-blame as a consequence of internal guilt and external sources; and to extrapolate conditions surrounding the occurrence of rape and sexual assault. The methodology for this research is as follows: a literature review which was accomplished by searching for research and literature pertaining to sexual assault \u2014 particularly research pertaining to involvement of law-enforcement in sexual assault and rape cases, victim-blame, both internal and external, and attempting to uncover a universally accepted definition for rape; a testimonial: n=1 case study, written in the form of a narrative; and, an analysis synthesizing the literature review and testimonial. This analysis seeks to answer "what aspects of the literature does the testimonial support and which does it dispute?"; "what conditions of rape and sexual assault does it suggest, that may have yet to be identified or fully discussed and understood?" Furthermore, it strives to discuss the benefits of including a victim story, in its entirety, as told by the victim without any editing or censoring done by the researcher. The concluded findings for this research suggest that literature and research pertaining to sexual assault is quite vast, however the topics being researched are the same year after year. There is little headway being made to understand the conditions surrounding rape and sexual assault, characteristics of the victim and the perpetrator, and making efforts to move away from false perceptions of what must happen during rape for a victim to be classified a victim. Moreover, the findings conclude that there are few first-hand narratives of sexual assault and rape experiences. Researchers include snippets of a victim's words, but only those words that corroborate the findings the researcher is hoping to prove and solidify. By including the victim's story in its entirety, we are allowing for further exploration and understanding of why rape and sexual continue to frequently occur.