Rape and Sexual Assault: Teen Girls at Risk

Essay by gemasy March 2003

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This past January, five high-school boys were charged with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl one afternoon at her middle school in an upscale suburb of New Jersey.

The girl supposedly knew two of her assailants, who were between the ages of 15 and 17. One may have been her ex-boyfriend.

The alleged gang rape of a young teenage girl shocked residents, many of whom felt that something like this couldn't happen in their town. But the sad truth is that rape and other sexual assaults occur in suburbs, cities, and rural areas, and victims come from every walk of life.

Rape and sexual assault mostly happen to females. One out of every six American women has been a victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. Acquaintance rape is most common--about 62 percent of victims know their assailant.

Teen girls are especially at risk. From ages 16 to 19, they are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault, according to the 2000 National Crime Victimization Survey.

At a Party

Dana was 17 years old when she was sexually assaulted. Before the assault, she had "the insane perception that bad things didn't happen to me," she says.

One night she was "chilling" at a friend's house with her girlfriends and three guys they'd just met. Everyone was drinking beer and smoking pot.

"One of the guys offered me drink after drink, and toke after toke. I noticed he wasn't doing more than sipping his beer and was barely smoking, but somehow I just didn't care," says Dana.

When he asked her to go out to the balcony, she went with him.

"He shut the door behind us and handed me a joint. I lost my balance and...