Literature Review of Sexual Violence in the United States
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.773Abstract
The purpose of this review is to examine sexual violence in the United States (U.S.) and discuss prevention and intervention methods used to lower these rates. Sexual violence remains a pervasive issue across the U.S. that causes negative impacts on victims’ health and wellbeing, as well as their ability to thrive socially, academically, and professionally. It is experienced and perpetrated more or less often by different demographics of people. This review uses twenty six sources from Internet searches centralized in Google Scholar to discuss the effects of sexual violence and different ways of preventing it among different populations. Although some prevention and intervention methods such as sexual education, bystander intervention education, and policy responses have been proven to effectively lower rates of sexual violence perpetration, more research is needed to fully understand the effectiveness of existing prevention and intervention programming. Additionally, innovative prevention methods need to be developed, implemented, and evaluated to more adequately reduce rates of sexual violence, especially among high-risk populations, which may involve changes to existing policy or implementation of new policy.
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