The Globe and Mail
6.18.15 | Zosia Bielski
The statistics are dire: 54 per cent of female rape victims are under 18, and being raped in adolescence means victims are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted again during their first year at university. Among women under 18, police recorded more than 11,000 sexual assaults in 2008, according to the most recent figures available from Statistics Canada. And in Ontario high schools, 27 per cent of girls said they’d been sexually pressured into doing something they didn’t want to do, the Girls Action Foundation found in 2013.
Sexual assault doesn’t wait until high school graduation: young women in this age bracket are at a higher risk of being attacked than those who make it to university and its booze-drenched parties.
With news last week of pioneering – and controversial – Canadian research that found rape rates plummeted by half after university-aged women were taught “resistance,” experts are agitating that we introduce such knowledge earlier – teaching high school girls clear-eyed risk assessment skills and self-defence.
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