ABSTRACT
Sexual assault has become a major social issue in many contemporary cultures. It is rare to find any media broadcast that does not devote at least one story to the assault or abuse of someone, or to the concern about the potential consequences for assault victims. Considerable ink and airtime is devoted to stories about the backgrounds of various abusers and victims. The sexual abuse of individuals, especially those victims viewed as very vulnerable such as women and children, is rarely tolerated in any form in most societies. Perhaps part of the concern is due to some astonishing statistics concerning the incidence and prevalence of sexual assault in many countries. One national survey in the United States (Finkelhor et al., 1990), for example, found that 25 per cent of adult female respondents and 16 per cent of adult male respondents reported some unwanted sexual touching or abuse. Published in 2002, national data from Canada (reported by Kong et al., 2003) revealed a sexual assault rate of 86 per 100,000 residents. Whatever forms the basis of the concern about sexual assault and abuse, the concern is significant.
