Recovering from abuse can be painfully lonely and feel utterly hopeless. From her own experience, Germaine Smith reaches out to other survivors who seek understanding, hope, and-above all-wholeness. She guides readers toward healing in all areas of being: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Between Lost & Found, written in a poetic yet plainspoken style, offers courage for emerging from darkness.

With statistics showing that 1 in 5 women have experienced some form of sexual abuse, it is likely that all birth professionals will support a survivor of such abuse at some point during their career. This book provides practical advice for those supporting these women throughout their pregnancy, labour, and postnatal periods. The impact of past sexual abuse on women during these periods is often underestimated, and this book shows the need for greater compassion and understanding in maternity services regarding this issue. Drawing on a vast range of research and expertise, this book includes details on the identifiable behaviours of survivors, how to respond when someone says they are a survivor, positive stories, and appropriate language to use. This book is for any care provider who wants to help pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period become a healing experience for those carrying trauma, and to support these survivors with compassion, respect and kindness.

Sexual assault is a crime that devastates victims and has a far-reaching negative impact for The Department of Defense (DOD) because it undermines DODs core values, degrades mission readiness, and raises financial costs. DOD developed its strategy to prevent sexual assault using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) framework for effective sexual-violence prevention strategies, but DOD does not link activities to desired outcomes or fully identify risk and protective factors. This book addresses the extent to which DOD developed an effective prevention strategy; implemented activities department-wide and at military installations related to the departments effort to prevent sexual assault; and developed performance measures to determine the effectiveness of its efforts to prevent sexual assault in the military.

Very few women are wartime rapists. Very few women issue commands to commit sexual violence. Very few women play a role in making war plans that feature the intentional sexual violation of other women. This book is about those very few women. Women as Wartime Rapists reveals the stories of female perpetrators of sexual violence and their place in wartime conflict, legal policy, and the punishment of sexual violence. More broadly, Laura Sjoberg asks, what do the actions and perceptions of female perpetrators of sexual violence reveal about our broader conceptions of war, violence, sexual assault, and gender? This book explores specific historical case studies, such as Nazi Germany, Serbia, the contemporary case of ISIS, and others, to understand how and why women participate in rape during war and conflict. Sjoberg examines the contrast between the visibility of female victims and the invisibility of female perpetrators, as well as the distinction between rape and genocidal rape, which is used as a weapon against a particular ethnic or national group. Further, she explores women's engagement with genocidal rape and how some orchestrated the ethnic cleansing of entire regions. A provocative approach to a sensationalized topic, Women as Wartime Rapists offers important insights into not only the topic of female perpetrators of wartime sexual violence, but to larger notions of gender and violence with crucial cultural, legal, and political implications.

Sex trafficking is a state crime. Nevertheless, it is also a federal crime when it involves conducting the activities of a sex trafficking enterprise in a way that affects interstate or foreign commerce or that involves travel in interstate or foreign commerce. Section 1591 of Title 18 of the United States Code outlaws the activities of sex trafficking enterprise that affects interstate or foreign commerce, including patronising such an enterprise. The Mann Act outlaws sex trafficking activities that involve travel in interstate or foreign commerce. This book provides an overview of sex trafficking. It focuses on the sex trafficking of children in the United States and reviews the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act.

People of every age, ethnicity, and gender survive sexual assault, and their continued well-being depends upon an informed and responsive network of medical, legal, and social service practitioners. Best practices, accurate diagnoses, and up-to-date treatments administered by these dedicated professionals protect sexual assault patients and hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes. For the safety of survivors and in support of their professional caretakers, Sexual Assault Quick Reference offers comprehensive, accessible guidelines for responding to sexual assault, wherever it occurs. The revised second edition of Sexual Assault Quick Reference provides updated information on a variety of subjects, all in the same convenient format, including chapters on the physical and forensic evaluation of patients across the life span, identifying and treating STIs (based on the CDC's 2015 Treatment Guidelines), mental health care for survivors and vicariously traumatized practitioners, and the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence. To address contemporary issues in a rapidly evolving field of practice, the second edition also offers 4 all-new chapters covering: Disclosure processes, medical and mental health care, and legal proceedings for sexual assault in the military The nature of human trafficking, common characteristics and identification of trafficked persons, and physical and mental health issues for survivors Assessment, documentation, and treatment of injuries sustained via strangulation Understanding and responding to online sexual exploitation, including self-exploitation and sexting, online sexual solicitation, and exposure to sexually explicit materials

Rape is common during wartime, but even within the context of the same war, some armed groups perpetrate rape on a massive scale while others never do. In Rape during Civil War Dara Kay Cohen examines variation in the severity and perpetrators of rape using an original dataset of reported rape during all major civil wars from 1980 to 2012. Cohen also conducted extensive fieldwork, including interviews with perpetrators of wartime rape, in three postconflict counties, finding that rape was widespread in the civil wars of the Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste but was far less common during El Salvador's civil war.Cohen argues that armed groups that recruit their fighters through the random abduction of strangers use rape-and especially gang rape-to create bonds of loyalty and trust between soldiers. The statistical evidence confirms that armed groups that recruit using abduction are more likely to perpetrate rape than are groups that use voluntary methods, even controlling for other confounding factors. Important findings from the fieldwork-across cases-include that rape, even when it occurs on a massive scale, rarely seems to be directly ordered. Instead, former fighters describe participating in rape as a violent socialization practice that served to cut ties with fighters' past lives and to signal their commitment to their new groups. Results from the book lay the groundwork for the systematic analysis of an understudied form of civilian abuse. The book will also be useful to policymakers and organizations seeking to understand and to mitigate the horrors of wartime rape.

Sexual Assault Across the Life Span, Volume 1: Investigation, Diagnosis, and the Multidisciplinary Team is the first of a 3-volume set of sexual assault references. This first volume serves as a complete guide for multidisciplinary team members involved in the investigation of sexual assault. It includes comprehensive medical guides for the diagnosis and treatment of assaultive trauma; legal guides to investigation and prosecution; and guidelines for the role of first responders in cases of sexual assault, including EMS and law enforcement professionals. Supplemented by nearly 200 full-color photographs, this new title offers an excellent visual reference for professionals in the field, in addition to in-depth guidelines for diagnostic and investigative procedures in response to sexual assault. Readers in medicine, law enforcement, and social service will all benefit from its comprehensive focus on a variety of interdependent investigative disciplines, making this all-new, convenient reference an ideal resource for any and all professionals in sexual assault response.

Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis's exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada-a coming-of-age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from speaking of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled through her first semester-a challenging time made even harder by the coldness of her college's "conflict mediation" process. Her desperation growing, she made a bold decision: She would seek healing in the freedom of the wild, on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail leading from Mexico to Canada. In this inspiring memoir, Aspen chronicles her journey, a five-month trek that was ambitious, dangerous, and transformative. A nineteen-year-old girl alone and lost, she conquered desolate mountain passes and met rattlesnakes, bears, and fellow desert pilgrims. Exhausted after each thirty-mile day, at times on the verge of starvation, Aspen was forced to confront her numbness, coming to terms with the sexual assault and her parents' disappointing reaction. On the trail she found her strength, and after a thousand miles of solitude, she found a man who helped her learn to love and trust again-and heal.

This explosive memoir is the first book to take readers inside a rape crisis center-to the front lines in the battle to protect children from sexual predators. It is set in the 1980's, a time when the "secrecy code" surrounding child sexual abuse is shattered by an unprecedented influx of child sexual abuse cases, stunning the nation. Why do the children finally speak out? Who do they tell? What is done about it? Bonati answers those first gut-wrenching calls that come through on the crisis line-"I think this child might have been sexually molested. Can you please help me?" Included are riveting case stories, uttered from the mouths of victims, ranging in ages from pre-school children to adult survivors. She describes an antiquated criminal justice system unequipped to deal with children accusing adults of felonious crimes. As a twelve-year child sexual abuse coordinator for Rape & Assault Support Services of Nashua, New Hampshire, Bonati interviews over three hundred children, confronts The System, testifies for legislative changes, and educates the public. Written in an easy to read, conversational style, this book brings a down-to-earth understanding of a complex problem that still faces us today, offering concrete steps we can take to stop this heinous crime.

In this history of right-wing politics in Brazil during the Cold War, Benjamin Cowan puts the spotlight on the Cold Warriors themselves. Drawing on little-tapped archival records, he shows that by midcentury, conservatives-individuals and organizations, civilian as well as military-were firmly situated in a transnational network of right-wing cultural activists. They subsequently joined the powerful hardline constituency supporting Brazil's brutal military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. There, they lent their weight to a dictatorship that, Cowan argues, operationalized a moral panic that conflated communist subversion with manifestations of modernity, coalescing around the crucial nodes of gender and sexuality, particularly in relation to youth, women, and the mass media. The confluence of an empowered right and a security establishment suffused with rightist moralism created strongholds of anticommunism that spanned government agencies, spurred repression, and generated attempts to control and even change quotidian behavior. Tracking how limits to Cold War authoritarianism finally emerged, Cowan concludes that the record of autocracy and repression in Brazil is part of a larger story of reaction against perceived threats to traditional views of family, gender, moral standards, and sexuality-a story that continues in today's culture wars.

Sexual Assault Victimization Across the Life Span, Volume 2: Evaluation of Children and Adults is the second in a 3-volume set of sexual assault references. This second volume focuses on the particular needs of sexual assault survivors in various age groups, including chapters on child sexual abuse and sexual violence against adolescents, adults, and the elderly. Readers will enjoy the benefit of specially tailored instruction on the care and assessment of survivors in all of these age groups, emphasizing the unique needs of each. This all-new, comprehensive guide includes essential information for sexual assault investigators of every variety. Social service workers, law enforcement personnel, medical practitioners, and prosecuting attorneys will all benefit from a versatile, multidisciplinary study of sexual assault in specific age groups across the life span, complete with more than 200 full-color photos provided by expert investigators working in the field.

In the 1980s, a series of child sex abuse cases rocked the United States. The most famous case was the 1984 McMartin preschool case, but there were a number of others as well. By the latter part of the decade, the assumption was widespread that child sex abuse had become a serious problem in America. Yet within a few years, the concern about it died down considerably. The failure to convict anyone in the McMartin case and a widely publicized appellate decision in New Jersey that freed an accused molester had turned the dominant narrative on its head. In the early 1990s, a new narrative with remarkable staying power emerged: the child sex abuse cases were symptomatic of a "moral panic" that had produced a witch hunt. A central claim in this new witch hunt narrative was that the children who testified were not reliable and easily swayed by prosecutorial suggestion. In time, the notion that child sex abuse was a product of sensationalized over-reporting and far less endemic than originally thought became the new common sense. But did the new witch hunt narrative accurately represent reality? As Ross Cheit demonstrates in his exhaustive account of child sex abuse cases in the past two and a half decades, purveyors of the witch hunt narrative never did the hard work of examining court records in the many cases that reached the courts throughout the nation. Instead, they treated a couple of cases as representative and concluded that the issue was blown far out of proportion. Drawing on years of research into cases in a number of states, Cheit shows that the issue had not been blown out of proportion at all. In fact, child sex abuse convictions were regular occurrences, and the crime occurred far more frequently than conventional wisdom would have us believe. Cheit's aim is not to simply prove the narrative wrong, however. He also shows how a narrative based on empirically thin evidence became a theory with real social force, and how that theory stood at odds with a far more grim reality. The belief that the charge of child sex abuse was typically a hoax also left us unprepared to deal with the far greater scandal of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, which, incidentally, has served to substantiate Cheit's thesis about the pervasiveness of the problem. In sum, The Witch-Hunt Narrative is a magisterial and empirically powerful account of the social dynamics that led to the denial of widespread human tragedy.