And there you are, back to "paranoid" and "feels so unsafe" -- both unfounded accusations that are highly offensive and have been answered repeatedly by several people.
This betrays a fundamental lack of understanding both of self-defense and of the nature of violent crime statistics.
Jeff, the tendency is for people to discount all violent crimes in which the victim "knew" the attacker. He was her husband, her boyfriend, her roommate -- so her life could not really have been in danger, right? The rape "didn't count" because she knew the guy, right?
The theory here -- and an offensive one it is! -- is that a rape is somehow less traumatic for the victim if she knew the violent SOB who attacked her and threatened to kill her or maim her if she did not cooperate.
The numbers are made even fuzzier because no one parses the line between "current husband" and "violent ex-boyfriend stalker who found the victim after she had moved six times to get away."
If the victim recognized the peeping tom who had run off last week as the same guy who attacked her tonight, that violent stranger rape is classed as an "acquaintance rape," and lumped in with other "acquaintance" rapes in the stats, just as if she'd instead gotten drunk on a date and the guy took advantage of her inability to give legal consent.
Some of those "acquaintance rapes" were he-said/she-said events where who knows what really happened? But some (an unknown number, because it is not tracked, damnit) are cases where a violent and aggressive man attacks, threatens, maims and mauls his victim -- then walks or gets a slap on the wrist because some idiot DA thinks the crime somehow doesn't count since the victim "knew" her attacker.
So yeah, the numbers are fuzzy. You'll notice I reported both stats, the acquaintance stats AND the stranger stats. That was to make allowance for people who believe that when a woman gets raped, it is really a minor and inconsequential thing as long as she "knew" the guy who attacked her.
pax
But as the first stat bears out, most crimes commited in the home are done by someone the victim either knows or is related to. If you look at your rape figure, more than half of all the rapes were comitted by someone the victim knew. Of the remaining number, less than half were committed in the victims home. I have no doubt that most of the cases of assault fall into this category as well.
As such, these stats aren't quite as imposing as has been suggested... unless you plan on shooting your friend/brother/father/husband.
This betrays a fundamental lack of understanding both of self-defense and of the nature of violent crime statistics.
Jeff, the tendency is for people to discount all violent crimes in which the victim "knew" the attacker. He was her husband, her boyfriend, her roommate -- so her life could not really have been in danger, right? The rape "didn't count" because she knew the guy, right?
The theory here -- and an offensive one it is! -- is that a rape is somehow less traumatic for the victim if she knew the violent SOB who attacked her and threatened to kill her or maim her if she did not cooperate.
The numbers are made even fuzzier because no one parses the line between "current husband" and "violent ex-boyfriend stalker who found the victim after she had moved six times to get away."
If the victim recognized the peeping tom who had run off last week as the same guy who attacked her tonight, that violent stranger rape is classed as an "acquaintance rape," and lumped in with other "acquaintance" rapes in the stats, just as if she'd instead gotten drunk on a date and the guy took advantage of her inability to give legal consent.
Some of those "acquaintance rapes" were he-said/she-said events where who knows what really happened? But some (an unknown number, because it is not tracked, damnit) are cases where a violent and aggressive man attacks, threatens, maims and mauls his victim -- then walks or gets a slap on the wrist because some idiot DA thinks the crime somehow doesn't count since the victim "knew" her attacker.
So yeah, the numbers are fuzzy. You'll notice I reported both stats, the acquaintance stats AND the stranger stats. That was to make allowance for people who believe that when a woman gets raped, it is really a minor and inconsequential thing as long as she "knew" the guy who attacked her.
pax