By Amy Newcomb
GUIDON staff
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For the last three weeks I have written articles regarding the Special Victims Unit, but what was unusual about this is I actually attended the Advanced Sexual Assault Investigation Training Course as a student.

As a journalist, I usually only sit in for specific parts of a course and then interpret the information I absorb with my interviews with the subject matter experts into an article to be published. Fortunately, Russell Strand, Lori Jones and David Markel, who teach the course, thought it would be great to have me as a student and hopefully help me articulate the seriousness of this issue.

I learned many things while attending this course, but what significantly struck me about this course was how sexual assault victims are treated.

I now understand why a majority of sexual assaults are not reported — because victims don’t think anyone will believe them. There are many people who believe most sexual assault cases are false reports. This mentality advocates a culture where sex offenders are walking among us — in uniform.

According to the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence 2012 rape crisis center survey, nearly one in five women have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape and over 1.3 million women were raped in the U.S. in one year. More than 80 percent of women who were victimized experienced significant impacts, such as PTSD.

One last staggering fact — most sexual assault victims know their offender.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics explains the differences between the types of sexual offenses.

Rape is forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means penetration by the offender(s). Includes attempted rapes, male as well as female victims, and both heterosexual and homosexual rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.

Sexual assault covers a wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape.  These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim and offender.  Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling.  It also includes verbal threats.

I will never be able to write an article that adequately covers this subject, but what I want readers to take away from this commentary is:

Ninety-nine percent of sex offenders are just like every other person out there. You can’t look at them and know they are a sex offender. Most likely, you know a sex offender, but do not know they are a sex offender. Most sex offenders are serial sex offenders; they began offending between the ages of 14 and 16 and will have 300 to 600 victims over the course of their life. Sex offenders will find a victim’s vulnerabilities and use them to their advantage. Their victims will not report them because they will blame themselves or are afraid no one will believe them. Their victims are more likely to suffer from PTSD than a Soldier who has seen combat. Their victims will be revictimized by society and they are counting on that.