The epidemiological assessment of sexual assault

The present study was conducted to determine the epidemiological characteristics of rape victims and rapists.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 68 examined cases of sexual violence in Shiraz Legal Medicine Organization during 2013-2014. Victims were referred from the judicial authority or deputy. The file information of referred cases was extracted without a name and a unique code for each file.

All cases in this study were female victims. The mean age of the victims was 21.39 ± 6.11 years. The majority of cases were single (94%). Of all cases in the study, 63.2% and 30.9% had middle and low socioeconomic status, respectively. Someone's home was the most frequent place of rape (54.4%). In 58.8% of cases, victims and assailants knew each other. There was a single perpetrator (59.7%) most of the time, but in 19.4% and 11.8%, respectively, there were two and three perpetrators concurrent. In 76.5% of cases, victims mentioned that they were under verbal threats, 8.8% were under gun threats, and 28% were under knife threats. Completed rape happened in most of the victims (98.5%).

The results of this study emphasized the priority of sexual assaults prevention and increasing public awareness of these violations as a legitimate public health issue.