For some, the first person they told about having been raped was our fieldworker,” said Steele. Only five percent of women told health workers they had been raped, while one in 10 reported their rape to the police. Health workers were among the least likely to be confided in. One in five of the women interviewed said they had told no one about being raped. Transmission is exacerbated in settings with concurrent epidemics of HIV and forced sex or other forms of sexual violence.” “HIV transmission is higher during forced sex, particularly child sexual abuse, than consensual sex.
“Rape and HIV are co-existing epidemics,” said Steele. But many people don’t know that PEP exists.Īccording to Steele, this helps to explain the gap in the number of women currently seeking health care after sexual violence and the number that service providers would expect to see if all of those affected sought care.
SUFFER IN SILENCE QUOTES FREE
Since 2007, under the Sexual Offences Amendment Act, all HIV-negative rape survivors have had the right to free PEP to reduce the risk of HIV infection from the rape. Sadly, the majority of women did not know that they could protect themselves from HIV after rape by taking antiretroviral medication within 72 hours, called post-exposure prophylaxis. Rustenburg has a high HIV rate, with 35 percent of pregnant women testing HIV positive, according to the latest antenatal survey. If these findings are generalised to the 247,780 women living in the Rustenburg municipality, this would mean that 48,217 have been raped (including “experienced forced sexual acts”).
“Because of the high response rate, the findings can be generalised.” “We visited over 2000 households and there was a very high response rate from the women, with 86% of eligible women taking part in the survey,” MSF’s Sarah Jane Steele reported at the organisation’s Science Day last week. Some 15 percent had been raped at some stage by a sexual partner, while seven percent had been raped by more than one perpetrator. Health workers were among the least likely to be confided in.Ībout eight percent of the women said that they had been raped as young girls before the age of 15. They talked to almost 900 women, and found that one in four had been raped in their lifetime. They wanted to find out about women’s experience of sexual violence so that they can work with the provincial health department to improve medical care for women affected by sexual violence in the town.Īs they went house-to-house, the fieldworkers found that the vast majority of women in the households – close to 90 percent – were willing to talk about their experiences of sexual violence. In November and December last year, fieldworkers from the humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) visited over 2000 households in Rustenburg in the North West. We know that reported rape is merely the tip of the volcano and we know that the conviction rate for rapists is miniscule, so rape mostly goes undetected and unpunished – almost a societal norm. Fear of rape is pervasive amongst women in this country.
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