Rape vs Sexual Assault
Whenever we hear the word sexual assault, we think of rape. This is despite there being the difference in degrees of physical or mental abuse of the person who is at the receiving end. While rape is extreme crime and involves making use of sex organs of a person without his consent, sexual assault is no less a crime and has similar connotations like rape. This article tries to make a difference between sexual assault and rape to let the reader appreciate the difference in the degree and severity of the crime.
It is quite easy to visualize a man forcing himself upon a woman penetrating her through the vagina or anal to reach an orgasm without the consent of the woman. In fact, rape is the extreme form of sexual assault as it involves the use of violence or threat of use of violence to enter a woman forcefully. In many states, the definition of rape has been broadened, and sexual assault has virtually replaced rape. In others, rapists get a longer term in prison than people accused of sexual assault. This difference in the eyes of the law is what has given birth to a hot debate if there is any difference between sexual assault and rape.
Though Making use of force or threat of force, to penetrate a woman’s sex organs is one feature that makes rape different from sexual assault, there is no consent in sexual assault too. Thus, sexual assault is any incident of intercourse that takes place without consent and thus includes the extreme case of rape where force is either actually used or the victim is threatened to succumb or face violence.
Sexual assault includes a wide variety of actions and circumstances such as sexual abuse of a child, rape attempt, actual rape, fondling of body parts, making obscene phone calls, and even making sexual harassment. In all cases of sexual assault, there is a feeling of helplessness and loss of control that is experienced by the victim.
Rape can be considered as an extreme case of violence that makes sex a weapon or tool to commit a heinous crime against a woman. However, there are strange cases of rape where the criminal does not even know the victim and commits rape just for the fulfillment of his sexual desire. Under the old English law, it was forced sex with a woman that constituted rape; that too, if it was committed by a man other than the husband of the woman. Any other crime involving sex was simply assault or battery that did not even attract any sentence.
This was a situation that was begging for reforms. After several protests and demonstrations, changes were effected in laws and sexual assault definition was broadened to protect women from sexual assault even from their own husbands. As there is too much of an emotional and cultural baggage such as social stigma involved with the word sex, many reformers want to do away with this word altogether. However, the fact remains that rape still constitutes as one of the sexual crimes under sexual assault.
Summary
Today, an adult who forces a child to watch porn or even asks the child to indulge in some sexual activity is deemed to have indulged in sexual assault. On the other hand, despite social stigma and cultural baggage, rape remains entering a woman vaginally or anally using force or threatening to use force without her consent. If there is an attempt to rape and the victim is able to run away, the charge is limited to sexual assault. Sentences for rape are higher than those for sexual assault.