FIGHTING BACK WORKS

And now a quote from:

Fighting Back Works: The Case for Advocating and Teaching Self-Defense Against Rape, by Marge Heyden, Tiel Jackson, Billie Anger, and Todd Ellner, From the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance, May/June 1999


“A thorough review of the available literature has led us to some surprising conclusions about the effectiveness of traditional anti-rape advice. Women are often advised to use non-aggressive strategies against sexual assault. Research suggests that this is poor advice. According to one study, women who used non-forceful verbal strategies, such as crying or pleading with the assailant, were raped about 96% of the time. In the same study, women who did nothing to protect themselves were raped about 93% of the time.

Forceful verbal resistance, including yelling and loud screaming, was more effective than non-forceful verbal resistance. These strategies were associated with completion of rape from 44% - 50% of the time. This study is particularly interesting because the data were collected from rapists in maximum security psychiatric hospitals, showing that forceful verbal strategies can be effective even against the violently insane.

Running worked even better than verbal resistance. Although researchers who relied on rape crisis center records and police records report a 55% rape completion rate against those who attempted to flee, broader studies … indicate that only 15% of women who attempted to flee were raped. Running was also associated with a lower rate of injury.

Forceful physical resistance was an extremely successful strategy. The completed rape rate dropped to between 45% and 14% [to at least 45% and as low as 14%] when the rapist's attempt was met with violent physical force. Striking was more successful than pushing or wrestling. Physical resistance also appears to be more effective when assault occurs outdoors.

Women are sometimes advised that fighting back will increase their risk of injury. There are two problems with this argument.

First, research shows that physical resistance does not cause further injury to the resister. While there is a correlation between resistance and a somewhat higher rate of physical injury (at most 3%), researchers who examined the sequence of events found that injury usually occurred before resistance. In other words, resisters were not injured because they had resisted: rather, being injured motivated them to fight back. After the initial injury, forceful resistance did not increase the resister's risk of further damage.

Second, this argument overlooks the fact that a woman who does not resist is virtually guaranteed to suffer the emotional and physical injury of the rape itself. Even when resisters are injured, the injury is typically much less severe than a completed rape would have been. Of those 40% of resisters who suffered physical damage, only 7% suffered injury as severe as a dislodged tooth. A woman who fights back incurs no demonstrable chance of additional injury, but she gains a 55-86% chance of avoiding rape altogether.”