what to do if your being accused of sexual assault

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Brainstorm the process of healing from sexual trauma with these steps to ensure your safety, assistance y'all process your experience and develop coping skills for long-term recovery.

The trauma of sexual assault can go out survivors with physical, emotional and psychological wounds. Each survivor has different experiences and needs, and may process and recover from trauma in their own mode.

To outline some full general steps toward healing, we spoke with Jessica Klein, senior lecturer in the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work's Department of Developed Mental Health and Health. Klein, who specializes in the clinical treatment of sexual trauma survivors, hopes to provide victims of sexual assail with effective tools for processing their trauma while empowering them to brand their own decisions when information technology comes to reporting the assault, pursuing legal activeness and seeking treatment.

Co-ordinate to Klein, these are the six steps that every survivor should take in the aftermath of an assault:

1. Ensure your own safety

Afterward the experience of sexual trauma, "the commencement and nigh of import cistron should exist prioritizing your condom and well-beingness," Klein said. In the immediate aftermath of an assail, most people experience stupor, derealization, and a sense of being overwhelmed. Later on an assail, the limbic system—the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions and triggering fight or flying reactions to perceived threats—is "firing on all cylinders," she said.

To constitute a sense of safety and normalcy, Klein recommends survivors use any coping mechanisms that have helped them feel comfortable in the face of major stressors in the past. "It can mean calling your closest friend or trusted family fellow member to come over and stay with you, or getting into bed under layers of blankets—whatever will help y'all experience a niggling bit safer in your own torso," Klein said.

2. Accomplish out for support

Once you feel more physically rubber, it'due south important to connect with a person you trust for support. After shock, sexual trauma survivors often feel depression, anxiety and dissociation. In a culture rampant with victim-blaming and doubt surrounding accounts of sexual assault—which may exacerbate trauma—information technology is crucial to confide in someone y'all fully trust. Klein recommends finding a person who will not pry into the details of the feel, simply who is at that place to say, 'I am distressing this happened to you. Are y'all feeling safe? How tin I assistance you lot?'

If you adopt to express your experience and emotions anonymously, Klein encourages victims to telephone call a crisis hotline such equally the National Sexual Assail Hotline. Hotline operators are trained to offer back up, hear your story, connect yous with resources for treatment and provide you with information on how to report the law-breaking.

3. Consider your medical options

Many survivors may be reluctant to pursue medical attention in the immediate wake of a sexual assault. Information technology is ultimately up to y'all to determine what to do in accordance with your ain physical, psychological and emotional needs.

Choosing to go to the hospital or a medical rape heart after an assault can be benign for a number of reasons. Most critically, health intendance practitioners can treat bodily injury and assistance ensure your sexual and physical health. Additionally, they tin provide you lot with a rape kit—a sexual assault forensic examination that tin can be used to collect Deoxyribonucleic acid, blood samples and other bear witness. If you lot are not gear up to file a police report immediately, some centers can freeze the evidence and store it for afterward access.

"Making the conclusion to obtain a rape kit can exist scary, because in a style, you're admitting to yourself and to others what has happened," Klein said. But once you feel confident making the decision, Klein says you should go through with the process as rapidly every bit possible. In many places, the window for collecting bodily forensic evidence is just 72 hours (though in the state of California information technology is 96 hours). If possible, victims who cull to go an exam are encouraged not to shower, comb their hair, use the restroom or modify their clothes before completing the rape kit.

4. Process your experience

The want to but avoid addressing or processing the incident is a common phenomenon amongst survivors. "Just healing doesn't happen through avoidance," Klein said. "Yous can't become around it, over it or under information technology. Y'all accept to become through information technology." Learning healthy coping habits—which may be as unproblematic every bit journaling, walking or meditating—can help survivors effectively process their trauma.

Though not every survivor needs therapy, many display symptoms feature of both acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. "Many survivors doubt their own intuition," Klein said. "Even though they logically know they were assaulted, paralyzing anxiety tin brand them wonder, 'was it my error? Was information technology actually consensual?'" This sense of guilt can worsen the negative psychological furnishings of trauma. Every bit such, therapy may provide an effective forum for mediating, understanding and coping with your emotions.

Klein recommends seeking out a clinician who is specifically trained to address sexual trauma. Memory is dynamic and changing, and each time you lot recollect an event, your brain forms new associations, thereby modifying the memory. As such, therapy can provide a safe space to remember your trauma, and over fourth dimension, tin decrease the negative psychological effects associated with this exercise.

five. Consider your legal options

Some survivors are determined that they want to file a police report or prosecute the attacker. For many others, the conclusion is not so cut and dry out; they may be reluctant to report the assault immediately and may be confused as to what they should do next.

At that place are many reasons survivors may not want to report their assault to the authorities or pursue legal action. A major consideration for almost victims is the fact that their assailant was someone they know and with whom they may share mutual friends, family unit or acquaintances. In fact, a staggering 70 per centum of sexual assaults are committed by a person the victim knows. Every bit such, survivors are often plagued with anxiety, shame and fear of what others will think.

The prospect of reliving their trauma past filing a written report, speaking with law enforcement officials and possibly testifying against the perpetrator in court tin also dissuade victims from coming forward. Klein points to the fact that those who have had negative experiences with constabulary in the past may distrust law enforcement, which can also deter reporting.

If you are struggling with how best to support a loved i who has been assaulted, Klein recommends reinforcing to the survivor that they have options—fifty-fifty when they experience trapped and completely powerless. "Assail is someone taking away your power. Returning that power to the victim often means encouraging them to go on however feels most empowering to them. This might hateful filing a written report, telling their story or seeking justice by their own will," Klein said.

6. Reconnect to yourself and your life

"Until you lot process your trauma and learn how to actively cope, it can be difficult to feel like yourself once again," Klein said.

Consider the activities and social outings you may have avoided in the backwash of your trauma. Stay attuned to your emotions and evaluate if yous are gear up to go back to that exercise class or join your friends at a party. "A little internal nudge can be good, just never push yourself too far to be social when you aren't yet ready. Accept everything day by day," she said.

At this phase, Klein recommends group therapy, which can reduce fright, convalesce depression and have other positive psychological, emotional and social benefits. Having the back up of a community that understands what you lot have been through tin can be a crucial factor in your long-term recovery.

If you or anyone you know has been the victim of sexual abuse or a sexual assault, delight visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) for more data.

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Source: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu/news/6-things-to-do-after-youve-been-sexually-assaulted

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