Mental health to trauma, what are the unimaginable costs of sexual assault?

Economists measure the cost of health and mental health care and days of productivity lost

What is the cost of sexual assault? The answer depends on whom you ask.

Social and behavioural scientists like me measure the consequences of sexual assault in terms of mental health, physical health and educational outcomes. |BS|  We know that post-traumatic stress symptoms may last for years and even decades. Health is compromised indirectly, in ways unknown and unknowable to victims.

Economists measure the cost of health and mental health care and days of productivity lost. Other costs, however, are intangible, harder to quantify. We might call them quality-of-life issues. What might these costs include?

Two doors

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford might put her desire to have two doors in the front of her house – and the couple’s therapy bills that followed that panic-driven request – into the intangible category.

As for me, I have lived in a single-story house for 25 years. I have avoided leaving my home after dark so that I don’t have to re-enter it. (Sexual assault) Errands I don’t complete in daylight stray into the next day. I ask for restaurant seats against the wall, arrange my desk to face the door, and am always aware of the nearest exits. I have loved successive German shepherd dogs who gave me comfort while I slept and security to stroll my neighbourhood. Twenty-five years ago, I descended a staircase and encountered a man wielding a tire iron. He bludgeoned my head and tried to rape me.

I suffered multiple surgeries, endured years of therapy, and still startle more easily than a cat. But far from being damaged, I consider myself thriving, some might say flourishing – despite the costs I incur. I have fixed the problem of who lurks on the first floor by not having a second one. But the problem of entering my house after dark remains. I am wary of who may be there when I return, even with multiple locks, an alarm system and those sweet German shepherds. | Business Standard  

I was raped at 16: Padma Lakshmi opens up about being silent on her rape

I understand why a woman would wait years to disclose a sexual assault.

Padma Lakshmi : When I was 16 years old, I started dating a guy I met at the Puente Hills Mall in a Los Angeles suburb. I worked there after school at the accessories counter at Robinsons-May. He worked at a high-end men’s store. He would come in wearing a gray silk suit and flirt with me. He was in college, and I thought he was charming and handsome. He was 23.

When we went out, he would park the car and come in and sit on our couch and talk to my mother. He never brought me home late on a school night. We were intimate to a point, but he knew that I was a virgin and that I was unsure of when I would be ready to have sex.| Business Standard

On New Year’s Eve, just a few months after we first started dating, he raped me.

I have been turning that incident over in my head throughout the past week, as two women have come forward to detail accusations against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Christine Blasey Ford said he climbed on her and covered her mouth during an attempted rape when they were both in high school, and Deborah Ramirez said he exposed himself to her when they were in college.

On Friday, President Trump tweeted that if what Dr. Blasey said was true, she would have filed a police report years ago. But I understand (BS) why both women would keep this information to themselves for so many years, without involving the police. For years, I did the same thing. On Friday, I tweeted about what had happened to me so many years ago.

You may want to know if I had been drinking on the night of my rape. It doesn’t matter, but I was not drunk. Maybe you will want to know what I was wearing or if I had been ambiguous about my desires. It still doesn’t matter, but I was wearing a long-sleeved, black Betsey Johnson maxi dress that revealed only my shoulders.

You may want to know if I had been drinking on the night of my rape. It doesn’t matter, but I was not drunk. Maybe you will want to know what I was wearing or if I had been ambiguous about my desires. It still doesn’t matter, but I was wearing a long-sleeved, black Betsey Johnson maxi dress that revealed only my shoulders.

The two of us had gone to a couple of parties. Afterward, we went to his apartment. While we were talking, I was so tired that I lay on the bed and fell asleep.

International News : The next thing I remember is waking up to a very sharp stabbing pain like a knife blade between my legs. He was on top of me. I asked, “What are you doing?” He said, “It will only hurt for a while.” “Please don’t do this,” I screamed.

The pain was excruciating, and as he continued, my tears felt like fear.

Afterward, he said, “I thought it would hurt less if you were asleep.” Then he drove me home.

I didn’t report it. Not to my mother, not to my friends and certainly not to the police. At first I was in shock. That evening, I let my mother know when I was home, then went to sleep, hoping to forget that night.

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