Washington, U.S.A. — Strangers committed about 1.8 million nonfatal violent crimes in 2010, or about 38 percent of all nonfatal violent victimizations during the year, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced on December 11. This represents a 77 percent decline from 7.9 million nonfatal violent crimes committed by strangers in 1993, according to the earliest available data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).

During a more recent period from 2001 to 2010, the rate of violence committed by strangers declined 47 percent and the rate committed by offenders the victims knew declined by 41 percent. The percentage declines for these two rates were not statistically different.

In the NCVS, nonfatal violent crimes include rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault. Simple assault (assault not involving an injury or a weapon) made up 60 percent of violent victimizations committed by strangers in 2010, followed by aggravated assault (20 percent), robbery (17 percent) and rape or sexual assault (two percent).

More than half (52 percent) of all robberies in 2005-10 were committed by strangers, down from nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of robberies in 1993-98. Aggravated assaults and simple assaults committed by strangers also declined between the two periods, while the percentage of rapes and sexual assaults remained stable.

Based on data from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), among homicides in which the victim-offender relationship could be determined, strangers committed between 21 percent and 27 percent of homicides from 1993 to 2008, compared to between 73 percent and 79 percent of homicides committed by offenders known to the victims.

In 2010, males (9.5 victimizations per 1,000 males) experienced violence by strangers at nearly twice the rate of females (4.7 per 1,000). From 1993 to 2010, males (down 83 percent) experienced a larger decline than females (down 76 percent) in the rate of violence committed by strangers.

In each time period studied, young adults ages 18 to 24, people who were never married, and American Indians or Alaska Natives had the highest rates of violent victimization by a stranger among all groups in the respective categories. In 2005-10, people age 65 or older experienced the lowest rates (1.6 per 1,000) of violent victimization by strangers.

Other findings from 2005-10 include:

• Persons in urban areas experienced higher rates of violent victimizations by strangers than persons in suburban and rural areas.
• A higher percentage of violence by strangers occurred in public places (51 percent) (e.g., commercial establishments, parking lots or garages, open areas, streets or aboard public transportation) than in private places (26 percent).
• Strangers committed about nine percent of violent crimes that occurred in the victim’s home.
• About half of violent victimizations committed by strangers occurred while the victims were away from home traveling, shopping or doing leisure activities.
• About 10 percent of violent crimes committed by strangers involved a firearm, compared to five percent of violent crimes committed by someone the victim knew.
• About 22 percent of victims of violence committed by strangers were injured, compared to 31 percent of victims who knew the offender.

The NCVS collects information from victims on the frequency, characteristics and consequences of criminal victimization, using a nationally representative sample of about 40,000 households comprising nearly 75,000 persons. In the FBI’s SHR program, a part of the Uniform Crime Reporting program, law enforcement agencies report monthly supplemental data about homicide incidents with details on location, victim, and offender characteristics.

The report, Violent Victimization Committed by Strangers, 1993-2010 (NCJ 239424), was written by BJS statistician Erika Harrell. The report, related documents and additional information about the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ statistical publications and programs can be found on the BJS website at http://www.bjs.gov.

Image Courtesy : Daryl Lang / Shutterstock.com

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April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Jenny Lynn Anderson is encouraging women to speak out and acknowledge violence against women. Her advocacy is supported in her recently published book ‘Room 939: 15 Minutes of Horror, 20 Years of Healing’.

Her story is based on surviving a brutal robbery and sexual assault in a downtown Atlanta hotel 22 years ago. She offers steps leading to healing and restoration for women who have experienced sexual violence.

Every two minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Anderson’s two minutes came when she was sexually assaulted at the age of 28 while attending a convention.  In the two decades since that assault, she’s gone through all the emotional stages (shame, denial, anger, avoidance, post-traumatic stress, depression, and forgiveness).  It took 20 years for her to seek counseling to start the healing process and to find the courage to help others by sharing her story.

Today, Anderson is encouraging those who have been sexually assaulted not to consider themselves as victims – but rather as survivors.  “It’s a matter of choice in how you think about it,” she explains, “and I choose to call myself a survivor.  It’s a key to recovery.”

“Women are not empowered on this topic,” Anderson continues. “First of all, going through a sexual assault turns the woman who has been traumatized inward – they are not comfortable talking about it even with close friends.

Understanding what you’re going through is the first step to any kind of recovery.  More than anything, sexual assault and rape victims don’t want to be labeled as such – it makes you feel branded for life with something so hideous and nasty no one will talk about it,” she adds.

Opening up and going to a counselor or other professional for help is critical to the healing process.  “But there’s a hesitation,” Anderson explains.  “You don’t want to re-open wounds, yet if you don’t, you could possibly suffer other mental stresses such as depression.”

Victims of sexual assault are six times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.(1) “Post-traumatic stress can keep survivors of sexual assault from recovering,” Anderson says.  “It was 20 years before I sought counseling and that was much too long to wait,” Anderson adds.

Entering counseling began the healing process and speaking out publicly is helping to complete it. Since publishing Room 939, she has travelled the state speaking to womens’ groups, rape/sexual assault crisis centers, book clubs, recovery groups, civic organizations and others.

Anderson’s advice to those who are sexually assaulted – three steps to healing:

For more information about Jenny Lynn Anderson and her book, go to www.jennylynnanderson.com

(1) World Health Organization, 2002

Image Courtesy of  http://www.jennylynnanderson.com/

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Former Delaware pediatrician, Dr. Earl Bradley was sentenced on August 26 to 14 life sentences without the possibility of parole. He was convicted of 14 counts of rape and received an additional 160 years for sexually abusing 103 of his patients from 1998 to 2009.

He was originally indicted for 470 counts of rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation of a child; that number was later consolidated to just 24 through negotiations with lawyers. During his career from 1994 to his arrest in 2009, he received a number of complaints from patients, parents and colleagues, and was the focus of two police investigations.

The Medical Board of Directors in Delaware was supposedly contacted a number of times in regards to his unprofessional conduct with his patients, but the Medical Board insists it never received any allegations concerning Bradley until after his arrest.

The two initial police investigations were never granted permission for a search warrant, and so without any physical evidence, the Delaware police were unable to continue their investigations. Despite the complaints lodged against Bradley while he was a licensed pediatrician, the truth of the harm he was doing to his patients was beyond what anyone suspected.

When the police finally were able to get a search warrant after a two-year old girl complained to her mother about Bradley hurting her genitals, they were able to seize 83 tapes and DVDs showing Bradley molesting young children.

In the trial, one of the police officers involved in the case testified that the average age of his victims was only three years old, because they were not as verbal as older children. He would often force the children to perform oral sex on him, and then give them colored ice to cover up any blood or swelling.

Additionally, in the videos he is seen sometimes grabbing a child by the head and throwing the child on a couch after forcing the child to perform sex acts. As the horrific details of this case begin to come out, people are questioning how this pediatrician was allowed to practice medicine for so long without his more sinister actions being found out.

Following Bradley’s arrest, Governor Jack Markell asked Linda L. Ammons, the dean of the Widener University School of Law, to compile a report reviewing the current laws and policies in place. Her 62-page report outlined 68 recommended changes, while avoiding placing blame on any single organization or practice.

Following the report, Gov. Markell passed nine laws that would help to prevent misconduct like this to continue undetected by tightening regulations and encouraging both the medical and police communities to work together with suspected physician misconduct and child abuse.

Billed by Ammons’ report as the “pedophilia case of the century,” the atrocities uncovered during this case have encouraged other states to review their reporting policies regarding physicians as well.

As Earl Bradley begins his permanent internment in prison, the families and victims of those he hurt have found some measure of justice for the actions incurred upon them and now have the task of healing from the damage caused by Bradley’s insidious actions.

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Rihanna recently made headlines for her controversial new music video for her song, “Man Down.” The video opens with a shot of Rihanna hiding above a crowd in a train station, appearing nervous yet determined. She spots a man, pulls the trigger, and leaves. Then the song begins.

At first, the plot is unclear as most of the video involves Rihanna walking around a small Caribbean community, playing with children and kissing the elderly on the cheek. This is the video that’s been making everyone furious?

Near the end of the song, she is dancing at a party and spots the man who she will eventually shoot. He approaches her and is very persistently groping her. She then pushes him away multiple times and she finally leaves the party alone, but does not realize that he is following her. When she does turn around, he pushes her into an isolated area and she tries to escape, but it does not work. The song fades out with him leaving the scene with his shirt ripped and Rihanna is crying on the floor, implying that she has been raped.

The final shot is Rihanna searching frantically through her drawers in her home, until she finally pulls out a gun.

The outrage that has followed the release of this video is due to the fact that Rihanna has had a very public history of domestic abuse from singer Chris Brown. He was seen beating her in a car, and then photos were released of Rihanna’s face, swollen and bruised.

Melissa Henson, director of communications and public education for the Parents Television Council, said in a press release that: Rihanna’s personal story and status as a celebrity superstar provided a golden opportunity for the singer to send an important message to female victims of rape and domestic violence.” Additionally, the PTC is calling for television stations BET and MTV to ban the video.

On June 1, Rihanna responded to the criticism by tweeting, “I’m a 23 year old rockstar with NO KIDS! What’s up with everybody wantin me to be a parent?”  She went on to say, “U can’t hide your kids from society, or they’ll never learn how to adapt! This is the REAL WORLD!”

Though she got a restraining order from Brown, Rihanna has never been an avid spokesperson for domestic abuse, and has received a lot of criticism for not speaking out about the issue. Additionally, her previous single “S&M” includes the line “sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me.”

It is very confused how this song received virtually no outrage (aside from the video being quietly banned from many television stations), but Rihanna taking revenge on someone who hurt her is creating such a strong divide among the public.

On the one hand, women who look up to Rihanna may take this as encouragement to take revenge on those who have hurt her. On the other hand, the anger festering within victims of abuse is often bottled up, and ignored.

This video could also be an artistic expression of those feelings that Rihanna held inside during the period of time. Even the lyrics “I didn’t mean to end his life, I know it wasn’t right” are far better than other songs on the radio, which are also about murder and other not-so-friendly themes.

While Rihanna could probably use a better PR team, there are far worse music videos featuring misogynistic themes, and vulgar lyrics that the PTC could spend time criticizing, instead of this one.

Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

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The news that Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been taken into custody by the police at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, on Saturday, shocked not only his supporters but his opponents alike.

The chief of the International Monetary Fund is facing charges of attempted rape, criminal sexual act and unlawful imprisonment of a 32-year-old hotel maid. The maid, who went inside his penthouse suite at a hotel near Times Square to clean it, was able to identify the 62-year-old married father of four out of a line-up. She was then taken to a hospital for a “forensic examination” requested by prosecutors to obtain more evidence in the case, defense lawyer William Taylor said in the report by The Independent.

According to the maid’s account, she entered the suite in the belief that it was unoccupied. The New York Police Department spokesman Paul J. Browne relayed that not only did Mr. Strauss-Kahn emerge from the bathroom naked, but he chased her down a hallway and sexually assaulted her. After breaking free a second time, she escaped and informed hotel staff of what had happened.

When detectives arrived moments later, he had already gone. “It looked like he got out of there in a hurry,” Browne said.

Hugh Schofield of BBC News in Paris explained that the first reaction of many ordinary French people is that ‘this had got to be a put-up job.’ The former French finance minister has recently come to be seen as a realistic potential challenger of Nicolas Sarkozy in the upcoming French presidential elections in 2012. His popularity and reputation as an excellent politician has garnered him a lot of admiration and credibility on the political scene but the arrest is threatening to dissolve his hopes for candidacy. The long-divided Socialists are now thrown into revived turmoil over who they can turn to for credible representation in the election, The Independent reported. According to the paper, even some of Mr Strauss-Kahn’s adversaries were stunned.

“It’s totally hallucinating. If it is true, this would be a historic moment, but in the negative sense, for French political life,” said Dominique Paille, a political rival to Strauss-Kahn on the center right, on BFM television. Still, he urged, “I hope that everyone respects the presumption of innocence. I cannot manage to believe this affair.”

The IMF chief’s wife, Anne Sinclair, has expressed staunch support. “I do not believe for one second the accusations brought against my husband. I have no doubt his innocence will be established.” However, the BBC could reveal that Mr Strauss-Kahn goes under the nicknamed ‘Chaud Lapin’ (literally Hot Rabbit) due to his reputation as a ladies’ man. An affair with a Hungarian economist have before threatened to derail his career.

Speaking outside the court in Manhattan on Monday, Mr Taylor told reporters that Mr Strauss-Kahn had “willingly consented to a scientific and forensic examination.” A second lawyer informed that his client “intends to vigorously defend these charges and he denies any wrongdoing.”

Given the former French minister’s expected intentions of running for president, and his predicted favorable odds, Paris’ regional councillor Michelle Sabban told AFP, “I am convinced it is an international conspiracy [...] This is a new form of political assassination.”

Strauss-Kahn was supposed to attend a meeting in Berlin on Sunday in connection with the financial bailout of Portugal and Greece. Especially the later was of grave importance as the IMF is responsible for one-third of Greece’s existing loan package, according to the Independent. His presence was going to underline the gravity of the crisis. When Asian markets opened on Monday, the Euro fell half a cent to $1.4063 which reflects the concern that the arrest could affect the bailout plans.

Photo provided by International Monetary Fund

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