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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On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States, according to findings released December 14 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the course of a year, that equals more than 12 million women and men. Those numbers only tell part of the story – more than 1 million women reported being raped in a year and over 6 million women and men were victims of stalking in a year, the report says.

“This landmark report paints a clear picture of the devastating impact these violent acts have on the lives of millions of Americans,” said Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “The information collected in this ongoing survey will serve as a vital tool in the Administration’s efforts to combat domestic violence and sexual abuse. And the report underscores the importance of ourAdministration’s work to combat domestic violence and sexual assault.”

The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, or NISVS, is one of CDC’s latest public health surveillance systems and is designed to better describe and monitor the magnitude of sexual violence, stalking and intimate partner violence victimization in the United States. It is the first survey of its kind to provide simultaneous national and state-level prevalence estimates of violence for all states. Launched in 2010, NISVS also provides data on several types of violence that have not previously been measured in a national population-based survey.

“This report highlights the heavy toll that sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence places on adults in this country. These forms of violence take the largest toll on women, who are more likely to report immediate impacts and long-term health problems caused by their victimization,” said Linda C. Degutis, Dr.P.H., M.S.N., director of CDC′s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “Much victimization begins early in life, but the consequences can last a lifetime.”

The report findings also underscore violence as a major public health burden and demonstrate how violence can have impacts that last a lifetime. For instance, the findings indicate female victims of violence had a significantly higher prevalence of long-term health problems, including irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes, frequent headaches, chronic pain, and difficulty sleeping. And nearly twice as many women who were victims of violence reported having asthma, compared to women who did not report violence victimization.

“The health problems caused by violence remind us of the importance of prevention,” said Howard Spivak, M.D., director of the Division of Violence Prevention in CDC’s Injury Center. “In addition to intervening and providing services, prevention efforts need to start earlier in life, with the ultimate goal of preventing all of these types of violence before they start.”

NISVS provides data that can help inform policies and programs aimed at preventing violence as well as addressing the specific information needs of state and national governmental and nongovernmental organizations, while providing an initial benchmark for tracking the effectiveness of prevention efforts.

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