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Aid centers: Most ***ual assault victims in 2002 were minors; one-third
were under 12
By Ruth Sinai
More than 2,300 girls and boys under the age of 12 were victims of ***ual
assault in the past
year, constituting 30 percent of the new cases re****ted to the ***ual
assault aid centers.
Almost 26 percent of the victims were 13 to 18 years old.
According to the aid centers association's annual re****t, 32,533 people
called the 10 centers
last year, marking a 9-percent increase on 2001. However, the number of
new calls went down
from 8,669 in 2001 to 7,802 in 2002.
Association manager, Hila Karner-Suliman, attributes the decrease to the
acute economic and
security situation. "Many of the girls and women say they simply cannot
deal with the emotional
stress of a ***ual assault complaint on top of their other problems," she
said.
Forty percent of the ***ual assaults were carried out in the victim's
home. "The home, of all
places, which should be a safe, protective and sup****ting place, is where
many of the horrors
take place," states the re****t. About half of the victims refrained from
going to the police.
The most prevalent attack - 26 percent of the new calls - was rape,
including gang rape. About
16 percent of the callers complained about ***** by fathers (6.5
percent), brothers (2.6
percent) or other relatives. Some 14 percent complained of indecent acts.
About 30 percent of the 110 gang rape victims who called the Tel Aviv aid
center were men. Out
of 519 calls re****ting non-gang rape to this center, 25 percent were men.
Some 20 percent of
the victims of indecent acts re****ted in Tel Aviv were men.
"The ***ual assault of boys, male youths and men is a hushed-up crime,
which is almost
completely absent from discourse in Israeli society," the re****t states.
"It does not occur to
the victims that anyone would listen to their ordeal."
The centers operate a hotline and sup****t groups, and accompany the
victims during the criminal
procedures.
The great vulnerability of girls under 12 "derives from the inherent
naivety of the child's
worldview, which is filled with unreserved confidence in adults and the
purity of their
meaning, without the ability to resist them, and lacking the ability to
distinguish between
good and evil, right and wrong, according to adult society's criteria,"
the re****t says. The
re****t is to be presented today to the president's wife, Gila Katsav.
According to the re****t, the largest group of victims - constituting 19
percent - were attacked
by family relatives, 4.2 percent were attacked by a spouse, and 14 percent
by a friend or
acquaintance. Only 12 percent of the assaults were perpetrated by a
complete stranger.
In addition to new calls, the centers received more than 9,000 repeat
calls about ***ual
assaults and 1,458 calls about violence by a spouse or parents. The
remaining calls were
requests for information and complaints of various kinds of distress
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