Scarleteen

I disagree with what I read on your website,that you consider rape to be unwanted touch of your butt or chest. I had that happen to me and my shrink told me it was only sexual harrassment.

Hi IAmScared,

The reason we include that in our definition of sexual assault is because we want people to understand that sexual assault is, "when one person wants and pursues a sexual act on, to or inside another person who does not want to participate, and who does not fully and freely consent to take part in that act." Unwanted sexual touching of any part of the body falls within that definition.

Now some people, like your therapist, define sexual assault more narrowly (for instance, maybe they assume that there have to be genitals involved). But most people who work with survivors define it more broadly, to reflect all the ways sexual assault can look in the real world. Ultimately, you get to decide how you define what happened to you. If it's not comfortable for you to describe it as assault, then you can label it as something else. Does that all make sense?

It doesn't make sense.It's like me saying a person who touched my boobs without my consent raped me.

Can I ask what part of it does't make sense, given the definition I described in my first post? Too, I'm not saying you have to define something that happened to you any given way; simply that someone forcibly touching another persons' breasts without their consent falls under the definition of sexual assault used by professionals who work with survivors.

Is sexual assault the same thing as rape?

Rape is more of a cultural/vague term. Sexual assault is a legal term and one used more in healthcare. It is also more specific. Some people use them interchangeably, others do not.

We’re more inclined to use terms like sexual abuse and assault here, simply because they are better defined.

That said, you get to call things that have happened to you what you want to. In your posts, I am seeing a pattern of what sounds like sexual abuses and I worry that you seeming to want to dismiss them as abuses might be making you more vulnerable to them, though.