One in four women will be sexually assaulted during their college years, and this statistic does not seem to be declining.
Using humor and audience interaction to lighten a heavy subject, Rebecca Tieder and Kelly Walker presented a program called Let's Talk About IT
sponsored by POWER as part of Sexual Awareness Week last night at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.
Our hope this year is to send a very inclusive message: however you choose to express your sexuality it needs to be consensual said Char Kopchick, director of Health and Wellness at Ohio University. It is not our job to say what you should or should or should not do as far as being sexually active.
Walker, a victim of sexual assault, and Tieder began the program by asking what came to the mostly student audience's mind when they heard the word it. The collective response was sex.
Tieder and Walker do not think sex is evil
they said. They loosened the audience up by asking what other words they used for the male genitalia.
Sex is fun
regardless of whether we have a penis or not
Tieder said.
Tieder and Walker were chosen as speakers this year instead of Katie Kesner, who had been the speaker for the past three years. Tieder and Walker reached a different audience, said Kopchick.
I really like how they started out with laughter and jokes because it made everyone unconsciously open up to the topic
said freshman Kate Rogers.
Walker and Tieder, lifelong friends, attended the University of Florida and were in the same sorority. They stressed the importance of friendship in preventing and healing the damage of sexual assault.
Tieder advised the audience to believe a friend if he or she says she has been sexually assaulted. Only 2 percent of rape accusations are false, she said. She also advised audience members to communicate their sexual desires with their friends so that they are able to prevent an unwanted sexually situation.
Walker shared her personal experiences with the audience.
I'm a statistic
Walker said. I didn't choose to become a statistic
but I chose to become a survivor.
Eighty-four percent of rapes occur by someone the victim knows, and six out of ten occur in the home of the victim or the assaulter, she said.
Walker was intoxicated, and possibly drugged, when a visiting male friend raped her, Walker said. She did not know that she had been raped until she found out she was pregnant. One in 15 rapes result in pregnancy.
If some one is impaired under the influence
that is not consensual sex
Kopchick said. So many people don't even know they're committing sexual battery.
According to Ohio law, sex under the influence can result in a charge of sexual battering, which is one of the six types of sexual assault.
Sexual assault can include a multitude of things, including oral sex, or a guy grabbing a girl's butt at a party, Kopchick said.
But sexual assault can go both ways. As many as one in six males will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, Tieder and Walker said.
Tieder and Walker do not like to present sex and sexual assault as the stereotypical male versus female conflict, they said.
We need to be just as aware as females because it can happen to males too
