As rape becomes recognized as a public health issue, new paradigms must be constructed to discover viable solutions to this highly prevalent problem. Although the injury prevention field has begun to examine rape and offer solutions, physical injuries surrounding rape tend to become the focus in injury prevention literature, thereby minimizing the trauma of rape itself. This article applies William Haddon's ten general strategies for injury prevention to rape, in order to shift our focus away from women and their behavior onto the systemic causes of rape. These strategies have the advantage of encompassing a wide variety of injury reduction measures from many hazards and have provided the means to conceptualize solutions to an extensive range of issues. The application of these strategies emphasizes sociocultural factors and perpetrator, not victim, responsibility. Through this process, a broader range of normative and structural changes can be identified to promote rape prevention.
PIP: This paper reviews literature on injury prevention and rape; defines the hazard involved in rape; and applies Haddon's model to present a more encompassing framework for rape prevention. For the purposes of this paper, rape is defined as forced sexual penetration of victim by an offender. This paper focuses on heterosexual rape, since the overwhelming majority of victims are female and perpetrators are male. Heterosexual rape is a serious problem; the National Crime Survey estimated that approximately 12 of every 100,000 women were victims of rape or attempted rape during its 1986 surveillance. The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration estimated that for every reported rape, 3-10 rapes are not reported. The most common form of rape is acquaintance rape, yet there is widely held conception that stranger rape is the only genuine form of rape. In spite of the magnitude of this problem, injury prevention strategies aimed at rape remain inadequate. Sociocultural beliefs that place blame on the victim and ignore the importance of male behavior fail to address the systematic causes of rape. A potential way to remove these cultural blinders lies in applying William Haddon's 10 general strategies for injury prevention to rape. These strategies are intended to encompass all injury reduction measures potentially available to reduce damage to animate and inanimate structures and symptoms from any and all environmental hazards.