Male Sexual Assault and Rape: Who Seeks Counseling?

Abstract

This work rests on responses from 219 male sexual assault and rape victims who self-reported their victimization in the 1994-1996 Violence and Threats of Violence Against Women and Men in the United States survey. The authors expected that men who reported being severely assaulted would be more likely than others to seek counseling. They defined severely assaulted as having been penetrated, assaulted with a weapon, threatened, self-reported sustaining physical injuries, sought medical care, and/or reported the assault to the police. However, in their logistic model that explores who sought counseling, only one variable was significant. The odds of seeking counseling for men who reported being penetrated had significantly lower odds of seeking counseling all else equal.

Rape victim and perpetrator blame and the Just World hypothesis: The influence of victim gender and age

“…Therefore, he may expect to be met by someone carrying negative attributional biases towards male rape victims in general and perhaps mainly towards a young victim, whom other men think should be able to fight off the attacker. Furthermore, the rape victim encounters other instances such as health services that might subject the victim further to negative treatment (Campbell & Raja, 1999;Davies & Rogers, 2006;Monk-Turner & Light (2010). A young male victim may risk being treated negatively in several instances if met by people with attitudes such as those shown in the present study, which contributes towards explaining the finding of male rape victims not reporting to the police (Walker et al, 2005).…”

Male‐on‐male sexual assault: Victim, offender and offence characteristics

“…Men might also see sexual assault as an attack on their masculinity (Calderwood, ), and may therefore be embarrassed to admit to being assaulted or not being able to resist and fight their attacker off. Some men have also considered whether they may have consented to the attack due to them not being able to resist (Monk‐Turner & Light, ). The emotion of self‐blame can be further heightened by myths surrounding rape and sexual assault, ranging from provoking the attack in some way or not doing enough to prevent the assault from taking place (Davies, ).…”

Needs of Male Sexual Assault Victims in the U.S. Armed Forces

“…However, as discussed in more detail in Chapter Four, male victims appear to be reluctant to seek help (Masho and Alvanzo, 2009;Monk-Turner and Light, 2010;Severance, Debus, and Davis, 2017). Therefore, it is likely that only the victims with the most-pressing injuries receive immediate medical care.…”

“…Men, in particular, were eight times more likely to report an assault to police if they needed medical attention (Pino and Meier, 1999). Physical injury may increase the odds of male victims seeking help, but research on this association is mixed (Masho and Alvanzo, 2009;Monk-Turner and Light, 2010;Pino and Meier, 1999).…”

“…Again, this finding appears to be consistent with male victims in the civilian population who commonly do not seek any help following an assault. Research suggests that, of civilian men who are sexually assaulted, 30 percent or less seek any kind of help (Masho and Alvanzo, 2009;Monk-Turner and Light, 2010).…”