8-12-2012 Indiana:
About one in five Hoosier women have been victims of rape at some point in their lifetime, according to recent shocking statistics from the Centers for Disease Control (Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)).
And most know their rapist.
Very well.
“People think there are just these crazy rapists here and there that just attack people,” said Dr. Julia Heiman, director of Indiana University's The Kinsey Institute for Research on Sex, Gender and Reproduction. “And there are some, but the majority of this happens between people who know each other.”
Husbands, boyfriends, friends and acquaintances are more common offenders than the random rape acts headlined in the media. And Heiman said many victims are afraid no one will believe those intimate with them assaulted them, which is one reason less than half of rape and assault cases being reported to authorities.
That's a statistic that has stunned many local officials in light of a recent study showing female Indiana high school students have the second-highest rate in the nation of forced sexual intercourse at 17.3 percent. And if most never report the abuse, educators are left to wonder how many students are being assaulted before graduation.
Michelle Sulich, Guidance Director at Merrillville High School, said she was surprised at the numbers.
“The data is rather shocking and alarming. ... We need to make resources available for these kids so they know where to go if they do experience something.”
Barbara Bullock, a clinical social worker at IU Northwest, said about every three weeks someone new comes to her seeking help after being sexually assaulted or finding out they have an sexually transmitted disease.
She said she thinks the assault numbers are rising in part from “faceless dating” that comes with the growing popularity of social media. People arrange for meetings with different expectations and before really knowing the other person, she said, and a few chats mentally equating to dates in the minds of a techie generation.
But other aspects of popular culture have also contributed to the problem, Bullock said, with children listening to violent rap songs and watching graphic videos at younger and younger ages.
“Those videos tend to objectify females, denigrate women with derogatory names and they portray women often as property,” Bullock said. “And a lot of that, it gets normalized somewhat in our society amongst our youth.”
Heiman said youth need good images of men and women in the media that don't include sexual force or showcase sexual aggression as being a desirable trait. And unwanted sexual contact is not just a result of physical force, she said, but verbal coercion can also result in sexual assault. ..Continued.. by Sarah Tompkins
August 12, 2012
Staggering rape numbers for Indiana, youths
June 15, 2011
Sex survey riles middle school
I'm not sure they should so concerned over the questions, wait till they see the answer. Reality will hit for sure!6-15-2011 Massachusetts:
Issue of consent at forefront
FITCHBURG — Memorial Middle School Principal Francis G. Thomas said yesterday he has no control over the process of students at the school taking a risk behavior survey that some parents feel contains overtly intimate and sexually suggestive questions.
“I have no control over the process or content,” he said. “Whether I oppose it or not, it’s not my decision. I was told to give it on a particular day and I said, ‘OK.’ ”
He said he also feels students do not answer questions honestly and it puts the district in a bad light.
Mr. Thomas said if it were up to him, students would not be taking the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which asks questions such as:
“Have you ever tried to kill yourself?”
“Have you ever sniffed glue, or breathed the contents of spray cans, or inhaled any paints?”
“With how many people have you had sexual intercourse?”
Another survey, the Youth Program Survey, is given to older students at the school and asks true or false questions such as “I feel comfortable talking with any partner I have about using a condom,” and “I have had oral sex at some point in my life.”
The surveys — taken by Fitchburg students anonymously every other year — were created and are distributed by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 45 states to help monitor priority health-risk behaviors and the prevalence of obesity and asthma among youth and young adults, according to the CDC website.
Federal and state funding is provided to communities to help promote health initiatives based on data collected.
“If it was optional, I wouldn’t have done it,” said Mr. Thomas. “I don’t know who the funding comes to, but it doesn’t benefit me.”
In Fitchburg, Gordon L. Benson, chief executive of LUK Inc., said his agency works collaboratively with Fitchburg Public Schools to administer the survey and with other districts in Central Massachusetts. In the last five years, he said over a dozen districts have participated in the survey administered by LUK.
“Districts use it in different ways,” he explained. “The whole purpose of doing YRBS is to improve health conditions of youth and support them in their development. There is importance for every community in terms of addressing risk issues for youth.”
The issue became heated in Fitchburg when Arlene Tessitore, a parent with two daughters in Grades 7 and 8 at Memorial Middle School, contacted the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, Va., that provides free legal counsel in constitutional rights cases.
With the organization’s assistance, Ms. Tessitore filed a complaint with the Department of Education over administering the survey without parents’ knowledge or written consent.
The complaint alleges that the school district violated federal law by using a “passive” parental consent procedure rather than obtaining actual written consents.
“Every school district has used passive consent,” said Mr. Benson. “I can’t speak to the legal aspects of this. I’m not an attorney. School districts have done their due diligence for what is legal and appropriate to do.”
John W. Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, said if the district published the survey on its website for parents to review and officials informed students of their rights and asked parents for written permission to allow their children to take the surveys, there would not be a problem.
“First, it’s not anonymous,” he said. “They have to give their first name and last initial, and the month and year they were born in. If you ask a child if they ever tried to commit suicide, it would be difficult to keep that anonymous. It’s a way to identify a troubled student if they wanted to.”
Some of the questions, explained Mr. Whitehead, can be self-incriminating.
“It is basic legal protection of American citizens to have a lawyer present for some answers,” he said. “They have Fifth Amendment rights as well. They are not told these things. If you’re walking along the street and a police officer stops you and asks if you have smoked marijuana, you have rights — Fifth Amendment rights and the right to a lawyer.”
Moreover, he argues, many children at the middle-school level do not know about some of the issues included on the survey or heard some of the terminology. Some of the questions are suggestive, he says.
“Most people haven’t sniffed glue,” he said. “All these kids need to do is Google it — it’s suggestive. Kids today are really computer savvy. How do you sniff glue? You put it in a sock. We found out how to do it by Googling it.”
He also alleges the survey isn’t really voluntary. In public schools, teachers are authority figures, he said.
“When I was in school, I was afraid of teachers — if they told me to do something, I did it,” he said. “Most parents don’t know their child is being asked these questions. If they did, they wouldn’t be happy.”
Karen A. Keaveny from Lunenburg has two granddaughters in Grades 5 and 6 at the school. She was picking them up for their mother after school yesterday.
“I don’t think they should ask those questions,” she said. “These kids are only 11 and 12. I really feel with this age group parents should know about it. I just don’t think it is acceptable.”
When her granddaughter Kayla A. Keaveny, 12, was asked if she thought students her age knew what some of the terminology was on the survey, she said, “We do.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what ‘oral something’ is,” said her sister Autumn J. Imprescia, 11.
“Good — you don’t have to know that for a while,” Mr. Thomas said.
Kayla said she also thinks most kids lie on the survey.
“Yeah — just to be funny,” she said.
Joseph W. Bisson, 38, of Fitchburg was picking up his daughter Casey M. Bisson, 12, in Grade 7 at the school. Casey said she has taken the survey twice.
“I’m more of a ‘2000 parent’ versus a late 1980s or ’90s parent,” said Mr. Bisson. “I think it is a good thing for communities, even if we don’t get to see it. I think it is good all around for school systems to know if there is a problem and they need to do something. It is a way to prevent a child from causing harm to himself or making wrong choices if there are programs to help educate. I went to Memorial Middle School and there was nothing to help prepare any of us.”
His daughter, however, said she felt uncomfortable taking the survey.
“I felt uncomfortable answering the drug questions and sex questions,” said Casey. “Or, if I ever did coke or weed. Even though they don’t know who took it (the survey), it felt very awkward. I wish I didn’t have to take it. I answered ‘no’ even if I did it. I was nervous. I don’t think kids tell the truth on them.”
The School Committee is discussing the issue and whether changes to the district’s policies regarding parental consent are required.
Superintendent Andre R. Ravenelle didn’t return calls for comment.
“Not getting written permission violates federal law that protects both the child and parents,” said Mr. Whitehead. “We wrote the policy for them. Just follow federal law; otherwise this is going to come up again.” ..Source.. by Paula J. Owen TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
July 22, 2008
Decline in Teen Sex Levels Off, Survey Shows
7-22-2008 National:
The nation's campaign to get more teenagers to delay sex and to use condoms is faltering, threatening to undermine the highly successful effort to reduce teen pregnancy and protect young people from sexually transmitted diseases, federal officials reported yesterday.
New data from a large government survey (YRBSS: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System 2007) show that by every measure, a decade-long decline in sexual activity among high school students leveled off between 2001 and 2007, and that the rise in condom use by teens flattened out in 2003.
Moreover, the survey found disturbing hints that teen sexual activity may have begun creeping up and that condom use among high school students might be edging downward, though those trend lines have not yet reached a point where statisticians can be sure, officials said.
"The bottom line is: In all these areas, we don't seem to be making the progress we were making before," said Howell Wechsler, acting director of the division of adolescent and school health at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducts the survey. "It's very troubling."
Coming on the heels of reports that one in four teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease and that the teen birth rate has increased for the first time in 15 years, the data are triggering alarm across the ideological spectrum.
"We have a number of signs that are all going exactly in the wrong direction," said Sarah S. Brown, chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "All of us in this field are on red alert."
The new report did not examine the reason for the trends, but experts said there could be many causes, including rising complacency about HIV and AIDS, changing attitudes about sex and pregnancy, shifts in ethnic diversity, and the possibility that there will always be teens who cannot be persuaded to wait.
"The truth is that, as a field, we really don't know what the answer is," Brown said. "There are lots of theories: the economy, classroom education, the messages kids are getting in the digital world where they spend their time. They probably all play a role."
The new figures renewed the heated debate about sex-education classes that focus on abstinence until marriage, which began receiving federal funding during the period covered by the latest survey and have come under increasing criticism that they are ineffective.
"Since we've started pushing abstinence, we have seen no change in the numbers on sexual activity," said John Santelli, chairman of the department of population and family health at Columbia University. "The other piece of it is: Abstinence education spends a good amount of time bashing condoms. So it's not surprising, if that's the message young people are getting, that we're seeing condom use start to decrease."
Proponents of abstinence programs dismissed the criticism, blaming "comprehensive" sex education that emphasizes contraceptive use.
"Contraceptive sex education does not provide practical skills for maintaining or regaining abstinence but typically gives teens a green light to activity that puts them at great risk for acquiring STDs or which serve as gateway-to-intercourse activities," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association.
Others blamed the onslaught of movies, books, advertising and cultural messages that they say glamorize sex.
"The No. 1 movie that all teenage girls want to see right now is 'Sex and the City,' " said Charmaine Yoest, a spokesman for the Family Research Council. "Our culture continues to tell them the way to be cool is to dress provocatively and to consider nonmarital sexual activity to be normative."
The proportion of teenagers reporting having sexual intercourse rose steadily through the 1970s and 1980s, fueling a sharp rise in teen pregnancy. The trend reversed around 1991 because of AIDS, changing mores about sex and other factors. At the same time, more sexually active teens started using condoms and other contraceptive measures. Together, the trends have pushed the U.S. teen pregnancy rate to historic lows.
The first sign that trend might be reversing came last summer, when the CDC conducted an analysis for The Washington Post of data collected in 2005 by the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a nationally representative survey the CDC conducts every two years to track risky behaviors. While the rates still remained far below the all-time highs, the analysis showed that the proportion of teens who said they had ever had sex or had had sex in the last three months had leveled off, beginning in 2001. Researchers, however, were waiting for the next round of data to see whether a real trend was represented.
The new data come from the 2007 survey, which involved 14,103 students in grades nine through 12 at 157 high schools nationwide. The survey found a slight increase between 2005 and 2007 of the proportion who reported they had ever had sex, had begun having sex before age 13, had engaged in sex within the last three months and had had sex with at least four partners.
None of the increases was sufficient to convince statisticians that there is an upward trend. But when the agency analyzed the numbers for The Post, statisticians found that every measure of sexual activity passed the statistical test for having leveled off between 2001 and 2007, and the condom use numbers passed the test for leveling off beginning in 2003.
Because the survey involved only teens who are still in school, it might underestimate the level of sexual activity and overestimate condom use, several experts said.
"What's really important here is we're really running out of steam," Wechsler said. "There's no reason for panic, but there is reason for concern." ..News Source.. by Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer
February 15, 2008
Youth risk survey results for 2007 now available online
2-15-2008 North Dakota:
Regional results are now available on the state Department of Public Instruction Web site for the North Dakota Youth Risk Behavior Survey taken by junior high and high school students in the spring of 2007.
The anonymous survey was developed by the Division of Adolescent and School Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is used by area groups to help plan future prevention efforts. The complete 2007 survey is available on the DPI Web site at (www.dpi.state.nd.us/health/ YRBS/index.shtm). The survey is given at two-year intervals.
Here is a sampling of some of the (relevant) regional results:
Grades 9-12
Students who seriously considered suicide within the past year: Minot area (12.6 percent); Williston area (12.4 percent); Devils Lake area (11.2 percent); statewide average: (10.4 percent).
Students who attempted suicide one or more times in the past year: Minot area: (8.8 percent); Devils Lake area (8.2 percent); Williston area (11.5 percent); statewide average: (8.8 percent).
Students who have ever been forced to have sex: Minot area (7.3 percent); Williston area: (7.7 percent); Devils Lake area (7.8 percent); statewide average (7.1 percent).
Students who have ever had sex: Minot area (42.2 percent); Williston area (49.7 percent); Devils Lake area (50.2 percent); statewide average: (42.6 percent).
Students who had sex for the first time before age 13: Minot area (3.2 percent); Williston area (6 percent); Devils Lake area (5.1 percent); statewide average: (3 percent).
Students who have ever given or received oral sex: Minot area (43.7 percent); Williston area (47.1. percent); Devils Lake area (42.5 percent); statewide average (45.9 percent).
Among students who had sex in the past three months, the percentage who used a condom: Minot area (60.2 percent); Williston area (63.3 percent); Devils Lake area (59.25 percent); statewide average: (63.6 percent).
Among students who had sex in the past three months, the percentage who used drugs or drank alcohol before having sex: Minot area: (27.3 percent); Williston area (24.3 percent); Devils Lake area (25.3 percent); statewide average (28.1 percent).
Grades 7-8
Students who have ever thought of committing suicide: Minot area (21.7 percent); Williston area (21.1 percent); Devils Lake area (15.9 percent); statewide average: (17.5 percent).
Students who have attempted suicide: Minot area (8.6 percent); Williston area (5 percent); Devils Lake area (7 percent); statewide average: (5.9 percent).
..more.. by ANDREA JOHNSON, Staff Writer ajohnson@minotdailynews.com
The full report for North Dakota:
Youth Risk Behavior Survey
Andrea Peña, YRBS Data Manager
(701) 328-2098
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey was developed in 1990 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to monitor priority health risk behaviors that contribute markedly to the leading causes of death, disability and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. The YRBS was designed to monitor trends, compare state health risk behaviors to national health risk behaviors and intended for use to plan, evaluate and improve school and community programs. North Dakota began participating in the YRBS survey in 1995. Students in grades, 7-8 & 9-12 are surveyed in the spring of odd years. The survey is voluntary and completely anonymous.
The six monitored priority health risk behaviors, often established during childhood and early adolescence and result in unintentional and intentional injuries, include: Tobacco Use, Unhealthy Dietary Behaviors, Physical Inactivity, Alcohol & Other Drug Use, Sexual Behavior/STD’s/HIV/AIDS/Unintended Pregnancies and Violence/Injury.
