Sexual violence and rape is known across the world. The high rate of such incidents within South Africa has been met with public outrage, concern, marches, campaigns, parliamentary debate, and in some cases has lead to law reform.
- UNODC 2014
South African legislation makes reference to 59 different sexual offences detailed in the "Sexual Offences and Related Matters Amendment Act of 2007" (SOA). Sexual violence and offences may take many different forms and ranges from unwanted sexual comments to rape and murder and may include:
- Sexual assault
- Rape and compelled rape
- Incest, bestiality and sexual acts with a corpse
- Sexual exploitation and grooming of children, as well as of persons who are mentally unstable
Sexual assault is the sexual violation of a person without their consent and includes threats of sexual violation.
Sexual violation is:
Sexual violation is:
- The direct or indirect contact between the genitals, anus or female breasts of one person and another part of the body of another person, animal or object, for example: touching a woman’s breasts without her consent
- Contact with the mouth of one person and
- the mouth of another person, for example: Kissing someone without their consent
- the genitals, anus or breasts of another person
- any other part of another person’s body in a way that causes sexual arousal
- any object that resembles the genitals, anus or breasts
- the genital organs or anus of an animal
- inserting an object that resembles human or animal genitals
- masturbating someone with the mouth without their consent
Compelled sexual assault occurs when one individual forces another to commit acts of sexual violation on another individual. Related crimes may include:
Compelled self-sexual assault
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- Borrowed from: http://shukumisa.org.za/sexual-assault/
Not all forms of sexual violence are defined as crimes with South Africa. Sexual harassment is classified as misconduct and may be dealt with in terms of the labour law and an institutions' disciplinary codes. As a result, some cases of sexual victimization may be not be reported on, and result in the improper collection of statistics. Current statistics show that there are a recorded 172 sexual offences per day.
- ISS Hub Statistics 2014
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