Study of Victims of Alleged Sexual Assault

BACKGROUND: Sexual assault has been a major concern to our society. It is one of the most underreported offences to the law enforcement agencies. Such offences are multi-faceted and certain details of the offence may be hard to be unearthed even after a thorough investigation.

AIMS: To study factors associated with reporting of sexual assault cases and to correlate findings with the alleged history.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was conducted in the Department of Forensic Medicine, M.S. Ramaiah Medical College Bangalore from January 2018 and December 2020. All victims of alleged sexual assault brought for medical examination to the Department of Forensic Medicine were interviewed through a detailed questionnaire after taking consent. Relevant information was sought from the victim and the consent from victims. Descriptive statistics for qualitative type of data were summarized using frequency and percentage.

RESULTS: 82 victims those who had come to or brought by the parents or guardian or police with alleged history of sexual assault were subjected for medical examination. All of them were females except two juveniles. Majority of the victims (n=71, 86.5%) were less than 18 years of age and were considered as juvenile / minors under Indian law. Either the victims or their parents reported to the police in most of the cases (n=76, 92.7%). In 53.65% of the cases the alleged assaults were reported to the police after three days of alleged recent sexual assault. The purpose of reporting to the police was because of honour or pride of the parents / guardian in 59.75% of the cases. It was observed that only in four cases there were positive findings of recent penetrative sexual assault in the form of fresh hymeneal tears or presence of spermatozoa in the swabs taken during genital examination.

CONCLUSION: Majority of the victims of alleged sexual assault were minors. Only 12% of them reported to the law enforcement directly without anybody persuading. More than 50% of victims presented to the hospital after 3 days of the alleged sexual assault. In most of minor victims the sexual intercourse was consented, but it was invalid since the girl below 18 years cannot consent for sexual intercourse. Majority of adult victims had consented for sexual intercourse on promise of marriage. In view of these, no physical injuries were seen on victims and positive evidence of sexual assault was detected only in 5% of cases.