Studying the prevalence of physical injuries and demographic characteristics of female victims of sexual assault referred to the forensics in Ahvaz city, 2013-2014

Author(s): Fereshteh Alboebadi, Farkhondeh Jamshidi, Poorandokht Afshar*, Maria Cheraghi, Roya Mohammadi

Abstract

Rape is a term used in legal medicine and criminology (1) and a form of rape (2), which means sexual intercourse with a person (child or adult) through vaginal, oral and anal sex without his/her consent. (1 and 3) Each year, millions of females and children around the world become the victim of rape and sexual abuse. In recent years, researchers have made efforts to investigate the issue of rape from different perspectives and explain it in specific areas (7) that one of these areas is checking physical condition and demographic characteristics. (8) Therefore this study has been done with the aim of evaluating the prevalence of physical injuries and demographic characteristics of female victims of rape, physical injuries referred to the forensics in Ahvaz. In this descriptive-cross sectional study, 64 persons of rape victims referred to examinations of women section in forensics of the city of Ahvaz in the second half of 2013-2014 were selected as the sample of the research. For obtaining information, a two-part questionnaire including sexual assault and demographic characteristics was given to the cases and for recording the physical injuries inflicted upon the victims, some observation was done. Obtained information which was based on the objectives of the research was entered into the computer using software SPSS21 after coding and then descriptive statistics were analyzed. In this case, the majority of victims were single and the least of them had been divorced. Their highest level of education has been high school or diploma. In terms of economic status, most of them were in the medium level and a small population of them was in a good level of economic status. Most female victims had been raped by one man. In most female victims, defloration had been occurred. In general, the results of this study shows that the injury to the hymen (Defloration) has the highest percentage among inflicted injuries that according to the social and cultural conditions of the society as well as individuals’ attitude, this injury can greatly affect one's life.

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