The Rape of the Homeless
by Tony Chavira
I know that most of my posts on FourStory are either angry or whimsical (including the post I did today on science fiction urbanism), but Houston's KIAH-TV ran a story yesterday about the rape of a 61-year old homeless woman that I decided to ebb into this blog post. But before I do that, I'd just like to point out that a very large number of women you may see on the streets who you might consider "crazy" are actually experiencing a very severe form of rape trauma, that may in fact by magnified by the fact that simply by virtue of being homeless they have been raped on multiple occasions.
A 1990 Ford Foundation study found that 50% of homeless women and children were fleeing abuse, but that's only part of the story, according to a study entitled "Homeless Women and Victimization: Abuse and Mental Health History among Homeless Rape Survivors." I added the bold emphases below:
In a study of homeless women in Toronto, Breton and Bunston (1992) found a 75 percent rate of lifetime physical and sexual abuse, most of which took place before the women became homeless. Another Toronto-based study of both homeless women and men (Ambrosio, Baker, Crowe, & Hardill, 1992) found that of 106 female participants, 46.2 percent, had been physically assaulted in the previous year and 43.3 percent had experienced sexual harassment and/or assault. An astonishing 21.2 percent of the women interviewed said that they had been raped at least once in the preceding year. Both studies found that the experience of multiple incidents and forms of abuse is the rule, rather than the exception, for homeless women (Ambrosio et al. 1992; Breton & Bunston, 1992).
In fact, as the economy has forced many women into harder and harder situations, the fear of potential victimization becomes more and more real. When a 2007 study comes out that states that Los Angeles women who stay closer to useful homeless services had much higher odds of being physically assaulted, it makes you wonder about how important affordable housing is for women as a segment of the homeless population. When public housing can actually prevent sexual crimes against women who would otherwise be homeless, it becomes an imperative issue. Anyway, here it is. Just remember though, this isn't just one woman's story:
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