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Sexual Assault

  • Chapter
Family Medicine

  • 27 Accesses

Abstract

Each year increasing numbers of men, women, and children are victims of sexual assault, incurring medical, psychological, sociocultural, legal, and sexual risks. Sexually abused patients seek family physicians for the complex, combined roles of physician, counselor, legal witness, confidante, and family communicator. As the incidence of rape/sexual assault has risen, so too has the necessity for family physicians to be competent to:

  1. 1)

    Know the definition of sexual assault, both legally and colloquially.

  2. 2)

    Be prepared to diagnose and treat by protocol an acutely assaulted patient.

  3. 3)

    Maintain a chain of evidence for possible legal prosecution.

  4. 4)

    Appreciate the aspects of long-term follow-up of victims, including family-oriented intervention.

  5. 5)

    Recognize and diagnose the patients with unreported sexual assault—“the rape trauma syndrome.”

  6. 6)

    Be sensitive to the sexual innuendos of sexual assault. This includes the unique concerns of child sex abuse, incest, and homosexual assault.1

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Authors
  1. Mary Elizabeth Roth
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family and Community Medicine, Bowman Gray School of Medicine of Wake Forest University, 300 South Hawthorne Road, 27103, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

    Robert B. Taylor M.D. (Professor) (Professor)

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© 1983 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Roth, M.E. (1983). Sexual Assault. In: Taylor, R.B. (eds) Family Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4002-8_104

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4002-8_104

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-4004-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-4002-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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