How to Treat Sexual Assault Trauma

Introduction
Sexual assault can traumatize the victim and lead to major life issues, such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The victim may develop deeply disturbing mental issues that lead the victim to become a sexual abuser later on in life, which has been found to be the case especially for victims abused in childhood (Groth & Burgess, 1979). Trauma affects every individual differently. Some are aware of the issue and seek help. Others attempt to self-medicate by turning to drugs or alcohol or risky sexual behavior, which further leads to destructive behavior. Others are unaware that they have been traumatized and struggle to understand or deal with their emotions. This paper will discuss treatment available for victims of sexual assault, ways to prevent it, and how prevention is being implemented.
Treatment
One of the most common forms of treatment for sexual assault trauma is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT focuses on identifying the negative emotions, factors and triggers that will cause a person to enter into a negative state that then leads them into all manner of various other harmful activities. Once these factors are identified, the person can then begin to focus on more positive responses and behaviors to help prevent the slide into destructive behavior or the kind of negative mental and emotional states that lead to a lower quality of life (ABCT, 2019).
According to the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT, 2019), sexual assault trauma can be so damaging because “during a sexual assault, the survivor has to deal with feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty about whether he or she will survive.” This feeling of powerlessness can overwhelm one’s psychology and create an internal sense of self-doubt and helplessness. It can cause one’s self-esteem to crumble, and one’s self-efficacy to vanish. According to the ABCT (2019), “survivors may no longer feel safe, may lose self-esteem, feel powerless, and lose the ability to trust others or develop intimacy.” To address these issues, treatment has to focus on ways of constructing new behaviors that the sexual assault victim can pursue in order to replace the old negative emotions, thoughts and actions with new, positive emotions, thoughts and actions.
Sometimes the treatment process is more complicated because the trauma the survivor experiences is more deeply rooted. The victim can become withdrawn, isolated, anti-social, and self-destructive. Flashbacks, sounds, smells, environments can all trigger a reaction that takes the victim out of the present and immediately plunges the person back into the time of the assault and causes the victim to experience it all over again in a vivid way. This is the essence of dealing with PTSD, and it can be quite challenging to treat.
However, there are ways to treat trauma stemming from sexual addiction, and CBT can help. CBT focuses on identifying and working towards goals that can improve the life of the survivor. The goals can focus on ways of acting, thinking, feeling and dealing with mental or physical issues stemming from the attack. While there are many options available for treating trauma, the unique quality of CBT is that it does not try to probe the unconscious mind the way other psychotherapists may try: “Behavior Therapists and Cognitive Behavior Therapists usually focus more on the current situation and its solution, rather than the past. They concentrate on a person’s views and beliefs about their life, not on personality traits” (ABCT, 2019). Instead of looking at personality and unconscious psychology, the therapist looks at actions and ideology—things that can be clearly seen and understood. The main goal of CBT is to change the outlook of the person’s life so that more positive inputs can begin to take root and displace naturally the negative inputs that are preventing the person from developing and growing.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PET) is another type of treatment that can be used to help survivors of sexual assault trauma. It focuses on helping the person to deal with “unwanted thoughts, disturbing nightmares, feelings of hopelessness, depression, and hypervigilance” by assisting the patient to re-engage with life in a meaningful and active, constructive way (Psychology Today, 2018). Unlike in CBT, in PET the patient actually speaks at length about the trauma and by speaking about it is able to process it and come to terms with it. This approach differs substantially from CBT, which does not even attempt to do this but instead focuses on simply identifying and implementing new patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that can help the person to live a better and more positive life. PET focuses on the actual trauma and helps the person to process it so that the individual is no longer afraid of it and is no longer obsessed with it or overwhelmed by it.
Both methods can be effective in treatment even though they both take completely different routes. In CBT, the patient focuses less on the trauma and more on reshaping life according to the formation of new positive habits that make the person feel better in the long term. In PET, the patient focuses on the trauma itself and often tells the story of it or about one’s life. In telling the story, there is a type of cathartic experience that occurs, just like in reading a story. The experience of going over it in a controlled manner with a professional therapist allows the patient to overcome the mental and emotional roadblocks that are preventing the person from being engaged with life in a meaningful way.
Prevention
Prevention is a two-way street that can be practiced by both those who would engage in sexual assault and those who may be victimized by it. Bennett (2017) has noted that “poor impulse control is, in part, at the root of sexual assault offenses” (p. 707). In other words, in places like the military where the incidence of sexual assault has risen substantially in recent years, the main driver of sexual assault is a lack of self-control. To prevent assault from occurring, the idea is that people need to administer better self-awareness, better self-control, and maintain more respect for themselves and others at all times. There is also the idea that staying out of environments wherein one might be tempted to make an assault or where one might be more likely to be assaulted is a practical preventive measure.
Potential victims are sexual assault cannot, however, always control their environments. Sometimes they are children and the abuser is someone in their own home. They cannot speak up or protect themselves, so it is up to others to observe, identify clues and indicators that abuse is taking place, and intervene to prevent it from continuing. There can even be warning signs that people like teachers, neighbors, pastors, and coaches can look for in order to see whether they are dealing with a situation wherein abuse or sexual assault could take place. Knowing the warning signs, such as unexplainable bruises, trauma in the child, and adults who lie can all be helpful in preventing assault from occurring.
Teaching self-control to people can be a good way for schools and therapists to help prevent sexual assault from occurring. Self-control, as Bennett (2017) shows, has a great deal to do with the incidence of sexual assault in certain environments. Taking preventive measures such as segregating the sexes in the military could also be a step in preventing assault from taking place, though this may be a politically incorrect concept because it does not promote the equality agenda. However, at the end of the day, sexual assaults in the military have increased primarily since men and women began serving together (Bennett, 2017). If mixing the sexes in tense and extreme environments is a main factor in the escalation of sexual assault, then that factor should be removed to prevent assaults from continuing—regardless of whether it is politically correct or fits some sort of political agenda.
Prevention is something that has to be embraced by society as a whole, because it is really society as a whole that is responsible for creating the culture of prevention that needs to be adopted. Expecting individuals to prevent sexual assault all on their own is like expecting a handful of people to address the issue of climate change while the larger society continues to act in the same destructive way towards the environment as it always has. Prevention has to occur at the cultural level so that it can penetrate the psyche and habit of being of all individuals.
Implementation
In the military, where sexual assault is so common today, a new culture of awareness and respect has to be inculcated: Stimson (2013) notes that the is exacerbating because “incidents of sexual assault are detrimental to morale, destroy unit cohesion, show disrespect for the chain of command, and damage the military as a whole, both internally as well as externally.” The way to create this kind of culture of respect is to pay special attention to the code of ethics of the organization: Bennett (2018) observes that “the military ethic exalts obedience and self-sacrifice” (p. 707). In other words, putting into practice these core values and principles can help prevent sexual assault from occurring in the first place.
Education is a primary tool for implementation as well. The more educated that people are about what constitutes sexual assault, what consent means, what no means, and how men and women should conduct themselves at all times, the more likely sexual assault is to be reduced. Education can be implemented in the military through programs like Master Resiliency Training (MRT). MRT is currently being implemented in the military to help leaders recognize strengths in themselves so that they can in turn help others to recognize strengths and deal with issues like depression and isolation that may arise from suffering from some trauma. It can be taught in schools and colleges and workplaces. It can be taught in communities and in homes. Education is one of the best tools both for potential victims and potential attackers because it empowers both to take control in a positive manner. Counselors and therapists can use it to strengthen and empower their clients so that they no longer suffer from PTSD and know how to get a grip on their own sexual assault trauma.
Through public service announcements, the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter, and through celebrity sponsorship, the message of preventing sexual assault trauma can begin to gain traction in the real world. This is important as the main goal of implementation is to develop a foundation in the public. This foundation can then serve as the stage upon which the real work of implementation is done—i.e., work on a case by case basis.
Once the message is gotten out, the people have to begin to make changes in their own lives and this requires support. A network of support needs to be provided to effect the type of social, cultural and political change needed to effect a truly preventive culture. This means organization needs to occur at both the micro and the macro levels, with grassroots organizations coming together to provide messaging and support for people at the local level, and political action committees coming together to provide financial and political support at the national level. Through this micro-macro combination approach, the implementation of prevention strategies through education, messaging, support networks and cultural change can be achieved.
Conclusion
Sexual assault trauma is on the rise in today’s country as the country becomes less and less interested in promoting the concept of self-control and instead promotes the concepts of freedom and self-expression. In order to prevent sexual assault from occurring, society needs to get serious about respect for others and self-control. To treat sexual assault trauma, the most common method is CBT—cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on identifying thinking, feeling, acting and dealing goals that can be implemented in the person’s life to help overcome the negative inputs stemming from the assault suffered in the past. Through PET an alternate treatment method can be provided that focuses on processing the traumatic experience itself, engaging in narrative therapy (the telling of the person’s experience and story to help with the processing), and through this effort empowering the person to re-engage with life positively.

References
ABCT. (2019). Sexual assault. Retrieved from
http://www.abct.org/Information/?m=mInformation&fa=fs_SEXUAL_ASSAULT
Bennett, J. (2018). Combating Sexual Assault With the Military Ethic: Exploring Culture,
Military Institutions, and Norms-Based Preventive Policy. Armed Forces & Society, 44(4), 707-730.
Groth, A. N., & Burgess, A. W. (1979). Sexual trauma in the life histories of rapists and
child molesters. Victimology, 4(1), 10-16.
Psychology Today. (2018). PET. Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/prolonged-exposure-therapy
Stimson, C. (2013). Sexual Assault in the Military: Understanding the Problem and
How to Fix It. Retrieved from https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/sexual-assault-the-military-understanding-the-problem-and-how-fix-it