Be Strong, Be Wise: The Young Adult’s Guide to Sexual Assault Awareness and Personal Safety

By Amy R Carpenter

In Be Strong, Be Wise, psychotherapist and youth advocate Amy Carpenter provides all the information teens and young adults need to feel safe and confident in their relationships and in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781631950889

Book preview

Most young adults don’t think sexual assault will happen to them. They might feel they’re too well-supported, too smart, too sheltered, or too worldly to ever become a victim. And yet, according to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), there’s a sexual assault approximately every ninety-two seconds in the US, with more than half involving victims between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four.

Perhaps the most unresolved issue of our time, sexual assault—classified as unwanted sexual touch—is also a taboo subject. Victims often choose secrecy; in fact, according to RAINN’s reports, out of 1,000 sexual assault cases, only five offenders will serve jail time. As a psychotherapist, I’ve treated sexual trauma for nearly twenty-five years, and I’ve never gotten used to hearing the troubling stories my clients have shared. When the #MeToo movement came along, so did the realization that I’d spent enough time in my career responding to assault, and perhaps it was time to work on preventing it.

The #MeToo movement helped us break down walls of secrecy by creating an arena where survivors could share their stories in the form of two simple words: me too. Now it’s time to create a new movement focused on keeping young people safe.

Another Kind of College Prep

When I taught sexual assault prevention classes at a local high school, the students knew how to respond to the what-if scenarios that took place in familiar territory, like school. For example, when discussing whether it was okay for a coach to slap an athlete on the butt as they were heading onto the field, the responses were mixed but immediate. Many of the young men answered in the affirmative, while the young women answered with a concrete no. We explored gender differences and the definition of assault as it applied to sports in the lively conversation that followed.

When we talked about life after high school, the reactions grew vague. To their credit, why should the average eighteen-year-old apprehend, let alone understand, something they have not yet experienced, especially when experience is how we learn? Yet often that is what parents, teachers, and young people expect. Somehow, through trial and error, osmosis, or a keen gut instinct, college-age adults will go off into the world and just figure it out.

I liken this to travel. Before visiting India, I read every guidebook I could get my hands on, watched documentaries, and played twenty questions with anyone who had been to that immense country. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the teeming, electric, and sometimes overwhelming reality of India. Life after high school can feel much the same; like something altogether different, because it is.

No matter how independent or savvy a young person may be or how many adventures they experienced, life after the age of eighteen is a whole different ball game—a new playing field, new rules, new teammates, new learning habits. While their mentors in high school, whether a coach, a parent, or a teacher, were apt to say what was expected on any given day, after high school, young adults are on their own as both coach and team member. The good news is this can be one of the most exciting stages we get in a lifetime.

The average college freshman is no slouch and usually far more aware than most adults give them credit for. However, the #MeToo movement has taught us a few truths that can’t be ignored because they affect how to play the game of adulthood. Although these truths were around long before #MeToo, the movement helped bring them forward into a whole new light. Here are a few of the biggies:

1.If you are female, there’s a twenty-five percent chance you will experience sexual assault before you graduate college or have been in the workforce for four years