For the video, the three team members are planning a series of interviews with students. He said the interview subjects will be asked about violence within the culture in general as well as questions touching on sexism, gender and race issues and violence on campus. The LBT team, which was the first to get under way, has almost completed its work. There are elements unique to same-sex domestic abuse, said Anna Baum, LBT staff coordinator. In addition to threatening physical violence, a lesbian can draw on society's hostility toward gays, and, for instance, threaten to tell her partner's employer that she's gay.
Abuse can be very subtle.
Because there are so many dimensions to the issue of abuse, and because sexual assaults are often unreported, it's difficult to document the extent of violence against women at Tufts or any other university campus. The most commonly accepted figure, based on studies, holds that one in six college women has experienced rape or attempted rape since the age of 14, Barrett said. We assume Tufts would as well. In addition, studies show that there are differences among cultural groups in reporting sexual violence. The 1994 National Violence Against Women Study, for example, said that Hispanic women were less likely to report sexual assaults than non-Hispanic women.