Both victims and lovers have great difficulty in dealing with their feelings of shame, rage, hurt, and powerlessness.
Many relationships break up in the aftermath of sexual crime.
Here are some things you can do to help support yourself and your lover after a sexual assault. In James Dickey's novel, Deliverance , the narrator and a friend get waylayed at gunpoint by two mountain men during a whitewater canoe trip to a remote corner of Georgia. The mountain men tie the narrator to a tree and strip the friend naked. Then, as one attacker holds a shotgun to the naked man's head, the other rapes him. The campers' two other canoeing companions appear, attracted by their friend's screams.