If a person says, 'I want to go home,' that is her decision. Crimes against minors must be reported, but women 18 and over have a choice. Before these programs were in place, it was a grim picture. One in six American women will be sexually asssaulted in her lifetime. Some 732 cases of adult sexual assault were reported to law enforcement in Tucson during 1999, Riceci says, but professionals working in the field estimate that actual reports to police add up to just a fraction of the actual assaults.
Victims fear being blamed.
And in 75 to 80 percent of sexual assaults in the U.S. the victim and the perpetrator know each other. I believe you. The Wingspan Domestic Violence Project offers services to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people, says executive director Claudia Reynoso, who presides in an inner office just beyond a cheerful meeting room filled with couches. She's a small woman, too, conservatively dressed in a brown jumper, and like Caballero she speaks calmly and with determination. Gay or straight, people battered by the their loved ones are often blamed for what has happened to them, she says.