Let me ask you to raise your hand if you know someone who has been raped or sexually assaulted. So, a person who engages in sexual assault doesn t obtain consent. The assailant may coerce the victim. Coercion is using verbal or mental intimidation to get someone to comply with one s wishes. Or the assailant may threaten to hurt her, so she won t resist in order to prevent further harm.
Women can rape, and men can be victims, but most often males are perpetrators and women are victims.
We are also going to talk about alcohol and sexual assault, and we re not assuming that everyone drinks alcohol. We ll give you some statistics later about what we know about sexual assault at Penn State. Let people in the audience define what they think is consent, but only take a few responses. Consent also falls along a continuum. Here s what it looks like.