College Campus Rape Prevention Program Cuts Risk by Nearly 50%

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A program that teaches college women to prevent sexual assault successfully lowered their risk of getting raped, according to a new study.

More than 400 first-year female college students at three Canadian universities participated in the rape prevention program. The four three-hour sessions trained the women on rape prevention and resistance through lessons on self-defense, defining personal sexual boundaries and assessing risk, according to The New York Times. Another group of more than 400 women was given a brief information session and some brochures.

The findings were published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The students were interviewed a year after the intervention. Researchers found that only about 5 percent of women in the rape prevention and resistance group reported being raped while almost 10 percent of women in the information session group were sexually assaulted.

Meanwhile, the risk of attempted rape was only 3.4 percent in the rape prevention group, which was significantly lower compared to the 9 percent in the other group, according to Live Science.

"It's an important, rigorous study that shows that resistance and self-defense training needs to be part of college sexual assault prevention," said Professor Sarah E. Ullman, from Chicago's University of Illinois. "This won't solve the problem, but it's an important piece that has been overlooked."

In the US, 47 percent of sexual assault victims are under 18 years old, while 80 percent are under the age of 30. According to Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN), there are approximately 293,000 victims of sexual assault every year, with 4/5 of the assailants being someone the victim knows. Researchers said nearly 20 percent of women are sexually assaulted during their first year of college.

Psychologist Mary Koss, from the University of Arizona, who was not involved in the study, said that the results were unexpected.

"Universities should move right away to figure out how they can implement a program like this," she told Miami Herald. "We don't have to look at women as being so helpless and vulnerable. There are tools to empower women that can dramatically cut their risk of rape."

Sarah Oszter, 24, a psychology and criminology student at the University of Windsor, learned a lot about the program when she took it on her second year of university.

"The greatest thing that I took away was the self-defence training," she told CTV News. She added that she learned how to analyze her surroundings for signs of dangers and that those techniques to hold someone off comes in handy. She also believes that resistance training should not solely be focused on women because men also need it.