Sexual Assault

Olivia Ghafoerkhan has an MFA in writing for children and young adults and teaches composition at a community college in Virginia. She has completed training to assist sexual assault victims who are in crisis, and volunteers through the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

In her impassioned, thorough, forthright guide to the increasingly contentious arena of sexual consent, Ghafoerkhan draws a firm line: 'Unwanted contact, such as kissing or groping, is . . . sexual assault.' Of course, the possibilities extend beyond disturbing to the unimaginably horrific. However, she takes care to dismiss the standard 'rape script' (entailing a deserted locale and a violent stranger), driving home the point that, in the majority of sexual assault cases, the perpetrator is someone the victim knows. A wealth of deeply moving first-person accounts brings home the repercussions of unwanted sexual contact. While mustering a staggering array of statistics, the author keeps the focus personal (the prevailing voice is second person) and restorative as well as preventative. '‘Healing’ from a sexual assault isn’t alway possible in the traditional sense,' she notes in a chapter devoted to coping with the aftermath, 'which is why many professionals use the word recovery.' The closing segment moves on to 'Activism': 'I call it from pain to purpose,' says one survivor. The book’s price precludes slipping a copy into every last high school locker—though statistically, 'one out of every six U.S. women' will face rape at some point in their lives—but it certainly deserves a place in every school library.