Personal Safety Blind Spots

People often have blind spots concerning personal safety; they recognize a threat in one area, but are blind to the dangers of others. Sometimes the focus is on the obvious, and sometimes on the imagined or less likely. These blind spots may even occur where there is a wealth of information, and media attention – after all, bad things happen to other people, not to us.

Imagine that, for whatever reason, you had to move you and your family to a part of town that had a reputation for a high number of break-ins and burglaries. My guess is that one of your considerations in choosing an apartment or house would be how easy would it be for somebody to break into e.g. do the doors and windows look sturdy and substantial enough, do the lower floor windows have bars or grills on them to prevent easy access etc. You might even do some research into what types of properties tend to be targeted, so that you could cross these off your list, and look at other types of housing. Home security is something we take the most basic precautions over; there are few people who don’t look their front door when they leave their house, as we all accept the risk of burglary. If you have to move to a part of town where the risk of burglary increases, it is more than likely that you will invest in some stronger locks, deadbolts, etc.

The statistics estimate that around 15% of women in the US have been raped, at one time or another, with nearly 30% experiencing some type of attempted sexual assault. The statistics for women attending university are much higher with around 20 to 25%, reporting a rape or sexual assault. The truth is that young women attending university are much more likely to be raped or sexually assaulted than those who are not, and yet few women, or parents, seek personal safety and/or self-defense training prior to attending school. It is not that young women or parents aren’t aware of the problems of sexual assaults on and off campus; the media has done a good job in drawing people’s attention to the problem, yet it still seems that on an individual level, a blind spot exists. Whilst we would do what we can to mitigate the risk of a break-in if we were to move into a high crime neighborhood, we do little to mitigate the risks of sexual assaults, when our daughters and other female family members move to an environment where there is an increased risk of them being raped or sexually assaulted. Our personal levels of “denial” surrounding campus sexual assaults are quite astounding.

There are other blind spots that we have around rape and sexual assaults. Most people now understand and accept that women are most likely to be raped by someone they know, in their home or somebody else’s. There are very few individuals who dissent from this. We recently did an online survey, that looked at people’s perceptions of rape and sexual assaults. There were three questions that when combined told an interesting story about how people interpret and apply statistics and knowledge about sexual assaults to themselves. One question we asked was, “Who are you are most likely to be raped and/or sexually assaulted by?” 88% of the 402 people who took the survey, responded correctly by answering, “someone they knew”. The survey also asked them where they were most likely to be raped or sexually assaulted; 68% responded correctly, stating that it was most likely to be in their home or somebody else’s. Later on, we asked about how their assailant was most likely to set up the assault. This time only 52% got the correct answer, responding that their assailant would use some form of dialogue to gain access to them, with 48% believing that they’d suddenly be attacked by assailants who concealed themselves somewhere and jumped out at them, etc. What’s interesting about this is that whilst there was a good understanding about who an assailant was likely to be, and where an assault was likely to take place, there was a disconnect about the nature of such attacks i.e. somebody you know who is in your home is not likely to conceal themselves and jump out on you; they simply don’t have to, as they already have access to you.

What this disconnect likely displays is how people perceive attacks occurring, in general, compared with how they see themselves being attacked e.g. yes, most people are likely to be attacked by someone they know, in their home or somebody else’s but that’s not really how I see it happening to me; I’m more likely to be attacked by someone jumping out from behind a bush late at night, as I walk home, etc. This means they have a blind spot; they believe that the statistics apply to others, not to them. The media goes a long way to propagating this idea - that women are most likely to be attacked by a stranger - as they report on the newsworthy rather than on the ordinary (and the ordinary, is the most likely and the most common). Women should be alert late at night, and avoid walking in places which are deserted and offer concealment opportunities for potential assailants, but they shouldn’t think that the statistics don’t apply to their situation e.g. they should have a strategy to deal with their partner’s best friend who turns up at their house unannounced, when they are obviously on their own, etc. The statistics of sexual assault and rape, are largely made up of victims who didn’t think it would happen to them, or who thought their situation was different to others. This doesn’t make them different to us, in fact it makes them exactly like us.

Sometimes even when the threat/danger is obvious, we still have a blind spot to it e.g. sexual assaults on college campuses. Part of our personal safety landscape should be made up of making a realistic risk assessment of our lifestyle and environment, and rather than try to convince ourselves that we are somehow an exception to the norm, recognizing that we are in fact very much like everyone else when it comes to being targeted for violence.