The Tragedy of Rape: Putting Faces to Numbers.
In the article, "The Possibilities and Limits of Telemedicine: Self-Treatment at the South Pole," Sara Taub and Kayhan Parsi begin by stating, "it has been said that the death of one person is a tragedy whereas the death of a million is a statistic." One daily occurrence where this can be applied is rape. Over 240,000 fall victim to rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault every year in the U.S. Although this a daily occurrence, many people do not realize how serious the issue truly is until they've heard a personal account of it; like many things, it isn't recognized as tragic until real names and stories are placed to the statistical number. To help illustrate my point I will be using a few articles of the many on the subject. One of the articles examined, "Escaping Hades" by Lis (no last name given) is a story of one girl's personal struggle with being the victim of rape. The second article is a statistic chart for rape provided by RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). The third article is the story of Jesse Dirkhising, a young boy who was brutally raped and killed, the article was written by Allyson Smith of worldnetdaily.com. I whole-heartedly agree with the quote that with many things, including rape, are much more tragic when viewed from one victims personal perspective rather than looking at a number.
RAINN has provided a chart of statistics of the epidemic of rape. According to these statistics, "In 2002, there were 247,730 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault." Although this number is alarming and may give a bit of a shock value to whoever reads it, the truth is for the majority of people who look at this will think of it as no more than a number. Within these numbers lie true stories of victims of a terrible tragedy, it is not the numbers that tell their personal struggle or hardships that occurred throughout their life but merely places them in a statistic with everyone else.
