Spectrum

Lara Stemple and her colleagues are leading the charge to change perceptions of sexual victimization and more accurately account for the gender of sexual perpetrators. Stemple is the director of Graduate Studies at the UCLA School of Law and is the director of the Health and Human Rights Law Project. Two recent studies have blazed the way. The first was published in April of 2014. It was co-written by Stemple and Ilan Meyer. “The Sexual Victimization of Men in American: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions” was published in the American Journal of Public Health. When assessing five different federal surveys from 2010 to 2012, the research team concluded that sexual victimization of men in America was about equal to the prevalence found with women. This first research work also showed women are perpetrators at much higher rates than commonly believed. That finding was the foundation for a second research work for the peer reviewed journal Aggression and Violent Behavior. “Sexual Victimization Perpetrated by