It's just way too vague to convey any useful information.
Like today on the news, they said that a college girl in my neighborhood was "sexually assaulted" while jogging. This could mean anything from "a group of a dozen guys gang-raped and sodomized her for six hours" to "someone grabbed her butt and ran away." I'd really like to know what actually happened. I don't need all the gory details, but SOME sort of clarification would be nice. Would it kill them to report that?
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/
I think 'sexual assault' is mostly used to hide the "gory details" in the sense that the news doesn't want to say exactly what happened. I mean, if it's rape or worse, I think they will say rape or whatever, so sexual assault really refers to the lesser forms of assault.
-- _foolmo_ 'Illegal activities is a slight misnomer, most of it is not related to material that is actually illegal.' - nintendogrl1
When I hear the term used in the news, I tend to assume it does not mean "brutally gang-raped" because if that were the case, the media would usually say so. I don't really see the problem with this phrase......not very precise, yeah, but there are loads of phrases that aren't precise.
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From: red sox 777 | #005 When I hear the term used in the news, I tend to assume it does not mean "brutally gang-raped" because if that were the case, the media would usually say so. I don't really see the problem with this phrase......not very precise, yeah, but there are loads of phrases that aren't precise.
Right. This is a reasonable assumption. But then it always makes me feel bad. Like, I'm sure if I say to myself "well it was probably just some pervy dude who touched her and ran" and she actually WAS raped, boy would I feel like a jerk!
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SmartMuffin - Because anything less would be uncivilized - http://img.imgcake.com/smartmuffin/barkleyjpgde.jpg http://dudewheresmyfreedom.com/
if she was gang-raped and sodomized for six hours, she'd probably prefer for the incident to be reported as "sexual assault" rather than "gang-rape and sodomy for six hours"
just saying...
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