1 in 5 U.S. Women Sexually Assaulted

The results of a survey released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that nearly one fifth of American women have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. The numbers were surprising to many experts, with one CDC director saying, “I don’t think we’ve really known that [sexual assault] was this prevalent in the population.” In the survey, one in four women reported being beaten by an intimate partner and one in six women reported being stalked. Meanwhile, one in seven men reported severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner. One third of women had been victims of a rape, a beating, a stalking, or a combination of assaults.