On Monday, December 2nd, my Social Justice Group and I had lunch with Nicole Epps, a coordinator of the organization called Safe Horizon. She told us many interesting facts about our topic, and what her organization does. She told us about how many researchers show that 1 in 4 women are sexually abused. Her organization provides shelters to the victims of domestic violence every year and they serve about 350,000 victims every year. Usually, the average age of people entering in the shelter is between 11-13 years old of all genders and all economic classes. There are many ways a person could get raped. Oftentimes it happens that the pimp (person who controls prostitutes) becomes a close friend of the victim, he gets a lot of presents for her making her think that he is special and that he really cares about her, this is done to make her love him. After a while he’ll start telling her that he needs money and that if she really loves him she’ll have to do something for him, make her become a prostitute to make money. There are also ones who are called “Gorillas” and they are persons that are also pimps, but they also follow a certain person every day until they rape them. Nicole told us how there are many physiological issues caused by domestic violence and usually it’s harder for a single woman to get into a shelter after being sexually abused.
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