Unfortunately, sexual violence can come in many forms. In order to better understand the wide range of personal violence’s that can occur, we have included definitions of different types of rape and sexual violence, as well as other kinds of violence that often arise hand-in-hand with sexual violence.

Was I Raped?

How can you figure out if what happened was rape? There are a few questions to consider.

For purposes of this page, we use the term “rape” to mean all crimes of sexual violence, not just those crimes that would qualify as “rape” under the FBI definition or under state laws.

The exact definition of “rape,” “sexual assault,” “sexual abuse” and similar terms differs by state. The wording can get confusing, since states often use different words to mean the same thing or use the same words to describe different things. To see how your state legally defines these…