The framework of visual grammar (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006, via Serafini, 2014) is used to examine the artwork of Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll's "Speak: The Graphic Novel," which tells through words and pictures the story of Melinda Sordino, a girl who is raped just prior to beginning her freshman year in high school. Three…

In the United States, rape culture is a prevalent phenomenon that has contributed to desensitization to scenes in popular media that might have been considered unacceptable in the past. This paper explores the proposal of a model (Rape Culture and Violence Legitimization Model, RCVL) to understand the factors that prompt a society's focus and…

Hegemonic masculinity, with patriarchal supremacy and female subservience are the norms of many African societies. Suffering in silence goes along with the traditional place of woman in African societies as they observe sexist hierarchy of power. Physical attack and its wounds flourish in an atmosphere of secrecy and silence. Silence to such…

Laurie Halse Anderson's young adult novel "Speak" concerns the rape and subsequent silence of ninth grade protagonist Melinda Sordino. By relying on extensive literary allusions involving trees, rape, silence, and transformation, Anderson creates a young adult problem novel that is both of the moment and timeless in its themes. The…

The film "La teta asustada" (Claudia Llosa, 2009) was inspired by the text titled "Entre prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú" by the medical anthropologist Kimberly Theidon. In this study, Theidon compiles the testimonies of a group of indigenous women who were sexually assaulted…

This article describes the process by which we created a recruitment protocol for engaging adolescent sexual assault victims in a qualitative evaluation study. Working in collaboration with forensic nurses, rape victim advocates, adolescent rape survivors, and our institutional review board (IRB), we created a prospective recruitment method…