Good morning, Netizens...

[Photo Credit: AP Photo/Evansville Courier & Press, Bob Gwaltney

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

There's an old saying taught to me by my grandmother that goes, “You can't really understand another person's experience until you've walked a mile in their shoes.”

While there are a lot of good, uplifting things taking place in the world today, one grim undeniable statistic is that every two minutes someone is sexually assaulted in the United States. Less than 65% of all sexual assaults are reported to the police; even more grotesque, 73% of all victims of sexual assault know the identities of their assailants. Sexual assault is one of America's great unspoken travesties that we seldom, if ever, talk about in public. Perhaps that is why only 6% of rapists ever spend a day in jail.

In 2001 a man named Frank Baird proposed Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®: The International Men's March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault and Gender Violence. The men's march started out small, but has continued to grow each year. Each year men around the world don women's high heel shoes for a day and march against sexual violence. You can read more about the evolution of this organization here http://www.walkamileinhershoes.org/.

Although valuable contributions are being made through education, rape crisis centers and toward making sexual assaults and gender violence a national priority, there is a lot of work yet to be done.

Every two minute someone in America is raped. One in six American women are victims of sexual assault. That means someone you know, someone you care about, has been or may become the victim of sexual violence. It may be your mother, your sister, your friend, your girlfriend, your wife, your coworker, or your daughter.

It might appear funny, obtuse perhaps, that a group of studly young men would don women's high heeled shoes, but it is a first step toward eradicating sexual violence.

Dave

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