MYTH 1: Sexual Assault just doesn’t happen in my town.
 

FACT 1: Sexual Assault occurs everywhere. Nationwide statistics show that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 33 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. To bring it closer to home, approximately 1 in 8 women in Nebraska will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime (that’s 64,000 women).

MYTH 2: As long as the person I had sex with secretly hid his or her true age or looked older than they were, it was legal for me (an adult) to have sex with him or her.
 

FACT 2: It does not matter if the victim engaged in active concealment or misrepresentation of age, or the actor made a reasonable mistake as to the age of the victim; as long as the victim is a minor, consent is not an issue and it is considered sexual assault.

MYTH 3: A victim needs to do or say something to let me know he or she does not want to have sex with me.
 

FACT 3: According to new statutes that became effective in the summer 2004 in Nebraska, a victim does not need to resist verbally or physically where the victim would feel it would be useless or futile to do so.

MYTH 4: If you are married, you cannot get raped by your spouse.
 

FACT 4: Nationally, 30 percent of women who are seen at Domestic Violence shelters report that their partners sexually assaulted them, though it is believed that the rate of martial rape is much higher. Marital rape can be prosecuted under Nebraska Law. It is just as serious a crime as other acquaintance or stranger rapes.

MYTH 5: The most common type of rape is stranger rape.
 

FACT 5: Actually, only 14 percent of rapes committed in the United States are what you would consider stranger rape; 85 percent are acquaintance rapes, or when someone is forced, threatened, or intimidated into having sex with someone that they know. This could be a friend, ex-lover, classmate, co-worker, neighbor, etc.