Predictors And Self Reported Consequences Of Sexual Violence Among Female Students Of College Of Public Health And Medical Sciences, Jimma University, South West Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: There are many forms of violence against women; from which sexual violence is the most common form of it which include rape, coercion, abuse using physical force, verbal threats, harassment to have sex, unwanted touching or physical advances, forced participation in pornography or other degrading acts that often persist over time and are accompanied by threats on part of the perpetrator. Sexual violence is the world's most prevalent, pervasive, and systemic problem. Objective: To assess magnitude, associated factors and consequences of sexual violence among regular, undergraduate female students of college of public health and medical sciences, Jimma university, south west Ethiopia in March, 2014. Methods and Materials: An institution based cross sectional study design was employed to assess sexual violence among regular, undergraduate female students of Jimma University, college of public health and medical sciences. A total of 268 study subjects were obtained by using stratified random sampling technique. Data was collected through pre-tested, selfadministered questionnaire and entered by using Epidata3.1 then it was exported to SPSS version 16.0 for analysis. Logistic regression was done to identify those variables predicting the outcome variables. For the qualitative data, purposive sampling technique was employed to select participants for the focus group discussions. Results: The prevalence’s of lifetime completed rape and attempted rape was 8.6% and 12.7% respectively among the total respondents. From those rape victims, 30.4% were occurred after joining campus. Nearly half (45.1%) of the total respondents had faced at least one form of sexual harassment practice. Keeping other variables constant, childhood residence [AOR=12.400, 95% CI: (2.692, 57.120)], drinking alcohol [AOR=5.136, 95% CI: (1.253, 21.051)] and number of sexual partners [AOR=8.791, 95% CI: (2.005, 38.536)] were significantly associated with life time rape in the multivariate logistic regression analysis. Unwanted pregnancy (66.7%) and abortion (57.1%) from reproductive; feeling unhappy (52.4%) and tried to commit suicide (42.9%) from psychological were frequently reported consequences. Academically; students who had faced completed rape in their lifetime had almost four times [AOR=4.121, (1.403, 12.105)] higher chance to have last semester CGPA < 3.00. Conclusion and Recommendation: This study showed that completed lifetime rape, attempted rape and sexual harassment had temperate prevalence rates. Factors like; having rural childhood residence, alcohol abusers and having more than one sexual partner were identified as predictors for rape. The violated victims faced significant reproductive, psychological and academic effects. Therefore, timely and integrated actions of the various stakeholders working in this area are essentially recommended to restrain this critical human rights violation