Prevalence of violent crime

[tom&tata 2]

I was on the phone with my boss - 8 PM and was holding the phone instead of using the handsfree (yes I was driving too at the time and it was slow moving due to traffic jam - very stupid of me). It was in downtown Jakarta - 2 mins out of parking lot. 3 young men saw me holding that phone and they ran to my car - banging their fist on the car window and windshield. My car was locked and windows was closed so they could not harm me or took anything from me but it was scarry enough.

You almost got robbed because you were seen with a *cell phone*, of all things?

Man, some places are really effed up.

It was $700 cell phone & I am a woman. Easy target.

Edited April 4, 2007 by tom&tata

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

I was a victim of a violent crime in a third country - Italy. Someone on a motorcycle came on the pavement and grabbed me and dragged me for about 20 yards trying to get my bag (which had a grand total of 30 euro in it and my passport) which was hanging across my shoulder. Strangely, once they got it off me I bounced back up and ran after them shouting even though I would later require hospital treatment (complete bruising up one side of my body but no broken bones).

It's actually a story that's kind of funny in the retelling, though was not particularly funny at the time.

[keltic 1]

looks like the folks on vj have been fairly lucky as a whole...

i would be curious to see some more votes from the women... i know many women who have been raped or almost were...

Key Facts

~Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.

~One in six American women are victims of sexual assault, and one in 33 men.

~In 2004-2005, there were an average annual 200,780 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.

~About 44% of rape victims are under age 18, and 80% are under age 30.

~Since 1993, rape/sexual assault has fallen by over 69%.

Of the estimated 200,780 annual violent sex crimes, 64,080 were completed rapes. So, if you want a figure that covers only rape and excludes attempted rape and sexual assault, divide 31,536,000 by 64,080. That comes out to one rape every 492 seconds or so, or about one rape every 8 minutes.

http://www.rainn.org/statistics/index.html

another note from that site says they are not including boys/girls 12 or under... so its actually more prevalent than these stats show

[Alex+R 0]

Yeah, probably the most common one is rape. In Brazil I was "mugged" by 2 little kids. My roommate and I were walking and not paying enough attention and these two little boys ran up to us and tried to steal her necklace. They removed it and then ran away. One was holding me, but rather unsuccessfully, being about half my size. So um, we were victims of an attempt at violent crime? Kind of? Not in the US

[Lisa and Spence 0]

Not sure if this counts or not... I voted 'no'... but last year, I came home from a cruise and found that some jerk who had carjacked a car took that car and ran it straight into my house. It damaged the garage door and hit the corner of the house. I found out the hard way how well my house is constructed.