Care for victims of sexual abuses: physical, mental and legal remedy

Abstract

Sexual abuse is a social phenomenon with widespread and profound effects. It can create panic, anxiety and disturb the livelihood of the people involved. From the past, caring for the victim was separated into various parts each of which focuses on the treatment and prevention of physical ailments. Today, the treatment is transformed into holistic approach including physical, mental, social and spiritual. However, legal remedies are mostly neglected as most doctors lack the knowledge on this issue. Therefore, the care for the patient in this medical situation usually ended without any follow up, i.e. without trial and jurisdiction. On the side of the justice process,  it has focused on the victims of sexual abuse who were opposite sex with the offender, by neglecting the sexual violence that occurred between husband and wife and the victims who were of the same sex with the offender.      It also focused on punishing the offender rather than making social immunity as well as changing the offender’s criminal behavior. Later, the law was developed to protect all groups of sexual victims which also focused on rehabilitation of the offender. This article is a synopsis of the knowledge of medicine and law for the reader to know how to care for the sexually abused in the aspect of physical examination, laboratory, holistic treatment and legal remedies; and for making the public health officers and legal professions more clearly understood the problem of sexual abuse.