• Anyone can be sexually assaulted: women, men, children and the elderly. It affects all races, classes and lifestyles.
• Most offenders are not strangers. At least 75% of attackers are known by their victims.
• Sexual assault is not about sex. It is about power and control over another person.
• Incest can begin at any age. Help is available to all victims no matter how long the abuse has occurred or who the abuser is.
• Rape is the most committed violent crime in the United States. A rape is reported every 5 minutes, and the F.B.I. estimates that only 1 in 10 rapes are reported.
• Even though a victim requests a condom, a rape could still have occurred.

Your parents and friends are not going to always be around to help you make decisions. These decisions could affect the rest of your life, so its important to understand what the consequences of your choices are. Below is a list of possible outcomes from engaging in sex. Once again, having sex is YOUR choice, but you should know all of the facts.

PREGNANCY

It only takes one act of unprotected sex to result in pregnancy. More than 4/5 of teen pregnancies are unplanned. Having a child can get in the way of your opportunities for college, being self sufficient and moving out on your own, spending time with your friends having fun, or traveling to places you’ve always wanted to go.

SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES

One act of unprotected sex can give you a disease that will be with you for the rest of your life. Young women between the ages of 15 and 24 have a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections because the cervix is not yet fully developed and may be less resistant to infection. In fact, 25% of sexually active teens acquire an STD. While there are treatments for many diseases, some treatments can be painful and others can make you feel very ill. (For example: venereal warts, which are irregularly shaped lumps on your genitals, must be burned or frozen off in surgery) Other diseases such as AIDS and genital herpes have no cure. The treatments developed for herpes are aimed at relieving the discomfort of the sores on your skin and although these sores can dry up, herpes will never go away. Herpes can be spread even if there aren’t any visible sores. Many people have herpes and don’t even know it. The treatments developed for AIDS are aimed at keeping you alive until the virus weakens you enough to cause you to die from a common infection or disease. Enclosed in this packet is a chart of some common diseases and their symptoms. Protecting yourself from these diseases through using a condom or by deciding not to have sex can literally save your life.

ORAL SEX

Many people choose to engage in oral sex because they believe it is a safer method than intercourse. Oral sex is not risk-free. While it is true that you cannot become pregnant while having oral sex, you can contract sexually transmitted disease by having unprotected oral sex. You can get gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, warts, Hepatitis B, HIV, and AIDS through oral sex if you do not use barrier protection such as condoms or dental dams. A dental dam is a six inch piece of latex, sometimes flavored, used to cover female genitalia during oral sex. Though no testing has been done on plastic wrap (saran wrap), some people choose to use it. To have protected oral sex with a woman, the entire vaginal opening and clitoris must be covered with the barrier (dental dam, plastic wrap) and held down with both hands. If you do not have a dental dam, you can make a latex barrier by cutting a rolled non-spermicidal latex condom with a pair of scissors from the edge to the center. To have protected oral sex with a man, the penis should be covered by a non-spermicidal latex condom.