AT ANY AGE or stage in life, rape is a traumatic, degrading, and humiliating experience. It destroys a sense of personal safety and brings into question basic assumptions about oneself and the wider world. Many experts maintain that when rape happens to teenagers, the experience is especially devastating. This is because adolescents are in the process of formulating their basic belief systems, personal identities, and attitudes and feelings about authority figures, gender roles, and relationships.

Acquaintance rape, by far the most common type of teen rape, is especially traumatic. As rape researcher Barry Burkhart points out: "To be raped is to be exposed to the ultimate assault on one's dignity, value, and power of selfdetermination. To be raped by someone you trusted and often selected to date is to be betrayed, not just by the perpetrator, but by your own...