BECAUSE TEEN RAPE victims are the least likely to seek help and are at significant risk for being victimized again, rape-prevention experts advocate focusing efforts on identifying and reaching out to already-victimized teens. Increasingly, the medical community is being called upon to help. Health-care providers are in a unique position to identify victims because they are apt to see teenagers in the relatively private setting of a medical office, where they can assure teens of confidentiality.

Both the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommend that health-care providers routinely screen adolescents for sexual victimization. Screening should take place away from parents, friends, or dating partners. Since more than 70 percent of victims who have had an experience that would legally qualify as rape do not use that term to describe their experience, experts advise avoiding the word "rape." Instead...