{"id":330720,"date":"2026-03-15T11:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T11:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/330720\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T11:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T11:23:12","slug":"a-fine-line-between-rough-sex-and-sexual-assault-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/330720\/","title":{"rendered":"A &#8216;fine line&#8217; between rough sex and sexual assault &#8211; report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">By Penny Smith of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new parliamentary report warns some young people are turning up to hospital with injuries after violent sex but do not realise they may have been sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n<p>The issue was raised in a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/selectcommittees.parliament.nz\/v\/6\/916f6e22-8b7a-4c8b-9358-08de8081d208?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">report<\/a>\u00a0by the Justice Committee, reviewing the work of the Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence.<\/p>\n<p>The committee said it had been told there can be a &#8220;fine line&#8221; between rough sex and sexual assault and that some young people were presenting to accident and emergency departments rather than specialist sexual assault services.<\/p>\n<p>In some cases, the patients did not consider what happened to them to be rape or sexual assault.<\/p>\n<p>The report said changing sexual norms, particularly among young people, were a growing concern.<\/p>\n<p>Committee members were told practices such as choking and strangulation were becoming more common during sex.<\/p>\n<p>However, the report warned those acts could have serious health effects.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These practices can have severe health consequences, such as brain injury and PTSD,&#8221; the report said.<\/p>\n<p>It also noted evidence shows strangulation and choking could be warning signs of future, lethal violence.<\/p>\n<p>The committee heard one response could be better training for hospital staff.<\/p>\n<p>The board said educating emergency department workers about the signs of sexual assault would help them identify cases that might otherwise be missed and refer patients to the right services.<\/p>\n<p>New sexual violence capability frameworks are expected to be published next year to help health professionals recognise more nuanced signs of sexual assault.<\/p>\n<p>Sexual health educators warn that violent pornography is normalising rough and dangerous sex among young people.<\/p>\n<p>Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa chief executive Jackie Edmond said pornography often portrayed rough sex as normal.<\/p>\n<p>Edmond said young people needed better education about consent, relationships and what healthy sex looked like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Penny Smith of RNZ A new parliamentary report warns some young people are turning up to hospital&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-330720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}