Mike Domitrz breaks down the legal degrees of sexual assault and explains that trauma isn't determined by the severity level. Even non-penetrative contact or unwanted touching counts as assault and can cause lasting harm.
Somebody who has sexual contact without consent. So, so when you hear the word like rape or sexual assault, people often think that means, oh, sex, they had sex, but it could be something that is not sex, but it's sexual contact. So every state has their laws a little different, but most of them have what's called a first-degree and a fourth-degree sexual assault. A first-degree would be the extreme that you just brought up a moment ago. A fourth-degree could be somebody touching somebody against their consent. As an example. So there's different degrees to which it can be. They're all messed up as far as committing the crime and doing that harm to someone. They can all do a lot of trauma. So sometimes we go, well, that wasn't a rape rape. You'll hear people make statements like this. That wasn't a rape rape because it wasn't the version they hear about on TV. It was a touch. Can still have a lot of trauma.
