The results of a new study by the University of New Hampshire found that one in ten young people admit to being sexually violent toward their partner.

According to The Daily Mail, a majority of 14 to 21 year-olds in the study admitted that rather than resorting to threats and physical force, they used coercive tactics on their partners such as arguing, pressuring them, getting angry, or making them feel guilty.

Eight percent of the 1,058 respondents said they had touched someone sexually even while knowing the other person did not want them to. Three per cent said they used coercive tactics to get their partner to be intimate with them when she didn't want to.

Two percent of respondents said they had committed rape and three percent admitted that they had attempted to rape someone.

Even more disturbing is the fact that more than half of the perpetrators of the verbal and/or physical violence blamed the victim for their actions. And almost all of them escaped punishment because their victims told no one what had been done to them. Only two perpetrators reported that they had been arrested for the crime.

Many also said that they had seen films and other media that depicted sexually violent situations.

"Links between perpetration and violent sexual media are apparent, suggesting a need to monitor adolescents’ consumption of this material, particularly given today’s media saturation among the adolescent population," said Dr Kimberly Mitchell of the University of New Hampshire.

"Because blaming victims appears to be common while perpetrators experiencing consequences is not, there is urgent need for high school and middle school programs aimed at supporting bystander intervention."

The American study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's (JAMA) Pediatrics and was based on surveys conducted between October 2010 and March 2012 with more than one thousand young people aged 14 to 21 who participated in a broader longitudinal study called "Growing Up With Media."

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