Sexual Assault and Associated Factors among Women: A Cross-Sectional Study in Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Ethiopia

Background: Sexual assault is a major form of sexual violence affecting one out of every five women in the world and it has many consequences including sexually transmitted infections, posttraumatic stress disorder and risk of unintended pregnancy. Thus, this study was aimed to assess the magnitude, complication and factors associated with sexual assault among women who visited gynecologic outpatient department of Hawassa University Comprehensive Specialized Hospital.Methods: Cross-sectional study was conducted from January 1 to October 30, 2019. Self-administered questionnaire developed from “WHO multi-country study on women health” and from “sexual violence medical evaluation certificate format” was used to collect data. Descriptive analysis was done on sexual assault related characteristics and binary and multivariate logistic regression analysis were done to identify factors associated with sexual assault.Results: The prevalence of sexual assault was 10.8% (n=43). Some 79.1% (n=34) of survivors were under the age of 18 years. 25% (n=7) of the survivors tested for pregnancy were positive and some 7% (n=3) of each were positive for Hepatitis B and Trichomonas vaginalis. Woman who was less than 18 years old [aOR=10.7, 95%CI (3.37, 33.85)], unmarried [aOR=9.2, 95% CI (2.11, 40.42)], had primary level of education [aOR=8.9, 95% CI (2.37, 33.06)] and a monthly income less than 1500 birr [aOR=6.7, 95% CI (1.54, 29.50)] had higher odds of experiencing sexual assault than their counterparts who were adult, married, secondary- or higher-level of education and a monthly income more than 1500 birr. Conclusions: In this study, Age, marital status, monthly income and educational level were significantly associated with sexual assault.Key words: Women, Pregnancy, Sexual assault, Sexually transmitted infection.