A new UN survey looking into the roots of rape revealed one in four men from various Asian countries have sexually assaulted at least one person in their lifetime.
Ten thousand men from six nations in Asia participated in the study, which not only considered the socioeconomic and cultural reasons for rape, but also asked why people committed such acts of sexual violence.
The report, published in the medical journal The Lancet, was conducted by the Partners of Prevention - a handful of UN agencies asked men from Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka whether they'd ever raped someone.
Subjects were asked if they had "forced a woman who was not [a] wife or girlfriend at the time to have sex," and if they'd "had sex with a woman who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether she wanted it."
According to the study, about one in four of the people surveyed reported they'd raped someone - Papua New Guinea had the highest proportion of admitted rape, with a whopping 60.7 percent.
Compare that with Bangladesh's 11.1 percent, Cambodia's 20.8 percent, China with 22.7 percent and Indonesia at 31.9 percent of men saying they'd forced a partner to have sex.
But women were not the only victims - 6.2 percent of the men said they raped a man or men, and 30.2 percent reported having assaulted a man or woman in a group setting, CNN reported.
The study found that the earlier the perpetrator first raped, the more likely they were to commit another sexual assault later in life. More than half of the men interviewed raped a person who was not their partner between the ages of 14 and 19.
According to the authors of the study, this "reinforces the need for early rape prevention if one is to intervene before the first rape is committed."
When asked why they committed rape, 73.3 percent of respondents cited sexual entitlement. Author Dr. Emma Fulu defined this term as men believing "they had the right to have sex with the woman regardless of consent."
The second most common justification for rape was "for fun, or because they were bored." At 37.9 percent, the following reason for sexual acts of aggression were punishment-based, if the man became aggravated. Alcohol was the least-cited reason for rape, at 27 percent.
With this information, the authors of the study concludee this high level of rape in Asian countries must be dealt with early on, and also must be considered in a cultural context.
"Interventions must focus on childhood and adolescence, and address culturally rooted male gender socialization and power relations, abuse in childhood and poverty," the report stated.
