April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which is sort of a dreary topic but an important one.

San Francisco Women Against Rape is one of the local resources women (and those who love them) can take advantage of when dealing with a rape or sexual assault situation. They've been around for more than 30 years and are now a fully staffed organization offering help 24 hours a day. We encourage you to do the direct thing and give them some money to continue their good work.

Statistics about sexual violence are easy to find but hard to rely on as the nature of the crime makes it one of the most underreported. The CDC estimates that one in six women and one in 33 men are the victims of rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes, and that 8 of 10 knew their rapist. Those are some scary and very sad numbers. The numbers get worse when you talk about broader definitions of sexual assault - we found estimates at 1 in 3.

Finally, we're sorry to have left it for so long, but SFWAR is looking for artists for its "9th Annual Artists Against Rape" event in June. The submission deadline is tomorrow, April 30th.

We also want to make sure that you know about resources available in the south bay. There's lots of help and organizations you can turn to down in San Jose as well.

Ideally, we'd move on to May and leave sexual assault behind in April but that's not the case. Organizations like SFWAR do their work year 'round and need your help all the time.