Growing Plague of Sexual Assaults : To turn the tide, families, schools and other institutions must re-instill morality, respect and discipline.

The figures are shocking! The Bureau of Criminal Statistics of the Department of Justice reported that last year Orange County ranked fifth in the state in the number of reported rapes, a total of 631.

However, Orange County is not alone in suffering from the plague of sexual assault. Statistics show a startling increase in rapes reported nationwide. A study by the National Victim Center in Arlington, Va., and the Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center at the Medical University of South Carolina revealed that 683,000 adult women were forcibly raped in 1990. In more telling terms, that means there were 78 forcible rapes per hour, 1,871 per day and 56,916 per month.

Another aspect of this blight that receives scant publicity is that an estimated 20,000 teen-age males are sexually assaulted each year. However, this figure, just like that for female victims, may be astonishingly low. Barbara West, who worked at the Orange County Sexual Assault Network, said that “just like female victims, males think they are at fault.” As a result, experts believe, and common sense would support, that the actual number of both female and male victims of sexual assault is much higher because many, if not most, victims fail to report the crime.

Sexual assault is truly one of modern society’s most abhorrent failures. Some people, however, would argue that it is merely a tragic sign of the times.

Despite Orange County’s dubious distinction in ranking fifth in reported rapes, victim assistance services barely exist. In fact, West is no longer able to counsel sexual assault victims because OCSAN, the county’s only rape crisis center, was recently forced to close its doors due to inadequate funding.

By comparison, Los Angeles County, which led the state in reported rapes, has 10 rape crisis centers. Last year alone, OCSAN handled almost 5,000 calls on its crisis hot line. The calls came from women (and men) of all ages, ethnicity and background. In addition to counseling, the network made available to victims therapist and resource referral, peer support groups, self-defense classes and an extensive community outreach program.

What does Orange County’s predicament--ranking in the state’s top five for reported rapes and the financial failure of its only sexual center--tell us about our community? First, it is startling evidence that the moral and cultural decline usually associated only with big city life has now taken root in our own back yard. As Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: “The West . . . has been undergoing an erosion and obscuring of high moral and ethical ideal. The spiritual axis of life has grown dim.” We can see the evidence all around us. The warning signal is loud and clear. The nation’s social institutions, especially the family, are failing in their most important and time-honored task: the moral education of young Americans.

Second, it illustrates community listlessness when the county’s only organization dedicated to helping sexual assault victims is forced to close its doors for lack of funds. We as a nation, and we in Orange County, need to come to grips with a situation that is reaching critical proportions. If we do not, we may one day find that America has fallen casualty to the recklessness of a society increasingly consumed with cynicism, greed, materialism and whim. Despite the claims of some, government intervention alone cannot solve the cultural decline of our nation or the scourge of societal ills such as sexual assault.

Only when society’s institutions--families, churches, schools, civic-oriented groups and others--resume the responsibility of teaching self-discipline, moral obligation, civil behavior and respect for authority will the cultural downfall be reversed. Only then will sexual assault cease to be a sign of the times.