The Victim of Rape

Lynda Lytle Holmstrom

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351301909
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This unprecedented in-depth account of how our major institutions respond to the crime of rape is the first empirical study of rape victims in the United States as they come into contact with those who staff our police stations, hospitals, and courthouses. As this engrossing study makes clear, rape does not end with the assailant's departure; the profound suffering of the victim can be diminished or heightened by the response of these institutions.

The authors provide direct, on-the-scene reports of how rape victims confront and endure the often devastating effects of institutional processing. Their work is based on first-hand observations, personal interviews, and case histories that document the rape victim's plight, and includes tables that present all research findings in easy-to-grasp numerical terms. The authors note changes now taking place, and argue that further institutional changes must be made to delegitimize rape in our society.

The new introductory essay locates The Victim of Rape within the context of four lines of research: studies looking at the criminal justice system processing of such cases, the connection of rape to everyday life, social-structural and ideological support for rape, and strategies for prevention.

CHAPTER 1
The Lot of the Rape Victim

Lynda Lytle Holmstrom and Ann Wolbeit Burgess

Our society makes the lot of the rape victim difficult. Often it is assumed that the rape was the victim’s fault or that it makes the victim less worthy as a person. Furthermore, when the victim reports the crime or when someone else reports it, a difficult process usually lies ahead.

A series of institutions—including law-enforcement agencies, hospitals, and courts—deal with the crime of rape. When an attack is reported, these institutions are put into motion, and both the offender and the victim are processed through them.¹ Studies of the course of the criminal through this institutional maze are numerous, but little scholarly attention has been given to how the victim proceeds through the same maze.

Our study is an attempt to correct this oversight. It focuses on victims and follows them over time, especially as they go through the criminal justice system. This focus on the victim has practical import as well as academic importance. Crime statistics show clearly that reported rapes have been on the rise. FBI uniform crime reports show that both the number of rapes and the rate per 100,000 inhabitants have increased dramatically in recent years. Thus, from a pragmatic point of view, it seems more important than ever to understand what happens to the victims of this crime. By documenting and analyzing their experience, we will be in a better position to recommend constructive change.

To investigate this issue, a study was done of all 146 victims with a complaint of rape admitted during a one-year period to the emergency wards of a large municipal hospital. In addition, a smaller number of victims from other sources were studied. We interviewed victims when they were admitted to the hospital, often in the middle of the night; did weekly follow-up interviews on their emotional problems; and accompanied them to court to observe firsthand all the courthouse proceedings. The study thus follows the victims from the time they arrive at the hospital until the final outcome of the legal process. It looks at the initial contact with the criminal justice system—that is, who is involved in reporting the rape and why; the experience in going to the police; the decision to press or not press charges; the hospital exam to gather evidence; how cases get dropped at each stage of the legal process; the court experience; and the results both legal and psychological, of this court experience.

This is a study of institutional processing. We take seriously Everett Hughes’s suggestion that, as social observers, we should pay attention to the connection between the institution and the person.² We look at the victim’s course—or, to use the sociological term, the victim’s “career”³—as she goes through the police, medical, and court systems. And we look at how these long-established work systems are structured and what impact their structure has on the victim who is briefly “going through.” Police, hospital staff, and court personnel often remain in their jobs for years, forming lasting relationships with these institutions and with each other. But victims, like defendants,⁴ are merely “passing through.”

Law-enforcement agencies, hospitals, and courts are large bureaucracies. Many of the problems rape victims face are related to this fact. Staffed by bureaucratic officials and by professionals, these institutions can contribute not only to the comfort and security of victims, but to their depersonalization and control. The problems victims face include feeling lost in the system, lack of privacy, being kept in ignorance, and being caught in the conflict between victims’ rights and organizational responsibilities.⁵

Victims often feel lost and neglected. Arriving at the police station, the emergency ward, or the courthouse they find that the organization has its own time schedule and procedures that are often set up more for the convenience of staff than for the public it is to serve. Victims who arrive at the emergency ward of a hospital may have to wait a long time for an exam, especially if more life-endangering cases than theirs are ahead of them. In some hospitals one must wait alone, since rules forbid the presence of a friend or family member. At the courthouse, the victim may sit unnoticed for hours in a crowded, noisy, depressing corridor. For serious crimes such as attempted murder and rape the victim waits to be interviewed by an assistant district attorney. These D As, often working under hectic and unpredictable time schedules, dash out into the corridors in between appearances in court on various other cases to try to sandwich in an interview with the victim.

The rape victim may also find that she has little privacy. One of the victim’s main concerns may be whether people will find out what has happened. Yet often the police, medical, and court personnel as they do their work make the victim’s situation known to the community. News of the crime may be spread by the manner in which the police arrive in the community—driving a marked car with siren or flashing light on. Physicians may tell the victim’s parents or spouse the results of the medical examination. The court process is one of the least private aspects of all. The victim, unless very young, must give testimony in a hearing or trial open to the general public. Usually, spectators are present. The victims are asked to state their name and address openly before strangers. Victims are asked about intimate details of the alleged crime, as well as details about their private lives. Some spectators may be present on official business, awaiting their turn in court. But others are there just for the show. They are “court-watchers”—voyeurs in search of sex and violence.

The victim is often kept in ignorance. Police, physicians, and district attorneys tend to not inform the victim about what is happening. Police often ask embarrassing questions without explaining why they must do so. Physicians who examine victims are still, for the most part, following the traditional professional model in which the professional decides for the client what he or she needs. And D As sometimes fail to inform victims of crucial aspects of the case. The victim may be sitting in the courtroom in the middle of the trial before suddenly realizing—due to comments of the lawyers—that the rape charge has been dropped and is no longer an issue.

Victims may find that there is a conflict between their rights and the responsibilities of the organizations. Hospitals, for example, are responsible for giving care that meets certain standards. If they fail to do so, they can be held legally liable for negligence. Rape may cause gynecological damage, venereal disease, and pregnancy, so adequate treatment typically requires doing an internal pelvic examination. Some victims do not want to be examined, however, and may wonder if they have the right to refuse. If they do try to refuse, they may be subjected to pressure by hospital personnel to submit, since the hospital must protect itself.

These and many other problems that rape victims face as they come into contact with institutions designed to deal with rape are discussed throughout this book. What the procedures have in common is that they often further victimize the victim. Ironically, the institutions that society has designated to help victims may in fact cause further damage. Although such procedures may be distasteful to any client, they are especially upsetting to the rape victim who has just been through a life-threatening situation.⁶ Already humiliated and depersonalized by the assault itself, rape victims are in a psychological state of crisis⁷ and are thus hypersensitive to any slight. The neutral stance of the record keeper who talks to patients as they arrive at the hospital or the calm detachment of a professional on the emergency ward may be perceived by the victim as an attitude of callousness.

The experiences of the particular victims reported in this book are of interest not only in themselves, but more importantly for their theoretical and practical implications. The findings have theoretical importance for criminologists and sociologists. They raise the basic analytic question of whether victimization can be increased by those groups and institutions that are supposed to protect citizens. If this is so—and we believe our data show that it is—then, in addition to looking at the crime, the perpetrator, and the victim, we can add a fourth element to our analytical framework: the part played in victimization by those groups and institutions that are supposed to protect the victim.⁸

The findings also have practical implications. Analysis and documentation of the difficulties victims face in the present system can suggest changes one could institute that would promote more adequate help for rape victims. Many groups around the country—including concerned social seientists, clinicians, former victims, attorneys, feminists, and law-enforcement officials—are interested in helping to bring about more humanistic treatment for rape victims. We hope that our analysis of the experiences of a sample of rape victims will be of use to them.

Notes

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1Lynda Lytle Holmstrom and Ann Wolbert Burgess, “Rape: The Victim and the Criminal Justice System,״ paper read at the First International Symposium on Victimology, Jerusalem, Israel, September 2-6, 1973; published in International Journal of Criminology and Penology 3 (1975), pp. 101-110.

2Everett Cherrington Hughes, in Men and Their Work, “Institutional Office and the Person,” (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1958), pp. 64-67. (First published 1937 in American Journal of Sociology.)

3Ibid.

4Abraham S. Blumberg, “Covert Contingencies in the Right to the Assistance of Counsel,” in The Triple Revolution Emerging: Social Problems in Depth, Robert Perrucci and Marc Pilisuk, eds. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), pp. 479-480. (First published 1967 in Law and Society Review)

5Lynda Lytle Holmstrom and Ann Wolbert Burgess, “Victimization by Government: Failure to Help the Victims of Violent Crime,” paper read at the American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 1-4, 1974.

6Ann Wolbert Burgess and Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, Rape: Victims of Crisis, (Bowie, Md.: Robert J. Brady Co., 1974), pp. 37-39.

7Ibid. This analysis uses Gerald Caplan’s definition of crisis as a psychological disequilibrium in a person who confronts a hazardous circumstance that for that person constitutes an important problem which he ,can for the time being neither escape nor solve with his customary problem-solving resources.

8We would like to thank Stephen Schafer for a discussion that helped clarify the theoretical implications of victimization by such institutions.

CHAPTER 2
How We Did the Research

Lynda Lytle Holmstrom and Ann Wolbeit Burgess

This book represents the finished product—the outcome of our research and analysis. But any research project has a history that the reader is entitled to know about to assess more accurately its results. Before presenting our findings, we want to review the process we went through as we worked together on this project.

How We Got Started

It is hard to know exactly what makes one decide to study a certain topic. Although rape has recently been much talked about, when we started our research almost nothing was being said or done about it as a social problern—especially from the point of view of the victim. One of us (Holmstrom) had just finished a research project and was searching for a topic that had some impact on women’s lives and on the relationship between the sexes. She remembered having heard many reports by women at consciousness-raising groups in the late 1960s about physical assaults that had been made upon them by men. And yet, it seemed that despite its common occurrence and its apparently strong impact on the people involved, that, researchers seldom picked up on this assaultive behavior as a research topic.¹ Thinking about this phenomenon led Holmstrom to the idea, initially only vaguely formulated, of studying rape and especially rape victims. The next step was her decision to meet with Burgess, with whom she had done interdisciplinary teaching, to discuss how to go about such a study. Burgess’s immediate response was, “If you want to add a counseling aspect to your study, I’d be interested in going in with you on it.” We discussed how an interdisciplinary project might be an especially fruitful way to approach the problem, and how the academic skills of a sociologist and the clinical skills of a psychotherapist and psychiatric nurse might well complement each other. We decided to become a team.

Holmstrom’s impression at the time of this preliminary discussion was that little existed in the scholarly literature on rape victims. Burgess’s impression was that little existed in the way of counseling services for them. We checked out our impressions and found that they were accurate. The scholarly and professional literature on sexual offenses, including rape, was voluminous, but it had overlooked the victim.² The literature had focused on the person committing the crime (an example is the well-known book, Sex Offenders, by Gebhard and his colleagues.³ Or, the literature had focused on the circumstances under which the crime took place and characteristics of victim and criminal that can be obtained from official records. Amir’s widely cited analysis of rape is an example of this type. Using information from police records, he analyzed the situation in which the crime occurred, such as place and time of day, and characteristics of the victim and offenders, such as age, race, and whether they were strangers to each other.⁴ Only in clinical case histories written by psychologists and psychiatrists did one begin to get some insight into the experience of the victim. But because they were reports of isolated and scattered cases, they remained only suggestive. Clearly what needed to be done was to collect such information from a sample of victims in a systematic way. Counseling programs, like the scholarly literature, had also neglected the victim. Although programs existed for hundreds of problems—from drug abuse to divorce, from alcoholism to widowhood—almost none existed for victims of sexual assault.⁵ Clearly there was a need here, too.

Having decided to work as a team and having ascertained that information on and services for victims were indeed lacking, our next step was to gain access to a population of victims.

Gaining Access to A Sample of Victims

Now that we have gathered information on several hundred rape cases, it seems obvious to us how one locates victims. But in the beginning of our work, it was not so self-evident. We knew that victims who reported the crime would be concentrated in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• 1 The Lot of the Rape Victim
• 2 How We Did the Research
• 3 Entering the Criminal Justice System
• 4 The Hospital As Healer and Detective
• 5 Getting the Case to Trial
• 6 In the Courtroom
• 7 The Rape Victim’s Reaction to Court
• 8 The Outcome of the Court Process
• 9 Policy Recommendations for the Institutional Response to Rape Victims
• Index