Intimate Partner Sexual Violence

A Multidisciplinary Guide to Improving Services and Support for Survivors of Rape and Abuse

Louise McOrmond Plummer, Jennifer Y. Levy-Peck, Patricia Easteal

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781849059121
• eBook ISBN: 9780857006554
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Intimate Partner Sexual Violence (IPSV) is the most common type of sexual violence and a common component of domestic violence, yet most cases go unreported and service responses are often inadequate. This book brings together advice for all those professionals working with individuals who have experienced IPSV and puts forward recommendations to tackle this prevalent form of sexual violence.

With contributions from leading experts on IPSV, Intimate Partner Sexual Violence is a comprehensive guide to the subject which bridges the gap between research and practice. Multidisciplinary and international in approach, the book covers key issues salient to all professionals - the impact of IPSV, reproductive coercion, the physical and psychological indicators, possible consequences of taking a case to court, and best practice service responses. One section also addresses the risks and needs of IPSV victims in different contexts, such as those in same-sex or teenage relationships, immigrant victims, and those living in rural areas or in prison.

This is an authoritative resource for all professionals who work with IPSV victims including counselors, social workers, refuge workers, victim advocates, mental health professionals, pastoral workers, lawyers, police, and health practitioners.

PART 1

Introduction
and
Overview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

THE NECESSITY OF APPROPRIATE
SERVICE RESPONSE TO INTIMATE
PARTNER SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Louise McOrmond-Plummer, Patricia Easteal AM,
and Jennifer Y. Levy-Peck

This book is about intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV). With an international focus, it contains multidisciplinary advice for professionals—such as advocates, mental health professionals, health practitioners, religious leaders, lawyers, police, and the judiciary—who interact with individuals (primarily women) who have experienced IPSV. We locate IPSV within the context of domestic and sexual violence—as both/and, rather than either/or—and give IPSV service provision priority.

What is intimate partner sexual violence?

IPSV is sexual assault by a current or former intimate partner, and includes sexual coercion in teen dating relationships, as well as what was formerly known as marital rape, and sexual assault in same-sex intimate relationships. Perpetrators have a range of ways to force or coerce partners or ex-partners into nonconsensual sex acts. These may include the following:

•Physical force: Holding down or otherwise restraining the victim, using superior physical strength to overcome refusal. May include beating or weapons.

•Threats of harm to the victim or a third party: May include pets, and often includes children or other family members with whom the victim has a bond. It is important to note here that a threat may not need to be expressly uttered; for example, if the sexual assault coexists with battery, there may be an implicit undertone of menace that forestalls refusal. Or, the perpetrator has raped the victim before and, as a result, she knows that refusal is pointless (Easteal and McOrmond-Plummer 2006).

•Verbal badgering and blackmail: Not allowing the victim to say no to sexual activity without unpleasant consequences such as withdrawal of affection, withholding of housekeeping money, or refusal of help with children. The perpetrator may threaten to seek sex outside the relationship. A teenager may be blackmailed with having rumors spread that she is promiscuous, or a same-sex partner may threaten to “out” the victim to work colleagues (Easteal and McOrmond-Plummer 2006; Winters 2009).

IPSV may include any of the following acts that are perpetrated without consent:

•Anal or vaginal penetration with finger, penis, or object.

•Oral rape: forced or coerced fellatio or cunnilingus.

•Touching the victim in a sexual way or forcing the victim to touch the perpetrator.

•Making the victim available to other people for the purpose of gang-rape or prostitution.

•Forced sexual contact with animals.

•Forcing or coercing a partner into viewing pornography.

•Filming or otherwise recording sex acts without a partner’s consent.

•Verbal sexual humiliation or degradation.

•Reproductive coercion (such as forcing a partner to become pregnant, to carry a pregnancy to term, or to abort).

•Deliberate exposure to sexually transmitted infections.

Importantly, not all forms of IPSV may meet legal definitions of criminality—for example, calling a partner degrading names such as “slut” or “whore” is also a form of sexual violence aimed at degrading or controlling the victim. Reproductive coercion also is not a criminal act in itself, but may have severe consequences for the woman whose wishes about childbearing are disregarded.

IPSV is usually perpetrated by an individual as part of a pattern of violence and control. However, while battered women are statistically more likely to experience rape and sexual assault (Russell 1990),
it also happens in relationships not characterized by other forms of violence, or that may appear to be otherwise egalitarian (Black et al. 2011; Easteal and McOrmond-Plummer 2006).

How common is intimate partner sexual violence?

By some estimates, as much as 60 percent of abused women are also sexually assaulted by their partners (Howard et al. 2003). A recent US study reports that 51.1 percent of rapes upon women are by past or present partners, and that 9.4 percent of American women have been raped by an intimate partner (Black et al. 2011). This is consistent with an earlier British Home Office study which found that 45 percent of all rapes were committed by present partners, with a further 11 percent by ex-partners, making IPSV the most common type of sexual assault (Myhill and Allen 2002).

Risk factors for intimate partner sexual violence

The risk factors for IPSV described by Raquel Kennedy Bergen in Marital Rape: New Research and Directions (2006) are as follows:

•being physically abused

•being pregnant

•being ill or recently discharged from the hospital

•attempting to leave a partner

•being separated or divorced.

This list makes clear the connection between vulnerability of the victim and coercion by the abuser. Sexual assault becomes a means of reinforcing the abuser’s power over his partner.

The impact of intimate partner sexual violence

Despite the common assumptions that “only stranger rape is real rape” and that sexual assault is less serious when the victim and perpetrator have a prior relationship, several studies indicate that women who have been sexually assaulted by partners experience longer-lasting and more devastating effects than women raped by strangers (Easteal 1994; Finkelhor and Yllo 1985; Russell 1990). Importantly, IPSV coupled with battering is recognized as a risk factor for lethal violence (Campbell and Alford 1989).

Lack of understanding

Although IPSV is, as we have seen, a highly prevalent form of sexual assault which accrues serious impact, widespread understanding of it lags behind other forms of sexual assault and domestic violence. Research from the 1980s up until the present indicates that many professionals in fields that have contact with survivors of IPSV are unsure about how to proceed when they encounter this issue. This may lead to IPSV survivors receiving less than adequate service (Bergen 1996; Finkelhor and Yllo 1985; Parkinson and Cowan 2008).

Practitioner and service provider ignorance may be attributed at least in part to the fact that the literature about working with sexual assault and/or domestic violence rarely gives focus to IPSV. Where it does, it often does not cover the special and discrete issues that accompany this specific form of violence against women. As Diana Russell (1990) writes, marital rape frequently has been filed under the rubric of domestic violence. Russell warns of the disservice that this does to survivors in terms of not addressing the special issues that rape by an intimate partner may carry, and promoting the false assumption that it only happens in violent relationships.

In her 1996 book Wife Rape, Raquel Kennedy Bergen agreed, writing that still too many service providers are uncertain as to who should take ownership of the issue of marital rape, with the result that they shunt women between agencies with little in the way of real assistance. This is problematic because, as Bergen’s research respondents indicated, women want specific assistance for the sexual violence experienced from their partners. Issues of violence to women and children have been traditionally addressed in the women’s movement. Yet, with regard to IPSV, problems may also exist within feminist-based organizations specifically set up to tackle domestic or sexual violence. For example, women who have experienced IPSV have been asked not to mention rape in domestic violence support groups. Sexual assault services have given IPSV survivors lower priority because there may be a mistaken belief that IPSV is not as serious as other types of rape (Bergen 1996).

Unfortunately, inequitable service provision for IPSV victims and survivors is not a thing of the past. More recent studies have indicated that survivors of IPSV continue to receive inadequate treatment (Bergen 2005, 2006; Easteal and McOrmond-Plummer 2006; Heenan 2004; Parkinson and Cowan 2008).

Horror stories: the need for this book

Women seeking help from advocates, counseling professionals, law enforcement, religious leaders, and medical professionals may receive treatment ranging from ignorance to seeming cruelty. Indeed, accessing help can be nightmarish. One woman told us about a visit to her doctor, where she disclosed that she had been waking up to her husband sexually assaulting her. The doctor’s opinion was that wake-up sex is “sexy” and that the woman should appreciate it as such. Another woman reported partner rape to the police, who suggested to her that it was really just “kinky sex” and not worth reporting—and this was a police unit with specific training in handling sexual offenses (Aphrodite Wounded 2002). Religious leaders have forbidden congregations to assist women escaping sexually violent husbands (Parkinson and Cowan 2008). Counselors may view IPSV as a mutual dysfunction rather than something a man does to control and abuse his partner, and so they offer couples counseling, which can be dangerous to women still in relationships of abuse (Easteal and McOrmond-Plummer 2006). A chronic issue with many service agencies is a reluctance to name IPSV as rape, sexual assault, or a crime (Heenan 2004; Parkinson and Cowan 2008).

Service responses do not need to be verbal to be harmful. Changing the subject, silence, or refusing to recognize IPSV as an issue at all can be damaging. For example, survivors of IPSV have reported that doctors commonly make no response to a disclosure of sexual assault and do not bring it up again in subsequent appointments (Parkinson and Cowan 2008).

Why do we call these responses “horror stories”? When one looks at their impact on victims and survivors of IPSV, the term seems warranted. Disbelief, minimization, or other responses that deny IPSV and its harms or its criminality serve to entrap women further. A victim silenced by a bad professional response may feel reluctant to tell somebody again. Thus, her psychological pain or the danger she may still face will thrive in this environme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1 Introduction And Overview
• Part 2 How Serious Is Intimate Partner Sexual Violence?
• Part 3 Intimate Partner Sexual Violence And Best Practice Service Response
• Part 4 Reaching And Assisting Different Populations
• Part 5 Conclusion
• Resources
• Contributors