Interviewing Rape Victims

Practice and Policy Issues in an International Context

Karen Rich

• Editore: Palgrave Pivot
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137353238
• Argomento: Psychology
• Categoria: Forensic Psychology

This study presents a unique overview of the cultural, social and practical aspects of interviewing rape victims. Exploring a range of issues that affect rape cases including discourse, gender, attitudes and victim's rights, Rich reveals the complexities of sexual assault and looks to how communities can work to respond to and combat such violence.

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Attitudes Toward Rape and Rape Victims

Abstract: This chapter will discuss the reasons why rape victims often fail to report the crimes, common reactions of others to disclosures, and the relationship of these reactions to rape myth acceptance. Cultural, sub-cultural, disability and gender-related issues will be discussed. Theories of human psychology explaining listener resistance will be presented. In addition, past studies on rape myth acceptance (RMA) among police officers and of perceptions of rape reporters will be summarized. Finally, the RMA scale used by the current author will be explained and results reported.

Keywords: Just World Hypothesis; neutralization strategies; rape myth acceptance; social stigma

Rich, Karen. Interviewing Rape Victims: Practice and Policy Issues in an International Context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137353238.0004.

Reactions to rape victims

In a large, cross national study of women’s victimization risk, it was determined that country-level variables (such as the human development index, female employment levels and inequality) were the most powerful determinants of violence against women – much more so than characteristics of individual victims (Jaquier, Fisher & Johnson, 2011). Sanday’s (1981) cross-cultural research resulted in a similar conclusion. Thus, the best way to understand crimes against women is to consider the cultural context within which they occur. Despite this reality, people often look at individual victim or perpetrator characteristics when seeking to understand violence against women.

One of the crucial elements in a victim’s recovery from rape is social support. Many rape victims decompensate in response to negative reactions from others, even when these are combined with positive reactions. A wide body of literature has documented that negative reactions to rape victims are common, even among their family members, intimate partners and friends (Ahrens & Campbell, 2006; Kaukinen & DeMaris, 2009; Ullman, 2010). This is because those people may feel indirectly responsible for, and violated by, the rape. Because they may experience traumatic reactions of their own, they have been labeled “secondary survivors” or co-victims of the crimes. Secondary survivors may feel rage at the perpetrator, anger at the survivor, fear for their own safety, shame, grief or recollection of their own abuse; thus they may engage in ambivalent or negative reactions even with the best of intentions. These may include: attempts to silence the victim; attempts at distraction or interruption of the rape narrative; blaming, disbelief; placing emotional or physical distance between self and victim; threatening to track down and kill the offender; questioning the victim before they are prepared to talk about the crime; insinuations that sexual acts were consensual; attempts to prematurely resume sexual relations (in the case of a romantic partner) and attempts to seize control of aspects of the victims’ life (what they wear, where they live, where they go, who they associate with) in the name of “protection” (Banyard, et al., 2010; Smith, 2005; Ullman, 2010). Victim populations particularly vulnerable to the latter response are adolescents and people with disabilities – the two groups most likely to be raped according to existing statistics. A third to one-half of co-victims develop post traumatic stress disorder and require psychological counseling of their own; the biggest contributor to their adjustment is the amount of social support received from their communities (Christiansen, Bak & Elklit, 2012). While co-victims’ reactions are understandable, they can undermine the emotional stability of primary victims (Ullman, 2010). Sometimes co-victims also provide positive responses to disclosures such as believing victims, allowing them space to tell their stories, offering concrete aid, referring them for counseling, or telling them that they did not deserve to be assaulted. However, victims are often more affected by negative responses than positive ones. Negative responses can also be encountered in dealings with police officers, medical staff, counselors, shelter employees, and other representatives of “helping” professions (Schauben & Frazier, 2006). When victims internalize negative messages from others they may experience an increase in post traumatic stress that can result in negative coping strategies (Campbell, Dworkin & Cabral, 2009). However, helpful responses may decrease these. For example, in Kaukinen and DeMaris’ (2009) study, victims whose perpetrators were arrested, experienced a decrease in post traumatic binge drinking behaviors.

Vulnerable populations

For certain groups in society, reactions from social agents can result in even more damaging consequences than those listed above. For example, if the crime reporter is a victim of human trafficking, (s)he may risk arrest, interrogation in a foreign language, deportation and/or murder by the trafficker or his associates (Kotria & Womack, 2011). If the victim is a prisoner, fostered child, or institutionalized person with a disability, (s)he may fear expulsion, loss of services from other providers, more restrictive environments, physical retaliation, withholding of food or medication, and escalation of the abuse (Plummer & Findley, 2012). An adolescent victim may experience stigmatization by his or her peers (often accomplished via social media), social isolation, loss of privileges at home, and re-victimization by the perpetrator’s friends (Skinner & Taylor, 2009). A wife who reports her husband may lose economic security, the stability of her children’s’ family life, and respectability among their mutual associates (Perrin, Perrin & Barnett, 2005). Members of ethnic or racial minority groups may bring shame and increased surveillance to (already maligned) communities (Glass, 2012; Pitts, 2014). Where multiple perpetrators are involved (in incidences of gang rape) these risks are magnified.

In many cultures, rape affects the honor of a victim’s family; stigma results from their failure to provide protection for their own. This understanding of rape may contribute to its use in war to humiliate enemy civilians (Brownmiller, 1975; Christiansen et al., 2012). Embarrassment, shame and attempts to hide a family member’s rape may result. Relatives of immigrant victims may fear deportation (Mason & Palvirenti, 2013; Pitts, 2014); relatives of gay or lesbian victims may fear public scrutiny of their family member’s sexuality (Balsam, Beauchaire & Rothblum, 2005). Adolescent and child victims, often lured into illegal activities by perpetrators, may fear punishment for their rule-breaking activities (Reid, 2010). Elderly victims or those with disabilities may fear placement in restrictive environments. Males may fear being characterized as gay (Balsam, et al., 2005). Thus, it can be seen that the incidence of rape, and the reluctance to report it, intersect with pre-existing social vulnerabilities.

According to sociologist Irving Goffman, stigma is a characterological “mark” that, once identified by others, results in social exclusion, hostility, pity and revulsion. Being a rape victim can be highly stigmatizing; this is amplified by membership in other stigmatized categories (such as persons with disabilities, AIDS sufferers, welfare recipients, prostitutes, etc.). For example, a minority-race lesbian may be especially reluctant to call public attention to her rape as it would add an additional layer of stigma. However, any rape reporter takes a considerable risk in coming forward, and may experience a multitude of negative social reactions.

Social psychological theories

It has been hypothesized that negative reactions to rape victims are common because people do not want to accept that rape happens to individuals who are “normal,” respectable, or decent. The “Just World Hypothesis” is an expectation of justice, agency and predictability among the world, the self and others (Stromwall, Alfredsson & Landstrom, 2012). People who believe in a Just World are more likely to doubt a person’s claim of rape, since it threatens their sense of safety and order. For example, Sleath and Bull (2012) found that police officers with a strong belief in a Just World were more likely to blame victims for having been raped.

Another psychological construct that may predispose people toward accepting rape myths is that of the Internal Locus of Control. This is the belief that choice and free will, rather than external influences beyond peoples’ control, are the causes of most events. Those with an external locus of control tend to view fate, accident, chance, God, or the behavior of others as responsible for what happens to them (Lerner & Miller, 1978). An external locus of control is common among trauma survivors, depressed people, people of lower socio-economic status, and certain cultural groups. Conversely, people with an internal locus of control (most often people of higher socio-economic status, males, and people from Western European or North American cultures) view their successes and failures largely in terms of their own efforts (Ajzen, 2002). Applied to rape cases, observers with an internal locus of control may tend to blame a victim’s actions, whereas those with an external locus of control are likely to blame the perpetrator, bad luck, the physical environment, indifferent bystanders, social mores, and other external causes. People with an internal locus of control that hear about a rape might reason “I wouldn’t have let that (rape) happen to me, so why did (s)he allow it to happen?”. In contrast, people with an external locus of control might react to the same rape victim by concluding: “There but for fortune go I.” (Hayes et al., 2013).

Compliance versus consent

Victims of rape (and those who would judge them) often conflate consent with compliance. Compliance is a victim’s submission to sexual activities out of panic, psychological or physical immobilization, social/psychological duress, or fear of death (Briere & Scott, 2013). Consent is agreement to sexual activity with the ability to make that choice (in other words, under conditions where desire is present and coercion is absent). When victims negotiate for rapists to wear condoms, leave their children unharmed, or let them survive the assault they are often viewed (by third parties) as having agreed to their own sexual violation; however, in these instances they were merely compliant. Victims themselves may conflate compliance and consent, resulting in shame and a reluctance to disclose to others (Patterson et al., 2009).

Defining rape

Rape incidence and prevalence are difficult to measure with certainty for a variety of reasons: definitions vary, victims rarely come forward, and reports are made to different sources. Institutions and communities may have vested interests in how rape is defined, labeled and recorded.

Rape has historically been defined very narrowly, with only forced penile-vaginal penetration counted as rape. Feminist legal advocacy resulted in various levels of rape, or sexual assault, being defined as criminal. More recent legal advocacy has resulted in marital rape, rape of gay and lesbian people and sexual relations with underaged, incapacitated or mentally disabled people to be classified as rape. However, despite evolving legal definitions (which vary across jurisdictions, states and nations) many people and institutions interpret rape according to their own standards (Edwards et al., 2011; Weis, 2012).

For political and economic reasons, colleges, residences for people with disabilities, drug rehabilitation facilities, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, branches of the military and religious orders may handle rapes “in house” rather than allow civilian law enforcement officials to intervene. There may be incentives to view rapes as rumors, misunderstandings or the atypical reactions of a person under stress – rather than as criminal acts. Even when police are called, they may accept institutional definitions of the events rather than pursing criminal justice remedies. This results in gross underestimations of rape rates within closed communities.

Reluctance to report

Rape is commonplace in the United States and most Western countries. In addition, current rape victims are at increased likelihood of being raped a second time, especially when the first victimization occurred in childhood; as many as two of every three raped women are repeat victims (Van Dijk, 2010). While it may seem that “lightning does not strike twice in the same place,” this happens because underlying vulnerability factors (low self-esteem, inability to afford secure housing, need to work the night shift, etc.) often do not resolve post rape and are only compounded by the existence of previous traumas.

When studies of confidential or anonymous reports are compared with those made to police, it is clear that in many societies only 10–40% of victims make reports to formal criminal justice agents (Jordan, 2011; Kelly, 2005; Mossman et al., 2009; Morrison et al., 2007). For example, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention has estimated that only 20% of actual rape incidents in Sweden are reported to the police (BRA, 2005) despite the gender equality espoused there. Westmarland and associates found that even in 2012 (after many reforms have been instituted to improve the police response to rape), 68% of women in their UK sample said they would not report a date, marital or acquaintance rape if it happened in the future. This speaks to a serious lack of confidence in the police force. The resulting low rape statistics provide communities with a false sense of safety.

There are many theories about why victims do not report rapes to police. Researchers who investigate this question by speaking directly to victims of both genders have found that the main reasons are:

(a)shame and fear of public humiliation (Ullman, 2010);

(b)belief that the rapist or his associates will seek revenge and that the police will not protect them from retribution (Kotria & Womack, 2011);

(c)inability to recognize the crime as a rape because it did not conform to stereotypical understandings of the crime (Heath et al., 2013; Weis, 2011);

(d)belief that it is too personal a matter for police involvement (Rumney, 2008);

(e)fear of mistreatment by criminal justice authorities (Kaukinen & DeMaris, 2009; Kelly, 2010; Patterson, Greeson & Campbell, 2009; Van Dijk, 2010).

The latter is especially unfortunate because research has indicated that a key factor in a victim’s recovery from rape is the presence of supportive responders (Laxminarayan, 2013). In fact, social support helps to prevent Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other potential sequelae of rape. Conversely, negative social responses have been linked to increased levels of victim substance abuse, self harm and re-victimization (Ullman, 2010).

Rape victims are more likely to report a rape if their friends encourage them to do so (Anders & Christopher, 2011; Paul, et al., 2013). Thus, the “reputation” of a police force is established through social networks that victims are part...