I’d like to thank Shannon Thompson for contributing this article. She is my friend and co-volunteer at CARE: the UCD Center for Advocacy, Resources, and Education which provides 24/7 confidential resources, and spreads awareness of campus sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking.
When we think of doctors, we don’t know much about them from their job title. Sure, we assume they’re smart, but we don’t assume they’re all quiet or talk a lot with their hands. We dont’t characterize every doctor with such specifics because we know that personalities and behaviors come in every shape and size. If we accept the variability in doctors, why don’t we give that same consideration to victims of sexual assault?
Old statistics and the portrayal of sexual assault in the mass media have provided our society with a notion of what a “real” victim looks like. When people don’t fit our mold, we want to doubt their story. In reality, these conceptions aren’t accurate. Many factors influence how a victim responds to a traumatic event: cultural expectations, individual factors like past life occurrences and social support systems, and the content and intensity of the traumatic event itself. No two people respond in exactly the same way. There is no proper way to “look” like a victim, even if some of their behaviors are contradictory to our notions, because all of the behaviors are natural reactions to trauma.
There are four common behaviors that we don’t allow victims to show:
Self-blame
When we see a victim choosing to shoulder the blame for the incident, it can be hard to see them as a victim. We think they deserved it, or that the perpetrator didn’t really do anything wrong. We begin to doubt the claim that the attack was actually a sexual assault because, obviously, a “true” victim wouldn’t feel responsible.
Sadly, self-blame is very common. We are constantly thinking of alternatives to reality. Within the field of social cognition, these “if only I had…” thoughts are referred to as counterfactuals, and we create them by manipulating some part of the event to make an alternative reality. One of the aspects most commonly manipulated is our controllability. Self-blame indicates that victims are manipulating parts of the event under their control – whether it be their clothes, or inability to fight back during the attack. They commonly manipulate these things because it’s easy for them to imagine themselves making a different choice, but that does not indicate that their choice was wrong. They manipulate their own controllability because it is something they cannot do with their attacker, someone whose alternative choices are much harder to imagine. Although it’s completely normal, their self-blame is still misplaced. The only person who should be held accountable for the assault is the assaulter.
From a third person perspective, people tend to manipulate the controllability of the person that they are focusing on. For example, when hearing the story of the culprit, one manipulates their controllability. When hearing the victim’s story, someone who might already be displaying signs of self-blame, one manipulates the victim’s controllability. With this in mind, it’s easy to see how victim blaming is such a common occurrence.
Not Resisting
Who wouldn’t fight for their life when someone is assaulting them? If they didn’t resist, that means they liked it, right? Not at all.
Imagine yourself taking an exam, and you get to the essay question and… nothing. This question is too hard, and you have no idea what to write. You sit there, frozen in time, not sure where to begin. Even when you do conjure something up, it might be hard to finally put the pen to paper and transform your thoughts into your official answer.
This type of response is no different for victims of assault. An attack is a traumatic experience, and can often leave the victim in complete shock, confused about what to do. In the moment, they may focus on staying alive, doing things to prevent even more harm to themselves. This is why some victims don’t resist, or even cooperate with their attacker. Afterwards, it may lead the victim to engage in even more self-blame.
This freeze response–also called tonic immobility–is an automatic, biological reaction set off by your autonomic nervous system. It’s designed to keep you safe until you judge whether you should fight or flee. It’s completely natural, but people often interpret it as an indication of the victim’s consent or enjoyment of the act. That is inaccurate. The absence of defending oneself does not equate to the absence of a desire to defend oneself.
Denial and Delayed Reporting
There is always a lot of media hype surrounding stories where an accuser later recants their statement and announces that their sexual assault never happened. Because of this, people may think false accusations are commonplace, but that’s only because the media doesn’t cover all the unreported cases of rape.
In 2011, according to the U.S Department of Justice, only 27% of sexual assault cases were reported to police. Victims may not report, or delay reporting for weeks or months at a time, for several reasons. First of all, they might be in denial that it even happened. People have different conceptions of what rape is “supposed” to look like. If what happened to them doesn’t match those cultural expectations, victims might not consider it sexual assault and not report it. This underscores the importance of debunking myths about sexual assault, as well as educating people about what is considered sexual assault.
In addition, victims might feel too embarrassed or ashamed, or they might not want to ruin the person’s life. If they are blaming themselves for what happened, they might not want the attacker to receive the full legal punishment, and will therefore refrain from reporting.
Often, the victim is afraid of retaliation from the perpetrator, or not being believed by their peers or the police. If the police do believe them, they might fear that law enforcement won’t be able to do anything. The investigative process and trial can often be traumatizing for the victim. When collecting evidence, victims have to recount their story many times, face their attacker in a line-up, and possibly undergo an invasive rape kit–all while surrounded by people who don’t believe them. At trial, they are face to face with the perpetrator, and revicitimized by defense attorneys. With all these obstacles to face, it’s understandable why victims may not want to report it in the first place.
Many people see initial denial and delayed reporting as an inconsistency in a victim’s story, which would lead them to doubt the legitimacy of the event. They might think that if the victim didn’t report it in the first place, it must not have been a big deal. This grossly ignores the trials and tribulations that a victim faces when deciding whether to report, and assembling the courage to do so. Reporting is not as easy or simple as people commonly believe.
Maintaining Contact
Letting go of someone – a friend, family member, romantic partner – can be hard for everyone, even for sexual assault survivors. Although the media portrays attacks by strangers as the norm, 85% of sexual assault victims know their attacker.
Some consider their assault as outside the societal definition, so they don’t view themselves as a victim or their attacker as a perpetrator. Others still refuse to believe it happened at all and want to put the past behind them. Keeping in contact might retain that feeling of normalcy, as if they were never assaulted.
For some survivors, their attacker isn’t someone they can easily leave. For female victims, 13% of attackers are family members and 51% are intimate partners. When in a relationships with someone, it might be hard to recognize physical and sexual abuse as harmful, because they misinterpret it as their partner expressing love and affection. They rationalize the partner’s abusive behavior by saying that it “doesn’t happen all the time” or “it just shows that they care.” This is especially important to consider when examining the cycle of violence in an abusive relationship: cyclical honeymoon phases often keep partners together despite many red flags and sexual abuse. These happy times in the relationship might lead the victim to feel loved by their partner, and this love makes it much harder to leave.
In addition, there might be other unhealthy aspects of the relationship that physically prevent the victim from leaving, even when they know they should. Controlling partners often cut away at the victim’s self esteem, make threats, isolate them from others, and have the authority over finances. Without economic means or people there to help, it can be challenging to leave an abusive partner.
Maintaining contact doesn’t validate or legitimize the assault in any way. It doesn’t change the fact that the attack happened unwillingly and without consent.
References:
http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/pub_victim_responses_sexual_assault.pdf
http://www.ncdsv.org/images/Explaining%20Counterintuitive%20victim%20behavior.pdf
https://www.wcasa.org/file_open.php?id=3
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv11.pdf
http://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/Publications_NSVRC_Overview_False-Reporting.pdf
http://livebooklet.com/userFiles/a/1/0/9/1/2/6/fEdJXEVrFukfjdsxz8AKzM/uupp1tsr.pdf