Sexual assault is a common crime against women, and most authorities agree that the number of rapes exceeds the numbers actually reported. Its victims are sometimes subjected to second assaults, which may be a reason for the severe underreporting. A “second assault” is when victims are subjected to uncomfortable victim-blaming attitudes or behaviors from system personnel after their victimization, often leading to additional trauma to survivors. This is unfortunate because when victims reach out for help, they place a lot of trust in the legal, medical, and mental health systems, only to face disbelief, blame, and refusals for help, due to biases against them. A common belief is that a rape victim must be suddenly and violently raped by a stranger in a deserted public place at night in order to be considered a “real” rape victim. These “real” rape victims are usually unintoxicated women who sustain blatant physical injuries and show emotional distress (sometimes called “true fear”) (Hockett). When a victim comes forward with a case that does not match the signs of a “real” rape, then the victim is often held responsible for her own assault due to her characteristics. These biases against “real” rape, “true fear”, appearances, demographics, past sexual history, and drug/alcohol use cause traumatizing betrayals of trust, equivalent to second assaults that often prevent rape survivors from reporting the violations against them and can be combatted through communication, the training of specialized nurses, and education of sexual assault.
Police officers are some of the first people rape survivors report to, but many victims account that law enforcement personnel often use biases against clothing, demographics, and drug/alcohol use to judge the legitimacy of cases, causing blame to be placed on the victims and discouraging them from reporting their experiences. Police officers are responsible for interviewing victims as first responders, writing the report, following up with investigation, and then deciding whether to present the case to the prosecutor’s office (Venema). Because false sexual assault allegations are sometimes made to police officers, they have to determine the legitimacy of a case before presenting the case to the prosecutors. Hence, officers that respond to multiple rape cases may develop schemata, which allow them to take shortcuts in interpreting the information by using prior knowledge of legitimate and false cases to filter out the information that supports their belief of whether a crime meets the legal definition of “sexual assault”. Often times, however, these schemata are based on the “real” rape stereotype, so when the victim and suspect have a prior relationship, the victim is involved in prostitution (so the sex could be considered to be consensual), or the victim is a juvenile (who could possibly be trying to cover up a consensual sex act), the officers perceive the attacks more likely to be falsified (Venema). In Courtney E. Ahrens’ study of the negative social reactions on the disclosure of rape, a woman named Vanessa narrated that her sergeant accused her of lying about her rape in order to ruin her ex-boyfriend’s future (Ahrens). Another woman named Natalie was abducted and assaulted by three men. She recounted that one of the police officers she reported her assault to actually laughed, causing her to feel that the police doubted her story and held her accountable for her own rape (Ahrens). Poor character (lack of perception of honesty, for example), drunkenness, and/or mental health issues in a victim, and a lack of signs of force can also convince an officer that the case is not credible. Some feminists believe that rape is an automatic consequence of feminine temptation by men who are unable to self-regulate their sexual urges. Consequently, police officers sometimes place the blame on the victim for putting themselves in vulnerable positions or wearing “slutty” clothing, and many victims report that they were actively discouraged from reporting their experiences by the law enforcement personnel. They are grilled repeatedly on the details in interrogation, such as past sexual history, whether there was penetration, use of force, or other control tactics, of the assault, as a common rape myth is that any healthy woman, if she really wants to, can successfully resist a rapist (Hockett). Therefore, the cases with less signs of resistance may suggest the victim did not fully want to resist the rapist. The victims are graphically told of the personal costs involved in pursing prosecution (including repeated trips to court and humiliating cross-examinations). The officers also threaten to charge the victims if doubt emerged about the claim’s accuracy. On the other hand, cases where the perpetrator is a stranger are considered more severe because it can happen when the victim is least expecting it and often involve weapons and violence. Correspondingly, officers expect the victims to be traumatized, which can be indicated by shaking and conveying panic, called “true fear”. Therefore, it has been found that cases where the perpetrator is a complete stranger, the victim exhibits “true fear”, or there is a sign of struggle can lead officers to perceive the case as legitimate and respond with more urgency (Venema). Because of officers’ biases and schemata in determining the legitimacy of an assault, report writing and detective work are often swayed, causing a lot of cases to not be successfully prosecuted. Successful prosecutions are not random. Biases against “real” rape, privilege, age, race, and alcohol/drug use are influences; victims from privileged backgrounds and cases that fit the stereotypical “real” rape cases are more likely to be successful in prosecuting the defendant, while younger women, ethnic minority women, and victims using alcohol or drugs are more likely to have their cases dropped, allowing the perpetrators to go free (Campbell). Even victims who have the opportunity to go to trial have frustrating or embarrassing experiences (Campbell).
Along with reporting their sexual assault to the police, rape survivors are also told to get medical care as soon as possible. However, because sexual assault survivors don’t typically have physical injuries that match the image of “real” rape, they are not considered a high priority for emergency care. When the victims are finally treated, they frequently feel humiliated during the medical exams. Before sexual assault nurse examiner programs, medical staffs usually had an expectation of what “real” rape victims looked like, so they directed a lot of energy trying to determine the legitimacy of the rape case, forcing the victims to wait four to ten hours to be seen by a physician (Fehler). In those four to ten hours, victims often had to wait alone and were told to not eat, drink, or urinate in order to preserve the evidence. Moreover, the medical staff sometimes didn’t communicate with each other, causing more the victim more stress by having different people ask multiple times why they needed care. When the survivors were finally seen, it was normally by male physicians or generalist nurses who lacked time, the experience, and training in treating rape victims and in forensic evidence collection. The physicians and nurses were vulnerable for being required to testify (Fehler). They also asked many of the same kinds of particularly traumatic questions as those of the law enforcement personnel, including whether they had sexual responses during the assault, what they were wearing, and what they did to “cause” the assault, decreasing the likelihood of the patients feeling like they were being treated in sensitive and respectful manner (Campbell). Over half of the women reported in Campbell’s study that the doctors and nurses disdainfully asked them why they were with the perpetrator. This is reflected in Vanessa’s statement that her rape exam was another assault and traumatizing because it was “cold and impersonal” (Ahrens). Additionally, documentation of the victims usually included unflattering information about them, such as prior sexual experiences or judgmental statements about the victim. Rape victims also often don’t receive pregnancy testing, contraceptives, or information on STDS. In fact, Campbell reports that Caucasian women were significantly more likely to get information on STIs/HIV than ethnic minority women.
As mentioned previously, one of the common factors asked by system personnel is about the victims’ prior sexual activity, which is a strong voluntary variable for victim blaming. Gotovac and Towson’s study on the influences of sexual history and body weight on sexual assault victims reports that the rape of unchaste women are perceived as a less serious crime than the rape of a virgin. This stems from the internal attribution theory, which justifies the negative attitudes toward non-virgin victims because if the victim chose the behavior, then she chose the negative consequences (Gotovac). The men also blamed the attackers of the victims with several previous sexual partners less than the attackers of sexual assault survivors with just one previous sexual partner. Some external attributed influences outside of the victim’s control include her ethnicity, attractiveness, and emotionality, and all these attributes can elicit negative reactions such as avoidance, neglect, disgust, and discrimination toward the survivor. In Gotovac and Towson’s study, to represent the influence of a victim’s flawed characteristics, victim weight is tested. They found that in a case where it is unclear whether a rape actually occurred, an attractive woman is judged to be careless, provocative, and more responsible for her assault. Conversely, when a case is clear that the rape has occurred, an overweight rape survivor is more likely to be perceived as sexually unattractive and unskilled, so the overweight woman must have provoked her attack. Men have been shown to exhibit stronger weight biases than women; the rape of a woman who is unchaste or fat is perceived as less serious to men. Accordingly, male physicians of overweight patients have been reported to be more hostile to their sexual assault patients due to the attribution of laziness to the patients’ excess weight (Gotovac). Because these false beliefs have been found to be endorsed by health care providers, these women with past sexual histories or excess weight can be seen as less deserving or denied proper care for being “at fault” for their own sexual assault.
Many survivors don’t report their sexual assaults to the police because they don’t believe their assaults match the defining characteristics of a true sexual attack. However, when survivors do find the courage to report their rape, the biases from system personnel often make the victims feel like they are getting punished for speaking about their assault, leading them to cope financially, legally, and emotionally with the aftermath on their own. The victim-blaming from system personnel often worsens the victim’s physical and mental distress, while the physical ordeal of the medical exams and subsequent investigations are described as “humiliating” and “dehumanizing”. 87% of rape survivors self-reported they felt bad about themselves after their contact with legal system personnel, while 53% felt distrustful of others, 71% felt depressed, and 80% were reluctant to seek further help (Campbell). The negative experiences act as a silencing function, causing survivors to stop talking about their experiences to anyone. Nearly two-thirds of rape survivors disclose their assault to at least one person, but the consequences are not always positive (Ahrens). Sometimes after sharing their experiences, victims are left traumatized, feeling like they have a lack of options, a fear of negative reactions, or self-blame. Furthermore, formal support providers are more likely to give negative reactions to survivors. This is particularly harmful and long-lasting impact on survivors because the formal support providers are seen as “experts”, and when the “experts” doubt the survivors or hold them accountable for their own assault, survivors may believe them and question the effectiveness and usefulness of reaching out for help from the services. Police officers often perceive weapons as legitimizing the crime, but in reality, only about 11% of rape victimizations included an armed offender and 35% of victims were treated for injuries between 2005-2010 (Venema). Although the rate of false reports is about 4.5%, the police often overestimate the percentage (Venema). Therefore, the police are likely to overcompensate for the risk of false reports by acting overly skeptic and not take victims’ allegations seriously enough. Possibly because of the second assault from police officers, 56-82% of reported rape cases are dropped by law enforcement (Campbell). In the three cases reported to the police in Ahrens’ study, all of them were dropped and failed in the prosecution of the rape offender. Natalie’s case was one of the three, and her negative experiences with the police made her reluctant to speak again of her assault for another year, due to the fear that others would laugh or blame her too (Ahrens). In addition, victims who rated their experiences with medical systems as “more hurtful” were associated with higher psychological and physical health symptoms, including PTSD levels (Campbell). The bad reputations from the legal and medical personnel can also potentially spread the assault silence.
Because victim blaming and traumatizing medical exams are a serious problem, our society has thankfully made moves in the right direction toward reducing second assault of rape victims. The conflicting needs of the legal system and emergency rooms often result in unhelpful treatment of rape survivors. Therefore, the SANE (sexual assault nurse examiners) program was created in the 1970s, where specially trained forensic nurses provide 24-hour coverage to sexual assault victims as first-response care in emergency departments and nonhospital settings. These nurses focus on staying bias-free and collecting evidence from living patients who have been victims of crimes, and they are prepared to care for the victims that need crisis intervention and emotional care (Fehler). In Fehler-Cabral, Campbell, and Patterson’s qualitative study, the SANE program was found to have managed to create positive experiences with understanding nurses that treated survivors with care and compassion and were perceived as “humanizing”. By explaining what would occur before the exam, the reason for each procedure, and marking any visible injuries, patients felt more informed, in control of their bodies, and reaffirmed of proof that the assault happened. The nurses also demonstrated their patience and respect by providing the patients with the choices of whether or not to continue with the exam (Fehler). In Lt. Mike Boyle’s (Philadelphia Police Department, Special Victims Unit) lecture, he talked about Philadelphia’s creation of a special victims center close to the police department with 18 specialized nurses on call. He reported that the center sees about 400 non-injured patients a year, and the specialized care led to an improvement of victim-friendly experiences and an increase in assault reporting. Gotovac and Towson’s study, along with Hockett, Smith, Klausing, and Saucier’s study, found that men typically have negative attitudes and place more blame on the sexual assault victims overall, so the hiring of an increasing number of specialized women nurses and police officers has also been a step in the right direction. Accordingly, in Rebecca Campbell’s quasi-experimental study, where victims’ medical forensic exam experiences from two urban hospitals with and without advocates were compared, survivors who had the assistance of advocates (including specialized victim or SANE nurses) had significantly lower PTSD scores than those without advocate help in involvements with the legal system.
Ahrens’ study found that at least half of the survivors questioned reported that the legal, medical, mental health, and religious system personnel they turned to reacted insensitively (Ahrens). The expansion of SANE programs and special care treatment units are working toward eliminating second assault, but there needs to be more communication between police officers and legal personnel in order to create more accurate police officer schemata. First, police officers need to receive more training in the police department on sexual assault and trauma to challenge their initial perceptions of victim credibility; they need to be taught about memory processes and tonic immobility to understand unexpected victim behavior and gain more awareness on how to prevent basing the entire case on how the victim is acting during the interview and the assault. The disconnection between the initial report, investigation, and case outcome within the legal system also needs to be fixed; there is no feedback for the officers to either confirm or deny their initial impression of the case, leading to possibly inaccurate schemata (Venema). By creating a communication channel between the police officers and the legal personnel for the outcomes of cases, the officer biases against the victims’ “true fear” and “real” rape can be mitigated.
In addition to police officers resisting their schemata against “real rape”, society needs to continue combating rape myths and biases and educating the public about sexual assault. Interestingly, few reported rapes actually reflect the “real” rape victim scenario (Hockett). Therefore, the public needs to be taught that there is no stereotypical “real” rape victim or case, the victims can be people of all backgrounds and characteristics, and an absence of a struggle does not mean the sex is consensual. It also needs to be clear that rape is not a justifiable, suitable punishment for anything. To teach the future generations, a policy requiring public education systems to hold classes or seminars on sexual assault victims and presenting the common biases against them would help people be conscious of them and allow them to make more aware decisions. That way, if anyone were to be sexually assaulted without the “real rape” symptoms (for example, injuries or weapons), they would understand it is still a sexual assault and wouldn’t hesitate to report it. Furthermore, if someone were to be confided in by a friend, family, or acquaintance that was sexually assaulted, they would also know the most helpful, least harmful way to respond. Gotovac and Towson’s study shows that women aware of the cultural belief that licentious women are blamed more for sexual assault are more likely to look more positively to the rape victims with more sexual history in compensation. Therefore, by publicly acknowledging and dispelling the myth that promiscuous women are at fault for their sexual assaults, a step in minimizing the sexual history bias against victims can be taken. Potential support providers also need to be trained to avoid negative reactions, and the legal system needs to be changed to reward the prosecution of all rape cases instead of just the convictable ones.