Language Matters: When Adjectives Facilitate Rapists

Recent comments by Representative Todd Akin from Missouri discussing so-called ‘legitimate’ rape once again highlight the power that the myth of “real” rape has on our society. While many have worked tirelessly to end this nonsensical perspective, it is clearly alive and well. What will it take for people to acknowledge that rape is rape regardless of the victim/offender relationship, regardless of the standing of the offender in the community, and regardless of the responses by the victim to this violence? While some may argue that these discussions are merely semantic, nothing is further from the truth. Labels such as “legitimate” or “real” or “acquaintance” are used for ranking purposes to indicate that some forms of rape are less serious than others. There is no acceptable ranking of “real” rape or “legitimate” rape or “date” rape or “acquaintance” rape.  There is only rape – a crime. It requires no adjective to denote the severity of it.

Terms such as “legitimate” rape allow individuals to somehow believe some rape is really rape (mythological rape), while other incidents are not really rape but rather lesser instances of regret or miscommunication or aggressive consensual sex or something equally ridiculous. These rankings and distinctions of types of rape perpetuate this nonsensical notion and prevent society from understanding that rape is rape, and rape is violence, and rape victims experience violence. Period. These false distinctions send messages to men that some behaviors are within the realm of permissibility (e.g., using drugs and alcohol to incapacitate a victim) rather than sending the message that those behaviors constitute rape. And as a result of these ill-conceived notions, rapists are allowed to roam freely in society committing additional rapes and other forms of interpersonal violence against adults and children. As research by Lisak and Miller (2002) clearly demonstrates, these “undetected rapists” commit crimes beyond rape and victimize children and adults alike.

The persistent myth of “real” rape and the tendency to rank order rape into legitimate and illegitimate, or serious and more minor crimes, is destructive and dangerous to all of society.  This archaic thinking encourages victims to question whether they should report their assaults if they don’t fit the common and mythical stereotype of violent rape or sexual assault. It allows some police officers to fail to fully investigate what may appear to them as an “illegitimate” rape.  It offers grand juries a way to avoid indicting a defendant even when there is corroborative evidence (see, e.g., http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/08/19/4190561/rape-unpunished-in-tarrant-county.html). It offers prosecutors a reason to decline filing charges in a case they don’t feel will be strong enough to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Finally, this destructive notion colors jurors’ ability to see rape as rape. And most importantly, it allows perpetrators to continue victimizing with impunity.

Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists.  By David Lisak and Paul M. Miller.  Violence and Victims, Volume 17, Number 1, pp. 73-84, 2002.

Dr. Rennison is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research focuses primarily on violent victimization with an emphasis on violence against women and minorities, research methodology, and measurement. Her recent research has been published in Feminist Criminology, Race and Justice, Violence Against Women, Violence and Victims, Journal of Quantitative Criminology and Justice Quarterly.  She can be reached at callie.rennison@ucdenver.edu

Dreaming of Equality by Guest Blogger Shirley Paceley

I am one of those people who get goose bumps when I think about the words, “with liberty and justice for all.”  It is a dream I have held onto since I was a young girl and discovered that some people were not treated well, or even hated, because of a characteristic they had.  For nearly 40 years, I have had the privilege to know many people with disabilities, both through my family and through my work.  I know people who were locked up at birth or shortly afterwards because they were different.   These folks were denied access to family and community and the very basics of human dignity.   I have marched beside people with disabilities calling for freedom as recently as 2009. 

We know that people with disabilities experience violence at alarming rates.  In recent months, five men in Milwaukee were charged for forcing a 17 year old female with intellectual disabilities to perform sex acts.  In Alhambra, California, a 6-year old girl in Special Education was sexually assaulted by fellow students in the restroom during lunch and recess.  And in Somerset, New Jersey, a staff member at a group home for people with disabilities was charged with sexually assaulting one of the residents.   There are countless voices and faces of people with disabilities who have experienced various forms of violence.  When does the ‘liberty and justice for all’ become a reality?

We need to stop treating people with disabilities as separate.  We need to stop trying to fix people who are just fine the way they are.  We need to stop focusing on what people can’t do and focus on what people can do.  ALL people have abilities, talents, dreams and contributions to make.  There is a huge difference between oppression and protection.  

So, what can one person do?   Invite people with disabilities to participate in collaborative teams that address violence issues.  Reach out to people with disabilities when you recruit for new employees and volunteers.  When you plan events, consider how to make the event accessible to the largest number of people possible.  When you see or hear someone being treated with disrespect, speak up. When you look at a person with a disability, see someone who has abilities.  When you think about someone with a disability, think about their abilities.    Join the dreamers who believe in the dream of “with liberty and justice for all” and know that all means ALL.

Shirley Paceley has worked with people with disabilities for 39 years and has a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology.  Shirley is the founder and director of Blue Tower Training in Illinois which has resources in 48 states and 16 countries.  Shirley serves on the Board of Directors of End Violence Against Women International and the Editorial Board of Sexual Assault Report.  Shirley is a published author, international trainer, advocate, counselor, and visionary.  Shirley is a survivor of childhood incest and has several siblings with disabilities.

A Learning Experience...

As a community educator for a rape crisis center, I often went to other social service agencies to give awareness presentations on sexual assault. I remember a specific presentation that I gave at a local domestic violence shelter, to several women living in the shelter.

I was trained as a dual sexual assault/domestic violence advocate. I have answered hundreds of crisis line calls related to domestic violence, and responded to victims at the hospital who were sexually assaulted by an intimate partner. I knew the facts, but nothing could have prepared me for sitting with those women, many of whom had just arrived at the shelter.

I knew going in that I needed to have a different strategy from my usual presentation. I always knew there would be a handful of sexual assault survivors in any group I presented to, whether they disclosed or not. With this group, however, I knew many, if not most of them, would have histories of sexual violence – but they may not have identified it yet. I didn’t want to be offensive and come in as the “expert,” when they were the actual experts of what it meant to survive domestic and sexual violence.

It was a small group, with about 10 women. One woman had just arrived a couple of days before, and she had a lot of bruising on her face, as well as a black eye. I was startled at first, because most of the sexual assault victims I provided advocacy for didn’t have visible injuries -- certainly not to that degree.  Other women had been there in the shelter longer, and there was a natural mentor/mentee feel among the women in the room.

As this was an educational setting, and I am not a therapist, I had to be mindful to not let our time together turn into a group therapy session. I wanted to give them information in a safe, comfortable way, so I made the decision to “throw away” the traditional script I used for most presentations (including the obnoxious quiz we used back in those days), and just talked with these women. I offered a place for sharing their personal experiences, which in turn helped them better understand some complicated aspects of sexual assault. An hour flew by, and none of us wanted the conversation to end.

This was a great experience for me, and I certainly hope it was for those women. I may not have fully realized it at the time, but the fact that I remember it several years later tells me I took a lot away from it. I believe it made me a better educator, because I was able to really evaluate my audience and tailor the presentation to what they needed to know, not what I thought they needed to know. It also made me a better advocate, because it gave me the opportunity to be in their environment, to see how they lived, and what the adjustment into shelter was like.

The relationship between the two agencies continues today, with a strong focus on collaboration and cross-training. Do you have a similar story of collaboration between two social service agencies to share?

Who Makes a Difference? By Guest Blogger Detective Billy Dotson, KCPD

Situation: Officers get dispatched to a Domestic Violence call. This is the 3^rd time this month going to the same address.

Officer’s perspective: “Wow, here we go again, Baby mama’s drama! Why can’t she just leave? This is getting old. Someone is definitely going to jail!” When the officers arrive at the house, they take the suspect into custody, and give the victim information how to get an order of protection.  They may or may not take the victim to a shelter or hospital. Afterward, they complain about the fact that they have to keep going back to that address over and over and wonder why she doesn’t just leave. They then continue on working, not really thinking about the incident or what impact they had on the victim.  Just another day!

Victim’s perspective: I am six years old.  It’s a Friday, and all day during school I wonder if my dad is going to be drunk when I get home from school.  When I got home from school, he wasn’t there! I went outside to play, but in the back of my mind I was wondering: when he will get home? Is he drunk again? Maybe he just got called into work, or maybe he won’t come home at all. I wonder this until it’s time for bed.

It’s bedtime now. My mom is reading me a story in my bed. All of a sudden I hear the crunching sound of gravel under tires. He is home! My heart stops, my blood rushes throughout my body, and my breathing picks up. My first instinct is to hide, but where? He found us under the bed last time. My mind begins to race; maybe he is in a good mood, maybe he will not be mean! Self preservation kicks in and I run and jump behind the couch with my eight year old brother.

I hear the door kick open, and the smell of alcohol and cigarettes fill the room. This smell has been cemented with negative thoughts in my head.  My legs start to shake, and I think: if only I was bigger I could do something! I hear the slurred yell of, “Where is everyone?” Nobody answers. I wonder; where is mom? I hope she didn’t hide in the closet, he found her last time when she was in the closet. I hear, “What the hell are you hiding for?” My eyes cinch tightly hoping he isn’t looking at me. I cover my head with my hands and curl up in the tightest ball possible. Maybe if I can’t see him then he can’t see me!

I then hear the unmistakable sound of bone hitting bone. My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach. That’s my mom!  I try to move, I need to protect her but I can’t because I am afraid. I pray to God that he stops beating her and he passes out.  I hear a drunken voice yell, “If you leave me I will kill you all!” and “Don’t even think about calling the cops because they won’t believe you. I am the man and they will believe me!”

BOOM, now I hear the hollow thud of a head hitting the wall. Screams of pain fill the air splitting my soul!  In the back ground I hear sirens. Please God make them hurry. Then everything goes quiet. Did he kill her, I wonder.  I pray my mom is not dead. I hear my dad say, “You better not say a word or I will kill you when he leaves!” I hear a knock on the door and a policeman announces himself. Oh no!  Dad said the police would not believe mom. 

The door comes open. I hear a scuffle. “Stop resisting! Stop resisting”! It gets quiet again. I hear a familiar voice: “Come on out boys, it’s okay now!” It’s the same policeman who came to the house the last two times this happened. I start to breathe easier now. I know the police officer has made it safe! The officer asks me if I am okay. I say yes as I look away in shame. He replies, “It is okay he is gone!” The officer continues to speak with my mom and then leaves.

My mom gathers me and my brother up and holds us with her battered body while saying, “it’s okay boys, he is gone!” Knowing that he is gone, I can almost go back to normal. I can sleep now because I know he will be gone for a couple of days.

That policeman was my lifeline! He did not say much, but he left an impression on me that I will never forget. To this day, I could pick out his voice from a crowd of a thousand people, yet I had very little conversation with him. He treated us with respect and showed us kindness we never knew. That police contact has forever changed my life. I don’t know if that officer will ever realize the impact that he had on me. I imagine after those calls he went to the station, wrote his reports and went home, never really thinking about it.

Now that I am a police officer, I realize the power and the responsibility that comes with routine interactions with people.  This “routine interaction” changed my life forever. Now imagine how many people you can have had contact with over the years as a police officer. How many lives will you have a positive impact on? The truth is, you might not ever know, but I know, because it happened to me! 

Multidisciplinary Response to Sexual Assault

At EVAWI, we encourage victim-centered, multi-disciplinary collaboration which strengthens the criminal justice system as well as the public’s ability to understand the realistic dynamics of sexual assault.  Sexual Assault Response & Resource Teams (SARRT) or Coordinated Community Response (CCR) teams are critical components of the overall community response to violence against women.

I remember an issue facing the Kansas City Community a few years ago. We were dealing with a situation where several young women had either called the crisis line and/or presented at local Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) programs, all sharing a similar story – they’d been raped by four men in an apartment type setting above a bar in the downtown area. None of these victims reported to law enforcement. As my agency provided advocacy at numerous SANE programs, we, along with the SANE programs, were able to begin putting pieces together to show an alarming trend. We used a regular SARRT meeting in our community to talk with law enforcement about these assaults, being careful not to identify the victims or violate confidentiality.

As advocates, we often have information that other community professions don’t -- because for a variety of reasons, victims are not comfortable reporting to law enforcement or going to a SANE program. When we saw trends forming, we used SARRT meetings to share that information.

In another example, we began to notice similar stories of drug facilitated sexual assaults originating in the new downtown area in Kansas City, where a number of restaurants, bars, and clubs are located. At first, everyone figured it was Kansas City Police Department’s problem because the downtown area is in their jurisdiction, but the sexual assaults weren’t necessarily being completed there. In these situations, the initial contact between the victim and suspect was taking place downtown, but the sexual assault was being perpetrated in the same type of place they usually are – at the victim’s home, or a friend’s home, etc. – typically outside the downtown area.  This made it a metro-wide problem, not just a problem for Kansas City Police Department. We tracked a number of these stories, and shared this information at the various SARRTs in the metro area so other jurisdictions could be informed and prepared when victims come forward in their communities.

We found that law enforcement really appreciated this type of information, especially when we provided it during roll call trainings. They were tired of hearing about our services and the role of the advocate – they wanted information that was more immediately relevant to the cases they were seeing. Sharing this information not only kept law enforcement aware of the things that weren’t being reported, but also helped show the importance and relevance of working together as a collaborative team.

We want to hear from you. What issues or projects are your SARRT or CCR working on right now?

Spotlight on Cambria County, Pennsylvania by Erika B. Jugan

The concept of anonymous reporting was first introduced to Cambria County’s STOP Violence Against Women Task Force during a monitoring visit by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency in 2009.  A committee was formed, comprised of representatives from the Cambria County District Attorney’s office, Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center, Victim Services Inc., Johnstown Police Department and the Women’s Help Center.  This committee would later expand and become the county’s first Sexual Assault Response Team.  Cambria County applied for and was granted funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to develop and implement a protocol that would allow for anonymous reporting of sexual assault.  Through this grant the District Attorney’s office was able to hire a Development Director who exhaustively researched sexual assault protocols throughout the United States and in other countries.  She worked with all of the agencies involved in responding to sexual assaults in our county and helped us to create a comprehensive and effective victim-centered protocol that was implemented in July 2011. 

Anonymous reporting is one solution to the forensic compliance provisions of the 2005 Violence Against Women Act which requires that victims be able to have a medical forensic sexual assault examination without being forced to participate in the criminal justice system or cooperate with law enforcement.  Anonymous reporting provides for the collection and documentation of forensic evidence while allowing the victim time to recover, consider his or her options, seek support and guidance, and/or arrange for safe accommodations and economic provisions in cases of intimate partner sexual violence/domestic violence.  In our protocol the victim is able to remain completely anonymous to law enforcement.  The victim’s name is connected to the evidence only through their medical record number given to them by the SANE program.  The evidence is stored by the largest police department in our county for 180 days.  When and if the victim decides to speak to law enforcement, his or her name is reconnected to the evidence by the SANE program and the evidence is transferred to the police department with jurisdiction over the crime, at which point the investigation begins.

In our first year with the new protocol the number of hospital accompaniments by our victim advocates more than tripled; this includes both standard and anonymous reports.  Many factors played into this increase including better recognition and understanding of the needs of victims and a clearer message within the protocol that requires an advocate be called in every case of sexual assault.  We have seen an incredibly strong, cooperative, and victim-centered response to sexual assault victims by all of the key players in the county.  Although we always worked cooperatively in Cambria County, the new protocol provides a greater understanding and appreciation for the role played by each responder which allows us to focus all of our energy on helping the victim right from the start.  During our first year with the new protocol we had four anonymous reports.  At this point, two victims have chosen to have their evidence destroyed and two are still weighing the option of speaking to law enforcement.

We quickly learned that our protocol would be an ever-evolving work in progress.   Through Sexual Assault Response Team meetings, case reviews, and ongoing suggestions from the field we have continued to improve the functionality of our protocol.  At this time, we’re in the process of revising it for the second time this year.  One of the revisions that our team has been discussing is extending the holding period for anonymous sexual assault evidence from 180 days to 2 years, or possibly more.  With the help of End Violence Against Women International, we are working to improve the protocol so that it can be shared with others in the field as a model.

Erika B. Jugan, is the Supervisor of Direct Services at Victim Services, Inc. in Cambria and Somerset Counties. Erika is a founding member and the coordinator for Cambria County's Sexual Assault Response Team. In addition, she has been a member of the Keystone Crisis Intervention Team since 2010. 

Making a Difference - Canada

Are you familiar with the Making a Difference (MAD) Project? This exciting, innovative project was undertaken jointly with Making a Difference Canada. The stated purpose of the project is to "Make a Difference" by challenging the legal process in both the U.S. and Canada to more effectively prosecute sexual offenders. It is clear based on existing research that the criminal justice systems in the U.S. and Canada -- as in other countries -- are less likely to prosecute incidents of sexual assault if they do not resemble the stereotype of “real rape.”  In other words, if they do not involve a stranger with a weapon, severe physical violence, and victim injuries. 

The "Making a Difference" project was designed to address this problem, by facilitating reform in the U.S. and Canadian legal systems -- to challenge the status quo and more effectively prosecute adult and adolescent sexual assaults. 

Our partnership with Making a Difference Canada has extended beyond the completion of the MAD project, and we’d like to use this blog to highlight some of their work.

·         Making a Difference Canada spans 7 communities: Calgary & Edmonton, Alberta; Victoria, British Columbia; Halifax-Antigonish, Nova Scotia; Niagara Region, Ontario; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; and Whitehouse, Yukon. 

·         In collaboration with the Voices & Faces Project, the MAD Community in Edmonton hosted an event in June entitled, “We Are the Stories We Tell: A Testimonial Writing Workshop for Survivors of Sexual Violence, Domestic Violence and Trafficking.”

·         The MAD Community in Edmonton launched a poster campaign titled: “Don’t be that Guy”, which was then replicated in Halifax as part of their Sexual Assault Awareness Month activities in 2012.

·         The MAD Community in Halifax launched a new video campaign titled “Be More Than a Bystander” as part of their Sexual Assault Awareness Month activities in May (one month later than SAAM is held in the U.S.).

·         Making a Difference Canada also has a couple of webinars coming up:

o   “Working with Culturally Diverse Communities” on September 6^th at 1pm ET.

o   “Sexual Assault:  Integrating Investigation and Forensic Medical Examinations for Best Outcomes in Court” on September 21^st at 1pm ET.

 
Making a Difference Canada is also showcasing a game, developed by METRAC (Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children), titled: Play the Game; Sexual Assault, What it is. It is a new digital game challenging sexual violence against young people. Try it out!