The UM case may seem extreme, but researchers suggest that
the perceived credibility of the victim of a sexual assault is often the
deciding factor in whether or not the assault is prosecuted or even
investigated. Dr. Rebecca Campbell,
professor of Psychology and Program Evaluation at Michigan State University and
an expert in victimology, especially as it applies to victims of sexual
assault, found that 86% of sexual assaults reported to police are never
referred to prosecutors. Moreover,
through extensive interviews with both law enforcement and victims, Dr.
Campbell determined that the perception of a victim’s credibility (or lack
thereof) is often an important contributing factor to the failure to refer
these cases to prosecutors. She quotes
law enforcement officials who told her “The stuff (sexual assault victims) say
makes no sense,” “I see them hedge, making it up as they go along,” and “They
can’t get their story straight.”
Such attitudes not only contribute to case attrition, they
discourage victims from reporting sexual assaults in the first place because
they don't want to subject themselves to the "secondary trauma" of
not being believed.
Failure to report sexual assault is itself a serious
problem, starkly illustrated in this recent post exploring the origins of the
oft-quoted statistic that 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted before graduating
from college. That alarming number is even
more disturbing when considered in light of researchers' estimates that less than five percent of attempted and completed sexual assaults of college students are
reported. Which is why new research by
Dr. Campbell on the neurobiology of victim’s response to the trauma of sexual
assault has the potential to dramatically improve the handling of sexual
assault cases.
Dr. Campbell’s research suggests that the hesitancy or even
inconsistency with which survivors report sexual assault may have nothing to do
with their veracity and everything to do with the brain’s natural response to
physical trauma. Such trauma results in
the brain releasing a flood of hormones during the assault. While those hormones may facilitate fight or
flight, they are less beneficial to the process of creating memories. The two structures in the brain responsible
for memory creation, the hippocampus and the amygdala, are both highly
sensitive to fluctuations in hormone levels.
The flood of hormones triggered by a sexual assault can lead
to the victim's memory of the trauma being fragmented and difficult to
recall. This, in turn, leads to the confusion
and hesitancy that law enforcement officials are trained to interpret as clues
of dishonesty. The problem is only
compounded by inebriation, a particularly troubling complication given the fact
that 70% of sexual assault victims have been drinking at the time of their
assault.
Dr. Campbell’s research has other important implications for
professionals dealing with reports of sexual assault. Those who deal with victims of sexual assault,
as well as victims themselves, are often confused by the flat or emotionless
affect survivors sometimes display immediately after an assault. Such a reaction strikes many as being
inappropriate for a person who has just undergone a traumatic experience. It may lead victims to feel guilty, and
others to doubt whether they're telling the truth.
Dr. Campbell, however, explains that such a reaction is not
a symptom of dishonesty or a sign that a victim is somehow culpable in their
own assault, but instead the consequence of natural painkillers released by the
human body in response to physical trauma.
During an assault the body releases opiates to block the physical and
emotional pain of the attack. Those
opiates are the natural equivalent of the morphine that might be administered
to a surgery patient. As pointed out by
Dr. Campbell, “morphine’s not sensitive to subtleties.” The body’s naturally-occurring painkillers
behave the same way, masking emotional pain and leading to the monotone
response that strikes some law enforcement officers as suspicious for a victim of
recent sexual assault.
Finally, Dr. Campbell’s research posits a phenomenon known
as “tonic immobility” as an explanation for certain sexual assault victims' failure to fight back or to run away. Tonic
immobility (also known, at least in this context, as rape-induced paralysis) is
an autonomic response wherein the body freezes in situations that provoke
extreme fear. It is an involuntary
response, and its most marked characteristic is total muscular paralysis. Fighting back or running away is literally
impossible for a victim of rape-induced paralysis, whose body has decided for
her that the safest course of action is to play dead. Thus, the failure to fight back, run away, or
in some other way physically resist sexual assault does not mean that a victim
“wanted it” – the assumption of many institutions and officials who treat such
failure of resistance as evidence of consent.
And, even when a sexual assault victim is physically capable
of moving (research suggests that the proportion of rape victims who suffer
from tonic immobility may approach fifty percent) it doesn’t necessarily mean
that she is psychologically capable of doing so. Besides impairing memory formation, the
hormones released during a sexual assault prevent optimum operation of the circuits
in the prefrontal cortex that make rational thought possible. For the victim of rape or some other form of
sexual assault, the thought process needed to resist may not be present during
the assault itself.
Dr. Campbell’s research is important not only because it
might alleviate the guilt of survivors struggling to understand their reaction
to an assault, but also because it suggests certain crucial improvements that
might be made to the way law enforcement and other officials handle sexual
assault cases. Failure to resist assault,
inability to recall events clearly or sequentially, and surprisingly flat
reactions to such trauma aren't necessarily suspicious, and certainly should
not be grounds for throwing out a case.
Perhaps most significant though are the implications for
interviewing victims. Dr. Campbell’s
research not only suggests why victim’s accounts often seem confused and
incoherent – it also suggests a solution to the problem. She says, “It’s just going to take some time
and patience for (a survivor’s recollection) to come together.” She recounts the story of a veteran detective
who insisted on getting a sexual assault victim coffee before interviewing her,
having found, after years in his position, that “If you give them a few minutes
to breathe, it starts to make more sense” – and made little difference to his
ability to discern a false report from an honest one. While this may go against more traditional
interview-taking procedures, Dr. Campbell’s research suggests that the institutionalization
of a practice similar to that veteran detective’s coffee-break might not only
offer survivors a welcome reprieve in which to gather and consolidate
fragmented recollections, but also lead to more accurate investigations.
The presentation in which Dr. Campbell outlines these
findings, and their implications for law enforcement, began as training for the
Sexual Assault Kit Action Research Team in Detroit – around twenty police
officers, nurses, prosecutors, and crime lab workers. Since then, she has educated hundreds of
audiences on her findings and what they mean for workers who deal with the
victims of sexual assault. She has
delivered a presentation sponsored by the Department of Justice and the National
Institute of Justice, and has collaborated with the writers of “Law &
Order: Special Victims Unit” to write an episode involving a sexual assault and
rape-induced paralysis.
During her presentation for the National Institute of
Justice, Dr. Campbell shared a comment posted by a survivor of sexual assault
on a blog post connected to that Law & Order episode which movingly illustrated the value of her work. “I cannot
believe I am reading this article. After years of blaming myself, questioning
myself, feeling tormented, I now understand why I froze every time I was
assaulted. It now has a name. I don't have to wonder why or what's wrong with
me or why didn't I do anything. I can't tell you how much relief this article
brings me. You must know how much your website and your work helps those of us
who have suffered in silent torment and agony. You give us a voice. You give us
compassion. You give us strength and hope. There are no words to express the
gratitude I feel.”
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