Understanding Victims of Interpersonal Violence

A Guide for Investigators and Prosecutors

Veronique N. Valliere

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000734232
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Medical Law
• Index: Law

Understanding Victims of Interpersonal Violence: A Guide for Investigators and Prosecutors provides accessible information for criminal justice personnel "in the trenches" with victims of violence to aid in understanding and explaining their behavior.

This guide sheds light on interpersonal violence victims' decisions and actions by providing context and naming factors that commonly impact victim responses. These include internal factors such as culture, religion, shame, and personality, as well as external factors like access to services, support systems, and resources. These factors inhibit or facilitate responses like disclosure, resistance, and participation (or lack thereof) in the prosecution of the offenders. This book also explores the influence of the perpetrator, as well as more deeply examining victim responses that typically offer challenges to investigators and prosecutors; for example, continued contact with the offender, lack of resistance, and issues in disclosure. Finally, the guide provides concrete tools to assist investigators in interviewing and for prosecutors to use during the prosecutorial process.

This book is designed for investigators, prosecutors, advocates, criminal justice practitioners, and students of these subjects.

Section 1
Victim Response to Interpersonal Violence

1
Victim Response to Assault

Is It “Counterintuitive” Behavior?

The behavior detailed within (police interviews) was inconsistent with a person who had been sexually assaulted,” Castor testified during Cosby’s second court appearance. “Her actions, on her own, including going to a lawyer before going to police, had created a credibility issue for her that could never be improved upon.

—Paquette, D., The Washington Post, February 2, 2016

On April 15, 2013, at 2:49 p.m., runners in the Boston Marathon were determinedly running toward the finish line when two homemade bombs exploded, killing three people and injuring 260 more. Pictures of the scene show the victims wandering in the street, frozen still or running away. Photos show first responders running toward the blast. News coverage captured a wide array of responses to the tragedy.

That day, and in the days following, the community gathered around the victims. Boston residents coined the term “Boston Strong” to capture the resilience of the town, the commitment to get “back to normal.” The next day, people visited the blast site, filled with shock and questions of “why?” Runners completed mini-marathons in their cities and towns. The nation supported the victims and were focused on the acts of the perpetrators.

What is almost as important as what happened in response to the Boston Marathon bombing is what did not happen. No one blamed the victims. No one questioned why the victims wanted to run, why they didn’t run faster or slower, or whether they would ever run again. The “return to normal” of Boston was celebrated as strength and was not used to minimize the event. No one said, “Well, if it was that bad, how did they go to work the next day?” No one disputed the potential impact, regardless of the victims’ behaviors. No one thought it was crazy to visit the bombing site. Regarding the perpetrators, no one made excuses. No one said, “Boys will be boys.” It was not considered a joke, explained away by alcohol, or considered a mistake or accident.

I use this example to illustrate that we have clarity, as a community, regarding victim responses and perpetrator behaviors in tragic events like this. However, we lose this clarity when it comes to interpersonal violence and assault. Concerning sexual assault, according to the most recent available data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (Truman & Morgan, 2016), out of 1,000 sexual assaults, only 344 are reported to police. Of those, 63 lead to arrest and even fewer are referred for prosecution. Estimates indicate that of 1,000 sexual assaults, only six offenders are incarcerated (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015). Recent research by Dr. Campbell and colleagues at Michigan State University found that sexual assault case attrition happens very early in the investigation and prosecution process. In fact, through studying 12 years of data from law enforcement, she found that 86% of reported sexual assaults never went further than the police (Campbell, 2012). Law enforcement simply did not refer the reports to prosecutors. These same issues appear in cases involving domestic violence and child abuse as well.

At least some of the explanation for this failure was the victim’s behavior and reaction during and following the crime and the ignorance of investigators about victim behavior. The victim faces blame and judgement from the very beginning of the investigation and prosecution process. This contributes to the failure to pursue investigation, as well as the traumatization of the victim by the process. A victim who is unsupported or who feels judged or mistreated by law enforcement is unlikely to be cooperative, even if the case is referred to prosecutors. After disclosing, countless victims have told me and others, “I wish I never told. This is worse than the rape itself.” I have asked audiences of attorneys, law enforcement, and advocates if they would go through the system themselves or would recommend their loved ones pursue prosecution of rape. Very few people raised their hands. One recent study demonstrated that more than 80% of surveyed police officers overestimated rates of false allegations (Mennicke, Anderson, Oehme, & Kennedy, 2014), a finding that has clear implications for interview, investigation, and treatment of victims reporting rape.

In our ongoing attempts to understand the success of perpetrators of violence and abuse, we often focus on the victim as opposed to the offenders. Whether it is victim blaming or the scrutiny of “counterintuitive” victim behavior in response to an assault, we look to the victim to give us answers or understanding. If a child does not act afraid of the abuser, perhaps the abuse did not happen. If the wife continues to love the violent husband, maybe something is wrong with her. If the rape victim does not run and scream, maybe it wasn’t really rape, but “buyer’s remorse.” Those audience members understand the scrutiny and judgement victims face. Understanding and communicating the logic of victim behavior is the duty of all of us through the process of prosecution.

What Is “Counterintuitive” Behavior? Is There Such a Thing?

In the criminal justice arena, victim behaviors are often referred to as “counterintuitive” or “nonintuitive” behaviors. This is not a diagnostic or psychological term. It refers to behaviors or responses that are evaluated by others as behaviors by the victim that are not “real” victim behaviors. We have projected expectations of how a victim would or should react if he or she was “really” assaulted. When a victim does not react in expected ways, that victim’s behaviors can be used to “prove” his or her lack of credibility (cited in Long, 2007). In fact, Long (2007) points out that if the victim’s behavior does not fit expectations, that behavior is easily used to create doubt about the victim’s experience or report of the assault. What is “real” is that victim response to sexual assault is so varied, research has yet to prove there is a set of expected responses, resulting in the disproving of “syndrome” evidence (for example, battered woman’s syndrome or rape trauma syndrome) (Ellison, 2005; Dutton, 2009). In fact, even the use of the term “counterintuitive” has been criticized as reinforcing these problematic beliefs and assumptions (Fanflik, 2007).

Some of the more typical examples of behavior that are considered counterintuitive include an array of behaviors that are fairly common to victims both during and after the offense. This includes a failure to disclose; inconsistent or piecemeal disclosure; failure to forcibly resist an assault; failing to escape when an opportunity presents itself; having continued contact with the offender, even including consensual sex; or acting “normal” following a sexual or physical assault.

In fact, there is no such thing as “counterintuitive” victim behavior. All victims respond to assault in individualized ways, though many show similar behaviors. No singular study will predict how a victim will act or will prove that the response means that the victim has been abused. No model predicts how victims will cope with assault, as victim responses are determined by an array of factors—internal and external (Littleton & Breitkopf, 2006). What we do know, in fact, is that the overarching belief that victims will or should react a certain way in an assault is a significant factor in preventing a victim from reporting. It also contributes to victim blaming in interpersonal violence.

Even though there is no “typical” response to violence, investigators, prosecutors, judges, juries, and defense attorneys often rely on using victim responses to judge victim credibility or offender culpability. Long, Kristiansson, and Mallios (2013) wrote, “these fallacies have been reinforced for centuries by public discourse, inadequate laws created by misguided and uneducated legislators, and the various defense strategies designed to discredit victims by the exploitation of common rape myths.” Faulty expectations not only contribute to victim blaming and using the victim’s behavior against him or her, they contribute to the failure of the criminal justice system to expose the offender and hold him accountable. When laypeople rely on myths and misinformation, they may be prone to inaccurately label a victim as not credible, to minimize the offenses, and to dismiss the victim’s allegations and testimony about violence.

Persistence of Myths About Assault

These faulty expectations are formed in large part by the internalization of misinformation about assault, media portrayals of victims, and a lack of understanding about human behavior (or at least a failure to apply our knowledge). Typically, people create scenarios of how they would react in the face of an act that they think is extreme, tragic, or terrible, like sexual assault or intimate partner violence. “I would kick him in the balls,” “if he ever touched me, I would leave right away,” or “I would never allow that to happen,” are the types of statements made by people who do not have the experience or understanding of being assaulted, especially of being assaulted by someone known to them.

What are some of the myths that persist about sexual assault and domestic violence? For sexual assault, a “real” rape would include a stranger, force, injury, a weapon, and an “innocent” or unsuspecting victim. Perhaps someone who is assaulted while jogging or locking up her business or by someone who breaks into her home. These crimes hypothetically draw a clear line between victim and perpetrator and between right and wrong, and indicate who is to blame. However, statistics show that even these crimes produce unanticipated victim responses. For example, in 2014, an average of only 50% of violent sexual assaults by strangers were reported to law enforcement, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (Planty & Langton, 2016). The same survey also reveals that more than 80% of both violent and sexual assaults were committed by those known to the victim.

Some of the information we know about sexual assault seems as though it should now be part of society’s common knowledge. I was confronted once by an attorney who asked, “come on—doesn’t everyone watch ‘Law and Order: SVU?’” Despite more discussion and media portrayals of sexual assault and domestic violence, research demonstrates that myths and misinformation still significantly impact the community’s evaluation of and understanding of assault. In fact, the media still tends to highlight the more dramatic, stereotypical stories of abuse and rape. In a recent study, men continued to endorse hostile rape myths toward men and women. These included overt victim blaming and stereotyping; for example, “if he were a real man, he wouldn’t have let himself get raped” or “she was a bad girl and deserved it.” Both women and men endorsed what the authors called “benevolent” rape myths toward women (Davies, Gilston, & Rogers, 2012). These myths included subtle blaming of the victim by identifying the victims’ choices, like drinking or “getting herself into that situation,” or indirectly, as holding her responsible for the sexual assault. In cases of stalking, when the victim and perpetrator had a prior relationship, police and laypeople could not identify the stalking behavior (Weller, Hope, & Sheridan, 2013), reinforcing the myth that stalking was a crime between strangers. Flowers from a stalker are not a “nice thing” to do. When a client of mine found her routinely bought Starbucks coffee sitting on her car one morning as she tried to escape her ex-boyfriend, she got the response of “isn’t that sweet” or “at least he isn’t mad at you.” No one was able to see the implications of that behavior—that he was following her, knew her routine, and was surreptitiously violating the Protection from Abuse order.

The idea that “real” rape includes physical violence, injury, and active resistance persists as well. Despite decades of education about sexual assault, there is continued public acceptance of rape myths (Grubb & Turner, 2012). The belief that sexual assault produces injury lives on, even in spite of consistent evidence that most sexual assault does not produce physical or genital injuries (Truman & Morgan, 2014). Acquittal rates of sexual assault increase when the defendant’s arguments highlight the lack of injury or lack of force, even in child sexual-assault cases (Stolzenberg & Lyon, 2014), even though medical literature consistently indicates that lack of injury is the norm, even in cases of penetrative offenses (Adams, Harper, Knudson, & Revilla, 1994). As McDonald (2009) notes, “the less a sexual assault looks like ‘real’ rape—because a complainant was previously in a relationship with the defendant, had been drinking, or willingly went home with the defendant—the more likely the defendant will be acquitted” (Temkin and Krahe, cited in McDonald, 2009).

Rape myth acceptance is a measurable phenomenon and has been researched since the 1970s (see Grubb & Turner, 2012 for a review). Accepting myths and misinformation about rape has been directly correlated with increased propensity for violence against women in abusers, generally misogynistic intolerance, a distorted perception about the abundance of false allegations of rape, and victim blaming (Flood & Pease, 2009; Hockett, Saucier, Hoffman, Smith, & Craig, 2009). Because rape myths generally include skepticism about claims of rape, mitigation of perpetrator responsibility, and maximization of victim culpability for rape, it is directly related to victim blaming and acquittal in court.

The problem of myth acceptance and victim blaming is pervasive with most kinds of interpersonal violence. For intimate partner violence (IPV), surveys continue to demonstrate that men blame victims for being victims, a finding that is magnified when the victim is a man (Sylaska & Walters, 2014). In one study, acceptance of myths about domestic violence contributed significantly to victim blaming and minimization of the offenses, especially when the victim returned to the offender (Yamawaki, Ochoa-Shipp, Pulsipher, Harlos, & Swindler, 2012). Again, men blamed victims more than women did in this study.

The public’s (and victims’) continued misperception of and misinformation about violence impacts so many levels of the criminal justice system—reporting violence, cooperation through the investigation and prosecution, investigation of claims by law enforcement, juror decision-making, defense arguments, and retaliation against the victim. When the victim does not label the violence accurately, blames herself, or does not feel believed or supported by the community, the likelihood that the victim will pursue prosecution lessens significantly. “What’s the point? No one will believe me anyway.” “My mother will kill me—she told me this would happen.” “It’s my fault anyway. I shouldn’t have provoked him.” “Those cops were assholes—I knew they didn’t believe me. They kept asking me the same things over and over.” “It’s not like he really hurt me. I mean, it’s not like he really raped me, he just wouldn’t stop, that’s all.” “He didn’t punch me or anything—he’s not that bad.” These are all things I have heard victims say. The good news is that a positive experience with the system increases the likelihood that victims of intimate partner violence will seek help from the system again (Cattaneo & Goodman, 2010). Procedural justice and a positive experience with the system also can increase long-term well-being and the mental health of the victims of intimate partner violence, even if a victim initially returns to their abuser (Calton &...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• SECTION 1 Victim Response to Interpersonal Violence
• SECTION 2 Common Types of Victim Responses
• Appendix A: Questions Instead of “Why?”
• Appendix B: Sample Voir Dire Questions
• Appendix C: Interviewing Victims for Sentencing
• Index