1994 1992 1985 1998 1975 1987 1989 2003 2001 1996a 1996b 1996c 1991 1989 2000 1992 1998 2001 1989 1998 2001 1999 2001 1989 2001 1998 1991 1994 1984 1991 1997 2001 1992 Speaking out about the assault may therefore have detrimental consequences for rape survivors as they are subjected to further trauma at the hands of the very people they turn to for help. Negative reactions can thereby serve a silencing function. Women who initially break the silence and speak out about the assault may quickly reconsider this decision and opt to stop speaking. Negative reactions such as being blamed, being denied help, or being told to stop talking about the assault may effectively quash rape survivors’ voices, rendering them silent and powerless. 1999 1994 thick description 1973 Method Recruitment procedures 1996 1999 breadth depth 1995 Participant characteristics SD M SD Measures SD 2004 The semi-structured interview was designed to obtain a comprehensive picture of rape survivors’ post-assault experiences. This interview consisted of 20 main content areas that covered the assault itself, initial disclosures, interactions with five key community systems (e.g., legal, medical, mental health, rape crisis centers, and religious community), reasons for non-disclosure, social reactions, the impact on survivors’ social and sexual activities, psychological and physical health symptoms, and changes in survivors’ worldviews. Survivors received $30 and a community referral booklet for their participation. Although information about survivors’ assault and disclosure experiences emerged throughout this interview, several questions were more useful in generating data related to the aims of the current study. Each of these questions is described below. The assault. First disclosures. Disclosure to formal support providers. Disclosure to informal support providers. 2000 Reasons for non-disclosure. Information about survivors’ reasons for not telling friends and family about the assault emerged in three specific sections of the interview. Survivors discussed their reasons for not telling additional friends and family when discussing their first disclosure experiences (described above), their interactions with family and friends (described above), and when asked “how did this experience change your understanding of … a) your family; and b) your friends?” In these sections, survivors discussed reasons for not telling specific friends and family as well as reasons for not wanting to tell informal support providers in general. Analysis procedures 1994 1990 1990 1997 1997 Results To contextualize survivors’ decisions to cease disclosing, vignettes summarizing their assault and disclosure experiences are presented first. Pseudonyms are used throughout. Vignettes of survivors’ experiences Natalie. They wasn't going to do shit, wasn't nothing going to be done. I remember one of the police officer laughed. The way they responded to me, I didn't want anything else to do with them. Natalie's experiences with the police served to silence her and she didn't speak of the assault again for a year, in part due to a perceived lack of options and in part due to fear that others would react as badly. She finally began speaking about the assault again when she entered a drug treatment program and began working with a counselor who was also a rape survivor. Karen. Her comment was … you should never have sex with anybody you don't want to. I’m like, duh. Like I had a choice, you know? It's just that it didn't do any good, it just made me angry. I never used the word rape ‘til like a year ago honestly. I just felt … that anybody would say, well, ah, you know, it was your own fault or you were vulnerable or, you know, not that you asked for it, but you were in that position, what did you expect, or something like that, you know. There was like, it's not going to be any help. And, well, you just laid there, you know. After 19 years of silence, Karen began disclosing again after she ran into the ex-boyfriend who had abandoned her. After telling him, Karen was able to start telling other people. Shawna. She thought I knew about his, um, past. He was known to do that, take advantage of women. Being a drug, intravenous drug user, then you’re like, that's your fault. That's—what you coming here for? I mean, you keep using and you keep going on the streets, that's going to happen. Then they kill you, beat you up, lay in the garbage, you won't hear nothing about it. Shawna began disclosing again when she entered a drug rehab center. Marie. And I went home, and it was my fault. Shut up and don't you tell anybody what you did. Forget it, it's over, it was your fault, leave it alone. He was in confessional. And just, you know, I’m separated, I had no right dating. I felt really, really, really bad. Feeling very bad. I couldn't talk, look at your face. I would, I would look down ‘cause I’d think you’d look and I’d be filthy, dirty whore … feel less than a whore, dirtiest thing in God's earth. Having exhausted all of the options she felt were available to her, Marie stopped disclosing for several years. Although Marie did begin to seek counseling several years later and has found some support among new friends, she relies mainly on herself and God for support. Linda When I went to see him, he said, well, what do you expect? If you stay over at somebody's house like that that you barely know, that's an open invitation. After that, the red flag went up and I just said no, I’m not speaking to anybody about this. Well, I figured they would do the same thing that this counselor did. They would just blame me and they would discount it. I referred to it as an unfortunate incident. I … had a narrow view of what rape was. Linda broke her silence when a therapist was able to validate her experience for her. She now runs support groups for sexual assault survivors. Rita Well, they told me that…that situation could not have occurred unless I’d attracted it by thinking about it … they said, probably, it must be in your subconscious. It was as if because I knew the men that suddenly, then, somehow that was not a legitimate complaint or something. I just wasn't in a place where I wanted to invest my money in that. Particularly in as much as everybody along the way that I had sought help from, I mean, always blowing me off. So, I’m not going to pay money to have someone blow me off. Since Rita was unaware that rape crisis centers existed and really didn't have any close friends or family that she trusted to have a good reaction, she felt she was out of options for support and justice. This led her to stop disclosing altogether for the next 4 years. Although she has disclosed the assault to researchers and has written a magazine article in the hopes of helping other women, she continues to mainly rely on herself and her spirituality for healing. Vanessa Well, for me, I was already feeling nasty and dirty and there was semen. Um. It was just like another assault. Cold and impersonal. He told me that he know my kind and I was messin up this boy future for college. And I couldn’t-I know I heard what he said, but I couldn't understand. You know, like hey, I’m the one that's the victim, you know. And he was all, pulled out some papers and threw them down and say, you’re a repeated run-away, you in foster care. And all the time, I did not know what to say. I was just looking at him, like, why are you do this to me? He said, that boy have a future in there and you destroying it. You stay away from him. [He] said if I do not drop the charges, he will burn my mother house down and rape my little sisters. I came to them in my most vulnerable state. I’d just been victimized and I walked into a place that was male dominant and what they did or did not do for me hurt me. Emotionally, mentally, very bad. They formed an opinion that will probably take a lifetime to undo. [I didn't know] that it was OK for African Americans to go to a mental place. Back then, not too many people I knew who were my color was going to therapists. I didn't even know what that is. And still don’t. Having nowhere else to turn, Vanessa stopped disclosing for 10 years. The current interview was the first time she told her story since her interactions with the legal system. Therese She took it almost as bad as I did. It kind of made me feel like I had to comfort her because she was taking it so hard. Cause I felt like it was my fault. And, ah, I really couldn’t. If I felt like it was my fault, I knew everybody else would be looking at me like, well, it's your fault anyway. These feelings of self-blame and fears of being blamed by others led Therese to cease disclosing for nine months. Unfortunately, her initial effort to break her silence by disclosing to a boyfriend was met by a blaming response. Nonetheless, she decided to participate in the current interview as a first step toward receiving needed services. Cross-case analysis: Common experiences and themes The preceding vignettes provide rich, contextualized descriptions of each survivor's experiences with disclosure and silence. In-depth analysis of these survivors’ narratives revealed four general types of negative reactions experienced by these survivors: 1) being blamed; 2) receiving insensitive reactions; 3) experiencing ineffective disclosures; and 4) receiving inappropriate support. being blamed insensitive reactions Ineffective disclosures inappropriate support These negative reactions then affected survivors’ decisions to cease disclosing the assault. In-depth analysis of these survivors’ narratives revealed five common reasons for ceasing to disclose: 1) lack of options; 2) fears of negative reactions or consequences; 3) ineffectiveness of support; 4) self-blame or embarrassment; and 5) didn't qualify for support. lack of options negative reactions ineffective self-blame or embarrassment qualified as rape The relationship between negative social reactions and reasons for ceasing to disclose As the above analyses suggest, the survivors in this sample spontaneously referenced negative experiences from initial disclosure attempts when describing their reasons for ceasing to disclose (even though this question was never explicitly asked, suggesting that this was an extremely salient reason for ceasing to disclose). This suggests that these survivors were using their past experiences with disclosure to evaluate future disclosure opportunities. Receiving negative responses to their initial disclosures, these survivors became more cautious and critical of future disclosure opportunities and ultimately opted to remain silent rather than risk further harm. The manner in which negative reactions led to being silenced, but, varied across survivors. Further examination of survivors’ narratives revealed three primary routes to silence. First, three of these survivors described negative reactions that made them question whether future disclosures would be effective. Each of these survivors had disclosed to formal support providers and felt that these disclosures had been ineffective. For example, Natalie, the woman raped by a group of men in an abandoned building, attributed her decision to stop disclosing to the negative reactions she received from the police and medical system. She felt that talking to others would be ineffective so she tried to forget about the assault and move on with her life. Similarly, Rita, the woman assaulted on a boat, described initially seeking help from multiple sources. She ultimately decided that help would not be forthcoming and turned inward to heal herself. Finally, Vanessa, the woman assaulted at her ex-boyfriend's home, also attributed her decision to stop disclosing to her experience with the legal and medical systems. The ineffectiveness of her contact with the legal system was particularly poignant in Vanessa's case and reinforced her fears that the legal system could do nothing to protect her from retaliation by the assailant and his brothers. Second, two survivors described negative reactions that reinforced their own doubts about whether their experience qualified as rape. Both Karen, the woman assaulted by the night watchman, and Linda, the woman assaulted by the host of a party, questioned whether the assault qualified as rape. Their own doubts about whether their assault qualified as rape and the reactions of others combined to make them reluctant to risk further disclosures. Finally, three survivors described disclosures which reinforced feelings of self-blame. These survivors’ initial disclosures were either inadequate for overcoming their sense of self-blame or actively reinforced feelings of self-blame. For example, both Shawna, the woman assaulted by a fellow drug addict, and Therese, the woman assaulted at a stranger's home, turned to informal support providers who provided inappropriate support that was inadequate for countering their fears and self-blame. For Marie, the woman who was raped in a car, the negative reactions she received from her mother, friends, and priest reinforced her feelings of self-blame, making her too ashamed to talk about the assault with anyone else. Discussion 1980 1992 1995 1999 1991 2001 1994 1994 1992 1996a 1996b 1996c 1991 1993 2003 1988 1996 2004 1993 1998 1981 1984 1989 1998 1997 1996c 2001 2001 1984 1982 1994 1997 1998 professionals 2000 1996 informal negative 2001 1991 1996b 1988 1988 2001 1991 1996b 2001 On a more practical level, the results of the current study suggest that negative reactions are particularly detrimental as survivors use these reactions as a gauge for how others are likely to respond. These results attest to the importance of continued efforts to reduce rape myth acceptance and train support providers on how to effectively support rape victims. Combating rape myths, educating the public about sexual assault, and training potential support providers to avoid negative reactions may help reduce the trauma of the assault and increase the likelihood that victims receive the support they are seeking when they turn to others for help. Such efforts may be further enhanced by changes in the organizational context of formal community systems. Until the institutional orientation of the legal system is changed to reward prosecution of all rape cases rather than only those cases that are considered convictable, the legal system will likely continue to blame rape victims who come to their attention. Until the medical system comes to view providing support as part of their role, victims will likely continue to be treated insensitively. Thus, educational and training efforts should be used in conjunction with efforts to help shift the organizational orientation of formal community systems.