Doing the “Right Thing”? Understanding Why Rape Victim-Survivors Report to the Police

Abstract

This article explores why victim-survivors engage with the police by drawing upon the accounts of 24 women who reported rape or sexual assault in Scotland. Findings defy public narratives around rape reporting, indicating that victim-survivors may exercise limited agency in reporting. Moreover, a problematic “aspiration-reality gap” exists due to stark differences between the aspirations attached to reports and the reality of the ensuing criminal justice response. It is suggested that the concepts of “secondary victimization” and the “justice gap” can be augmented through appreciation of the “aspiration-reality gap,” and contemporary preoccupation with increasing rates of reporting is called into question.

Challenging Anti-Carceral Feminism: Criminalisation, Justice and Continuum Thinking

“…These findings are similar to Brooks-Hay's study where even survivors seeking conventional punishment linked this to preventing further offending (Brooks-Hay, 2020). Similarly, research by the organisation Imkaan, which works with black and minoritised women experiencing abuse in the UK, identified that some survivors wish to 'access justice' via the criminal justice system and that this is an 'important objective for many survivors' (Thiara & Roy, 2020, 6).…”

Non-reporting of sexual violence as action: acts, selves, futures in the making

“…The data for this article come from narrative interviews with 15 women who were raped but never reported the incident to the police. 2 While in qualitative research on rape victims, participants are often recruited through support centres, helplines and the criminal justice system (Brooks-Hay, 2019;Huemmer et al, 2018), quantitative research has shown that most rape victims never contact any such organizations (Ahrens, 2007;Fisher et al, 2003;Thoresen & Hjemdal, 2014). Because those who do seek institutionalized support may acquire the frames of justifications offered there (Loseke, 2001), we wanted to bypass institutional framings and recruit respondents elsewhere.…”

Explaining the Why in #WhyIDidntReport: An Examination of Common Barriers to Formal Disclosure of Sexual Assault in College Students

“…He purported that law is a dynamic and quantifiable means of social control that vary across space and time and are contingent upon five situational dimensions of social life: Stratification, the vertical aspect(victim and offender demographics representative of their status and their interaction) , Morphology, the horizontal aspect (victim-offender relationship and the victim’s and offender’s relationship with others), Culture ( victim and offender level of education and the interaction of the two), Organization (the frequency and perceived commonality of similar offenders), and Social Control (when and where an offense occurred).By quantifying each and examining its direction and location, one could explain the variance in the mobilization of the legal system. Black’s theory has been met with some controversy (Kuo et al, 2012), and studies that have tested the theory (wholly or partially) have yielded mixed results, particularly in context of sexual violence reporting (Brooks-Hay, 2020; Clay-Warner & McMahon-Howard, 2009). Clay-Warner and McMahon-Howard (2009) tested Black’s theory alongside classic rape theory by examining cases of rape and attempted rape within the NCVS.…”