Supportive and Unsupportive Aspects of the Behavior of Others Toward Victims of Sexual and Nonsexual Assault

Abstract

Victims and their primary significant others (SOs) were asked to rate the amounts of supportive and unsupportive behaviors of the SOs following sexual or nonsexual assaults. Victim and SO reports of supportive behavior were moderately correlated, but victim and SO reports of unsupportive behavior were only weakly correlated. Nevertheless, victims and SOs reported similar levels of both supportive and unsupportive behavior. Neither victim nor SO report data revealed differences in amounts of supportive SO behavior according to whether the crime was a sexual or a nonsexual assault. According to both victims and SOs, however, rape victims received higher levels of unsupportive SO behavior. Moreover, according to victim reports, unsupportive actions of female SOs were comparable in sexual and nonsexual assault cases: Male SOs, however, were far more likely to engage in unsupportive actions in sexual assault cases than in nonsexual assaults.

The Persecution of Gypsies in Europe

“…Whereas numerous studies have been conducted to describe the psychosocial consequences of particular types of victimization (e.g., Freedy, Resnick, Kilpatrick, Dansky, & Tidwell, 1994;Frieze, Greenberg, & Hymer, 1987;Kilpatrick, Saunders, Veronen, Best, & Von, 1987;Sales, Baum, & Shore, 1984), only a handful compare symptoms across crime types (Davis & Brickman, 1996;Lurigio, 1987;Resick, 1987;Riggs & Foa, 1995;Wirtz & Harrell, 1987), and even fewer are specific to bias crime victimization Ehrlich, Larcom, & Purvis, 1994;Ephross, Barnes, Ehrlich, Sandnes, & Weiss, 1986;Herek, Cogan, & Gillis, 1999;. In part due to methodological issues, the results of these studies on bias crime victimization are somewhat inconsistent in their conclusions.…”

The Effect of Victims' Social Support on Attributions of Blame in Female and Male Rape

“…Such attitudes often extend to a wide variety of individuals and agencies such as family, friends, police and therapists, and even whole communities (Lees, 1997;Ward, 1995). Whilst it is generally accepted that social support has a great impact on victims' recovery from rape, where socially supported victims fare considerably better than their unsupported counterparts (Atkeson, Calhoun, Resick & Ellis, 1982;Davis & Brickman, 1996;Frazier, 1990Frazier, , 1991Frazier & Schauben, 1994;Pitts & Schwartz, 1993), the effect that social support may have on others' responses to the victim is unknown. Yet, this factor may have wider applicability than many of the factors investigated in rape perception studies such as the degree of victim intoxication, which may only be present in a subset of incidents.…”

Impact du moment du dévoilement d’une agression sexuelle perpétrée par un tiers sur certains aspects affectifs et relationnels des victimes adultes

“…Cependant, certaines croyances négatives entourant les causes d'un tel événement peuvent faire en sorte que son dévoilement est susceptible d'entraîner des réactions négatives chez le conjoint (Davis et Brickman 1996 ;Ullman, 1996c). Inversement, d'autres perceptions peuvent favoriser des comportements de soutien positifs (Ahrens, 2002 ;Campbell et al, 2001 ;Ullman et Filipas, 2001).…”

“…En retour, ces attentes peuvent entraîner des difficultés relationnelles, des difficultés d'adaptation et même une recrudescence de la détresse psychologique chez la victime (Holmtrom et Burgess, 1979 ;Brookings et al, 1994 ;Ullman, 1996c). Cela explique peut-être que les conjoints seraient les derniers informés de l'agression (Davis et al, 1991 ;Davis et Brickman, 1996 ;Ullman, 1996c).…”