University Women's Acknowledgment of Rape

Abstract

An ecological framework was used to examine individual, situational, and social predictors of university women's acknowledgment of rape experiences. Only individual and situational factors uniquely predicted acknowledgment. Women were more likely to acknowledge a rape if they experienced higher levels of violence during the rape, possessed factors congruent with an acquaintance rape script rather than a blitz rape script, and blamed their behavior for the rape. All women experienced a generally low amount of self-blame and blamed the perpetrator more than themselves. Implications for rape awareness programs are discussed.

The Relationship between Rape Myths and Sexual Scripts: The Social Construction of Rape

“…Research also showed that unacknowledged rape victims were more likely than acknowledged rape victims to hold a real-rape script (e.g., Bondurant 2001;Kahn et al 1994). Thus, their belief that rape involved high levels of violence may have led them to label their personal experience with a relatively non-physically violent sexual assault as something other than rape.…”

“…Most of the research linking rape scripts to participants' interpretations of their own experience as a rape focuses on female victims of sexual aggression (e.g., Bondurant 2001;Kahn et al 1994). For example, researchers have sought to understand why some women do not label their personal experience as rape when it clearly matches the legal definition of rape.…”

A Website Content Analysis of Women’s Resources and Sexual Assault Literature on College Campuses

“…More situation-defining information and more victim-focused literature should be visible to truly assist the survivors and others searching for resources on campus. Bondurant (2001) asserts that acknowledgement of a rape for many victims may be extremely difficult. Many women do not label what happened to them as rape because of many different factors on an individual, situational and social level (Bondurant 2001).…”

“…Bondurant (2001) asserts that acknowledgement of a rape for many victims may be extremely difficult. Many women do not label what happened to them as rape because of many different factors on an individual, situational and social level (Bondurant 2001). At the very least, universities need to have many definitions of the various types of sexual assault and descriptions of common sexual assault scenarios available in order to encourage these women to appropriately define what happened to them as rape/sexual assault.…”

The Effect of Young Adult Literature on Adolescents' Rape Myth Acceptance

“…In their 1982 study, Koss and Oros found that 13% of her sample had been victims of rape, but of these, 43% did not label their experience as rape. The percentage of rape victims who do not acknowledge their rapes as such have been found to range from 73% (Koss, et al, 1988;Layman, Gidycz, & Lynn, 1996), to 64% (Bondurant, 2001), to 62% (Peterson & Muhlenhard, 2004) and 48% (Kahn, Mathie, & Torgler, 1994). According to Koss (1985) these unacknowledged rape victims have had an experience that meets the legal criteria for rape but do not identify themselves as victims.…”