On September 14, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, “Rape in the United States: The Chronic Failure to Report and Investigate Rape Cases.”
During her testimony, Susan Carbon, director of the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) at the Department of Justice, discussed the efforts underway to improve the response to sexual violence. With regard to increasing support services for victims of sexual violence she said, “First, the President has requested substantial funding increases for OVW’s Sexual Assault Services Program (SASP). SASP is the only federal funding stream dedicated to providing services specifically for sexual assault victims and was created in VAWA [the Violence Against Women Act 2005 (P.L. 109-162)] as a result of this committee’s work on the legislation. Overall, the purpose of SASP is to provide intervention, advocacy, accompaniment, support services, and related assistance for adult, youth, and child victims of sexual assault, family and household members of victims, and those collaterally affected by sexual assault. In FY2009, each state and territory received formula funds through the SASP. These states and territories are currently in the process of making subgrant awards to local programs to provide direct services to victims.” Ms. Carbon continued, “Second, OVW has designed a Sexual Assault Demonstration Initiative (SADI) to address the challenges that dual agencies face in reaching sexual violence victims within their communities. SADI Project sites will receive customized technical assistance in an effort to assess the agencies’ current strengths and weaknesses in reaching victims of sexual violence within the community, the services currently provided to this population by the agency, and any specific technical assistance needs to underserved populations. SADI Project sites will receive guidance on developing and implementing models of service provision that prioritize the needs of sexual violence victims and the resources to implement those service models. Additionally, President Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act [P.L. 111-211] in July. The act requires a standardized set of practices be put in place for victims of sexual assault in Indian health facilities.”
“In America today, rape is a crime without consequence — except for the victim,” said Scott Berkowitz, president and founder of the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). “According to the Justice Department, six out of every ten victims don’t report their attack to police. A few years ago, that number was seven out of ten, so at least we are headed in the right direction…In general, victims will only report when they perceive that the benefits associated with reporting are greater than the costs, and the costs of reporting can be substantial. Victims tend to weigh lots of factors in this calculation: the odds of success, the risk of continued trauma, the opportunity cost of delaying other life pursuits, the satisfaction of helping to prevent future attacks by the same perpetrator, and the reward of seeing justice done are just a few of the variables…A generation ago, the reasons most often cited by victims spoke vividly of the way society viewed this crime. They feared not being believed. They feared being blamed. They feared being interrogated about their own behavior, from what they were wearing to why they gave the perpetrator the opportunity to commit the crime. In short, they feared that they would be the one on trial. Clearly, many victims’ perception of the treatment they will receive has evolved along with greater societal understanding of the crime. Now, common reasons cited for not reporting are: they don’t want their friends and family and coworkers to know what happened. They’re ashamed. They don’t think it’s serious enough to pursue. They want to put the whole thing behind them. Fear, or at least skepticism, of how they might be treated by police still exists, but it has moved down the list of reasons for not reporting.” Mr. Berkowitz added, “Research shows that police officers and doctors underestimate the impact they have on rape victims and the extent to which their statements or actions following an attack affect victims. Victims have reported significantly more ‘post-system-contact’ distress than service providers thought they were experiencing. Victims often left feeling responsible for the assault, distressed, depressed, disappointed, and reluctant to seek further help. While rape victims and law enforcement officials and medical personnel most often agree on what was discussed and the services that were offered, police officers and medical personnel were often not aware that victims were distressed by the interaction. This ‘post-system-contact’ distress is noteworthy, because the quality of the initial contact that a victim has with law enforcement and medical personnel has the potential to impact whether or not that victim proceeds through the criminal justice system. In fact, according to the NYPD [New York Police Department] Academy, the role of the first response uniformed police officer is not investigative; it is primarily to provide aid to the victim. Its Recruit Training Section Student Guide explains that the first police officer on the scene of a sex crime plays an important part in simultaneously minimizing the trauma and in maximizing the chances of successful prosecution.”
Michelle Madden Dempsey, associate professor of law at Villanova University School of Law, addressed the police investigations of rape cases. She said, “In recent decades throughout the United States, both our legal and cultural understanding of what counts as rape have undergone a radical transformation. Archaic legal definitions of rape which required victims to ‘resist to the utmost’ before their violations were deemed to count as rapes have now, thankfully, been largely abandoned throughout the fifty states. The standard set out in the infamous dissent by Judge Cole in the case of State v. Rusk, that a rape victim ‘must follow the natural instinct of every proud female to resist by more than mere words, the violation of her person…’ was rightfully rejected at the time by the majority of the court in Rusk, and now, nearly thirty years later, is largely recognized as representing a bizarre, anachronistic view of rape which the United States has long abandoned. Yet, perhaps this view of our legal and cultural understandings of rape is overly optimistic; for, the transformation from the archaic view of rape has not yet been complete. While some states have adopted progressive laws which recognize that a criminal offense occurs whenever sexual intercourse takes place without ‘words or overt actions by a person who is competent to give informed consent indicating a freely given agreement,’ there are still a number of states in which the legal definitions of rape (or sexual assault) include some form of the archaic common law physical resistance requirement (typically built into the state courts’ interpretation of what counts as ‘force’) and others where consent is deemed to be present even when the victim evidences clear signs of unwillingness to engage in sex. In these jurisdictions, there exists a tremendous and troubling justice gap between what counts as rape according to any reasonably enlightened view of women’s rights to sexual autonomy and bodily integrity – and what counts as rape as a matter of state law. Given this justice gap, the problem of police ‘misclassifying rape as a non-crime’ may simply be a reflection of the fact that what victims experience as rape – what is properly understood as rape – still does not count as rape according to out-dated laws. Where this justice gap persists, it remains crucial to support the continuation of rape law reform, so that every state’s criminal law will reflect a proper understanding of the reality of what counts as rape, rather than protecting predators under archaic laws that penalize only a very tiny percentage of actual rapes.”
Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project; Charles Ramsey, commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department; Sara Reedy, a rape survivor; Julie Weil, a rape survivor; Dr. Lawanda Ravoira, director of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency Center for Girls and Young Women; Dr. Dean Kilpatrick, director of the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center at the Medical University of South Carolina; and Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority Foundation, also testified.
