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. Natalie was abducted from a bus stop by three men and taken to an abandoned building where she was assaulted both vaginally and anally. The ordeal lasted five hours and ended when they set the building on fire. After escaping, Natalie staggered home and passed out, injured and hemorrhaging. When she woke up, she was in the hospital and the police were there. The police took her back to the scene, but the woman who answered the door said she didn’t know anything and that no-one else was there. The police did not investigate any further.
Natalie felt that the police didn’t care and weren’t going to do anything to help:
They wasn’t going to do shit, wasn’t nothing going to be done.
She was also distressed by their lack of sensitivity when she was recounting her experience:
I remember one of the police officer laughed.
Natalie also felt that the police doubted her story and held her accountable for the rape. These negative experiences with the police made her reluctant to have any further contact with them:
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. Karen was abandoned by her boyfriend at a coffee shop during a cross-country road trip. The manager offered her a room at the adjacent motel, but when the night watchman brought her food, he raped her. When Karen tried to tell her sister about the assault, her sister didn’t seem to identify the experience as rape:
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?
This unsupportive interchange caused Karen to question the efficacy of disclosure:
It’s just that it didn’t do any good, it just made me angry.
Her sister’s response was so unsympathetic that she never spoke to her about the assault again. Believing that there was no-one in her life who would support her, Karen did not disclose again for 19 years. In effect, her sister’s reaction confirmed her own doubts and fears about whether her experience qualified as rape:
I never used the word rape ‘til like a year ago honestly.
The fact that she was unsure of whether the experience qualified as rape also affected Karen’s perception of options for disclosure. For example, she described never even considering reporting the assault to the police, going to the emergency room, seeking mental health services, or contacting a rape crisis center.
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. Shawna was a self-identified drug addict who prostituted when necessary to support her addiction. The assailant was a fellow drug user who assaulted her with a weapon one night when she was walking down the street. The first person Shawna told about the assault was her cousin who told her that she should have known better:
She thought I knew about his, um, past. He was known to do that, take advantage of women.
This response reinforced Shawna’s feelings of self-blame and fears of being blamed by others. Fears of being blamed were particularly salient because of her lifestyle, leading Shawna to believe that there was no-one out there that she could turn to:
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.
Feelings of self-blame led Shawna to cease disclosing altogether for three years, a decision that was reinforced by her distrust of the police and fears of retaliation:
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. Marie was assaulted by two strangers her boyfriend arranged to give her a ride home. They drove to a wooded area where they held a gun to her infant son’s head and raped her. When she got home, she told her mother who told her to keep the rape a secret:
And I went home, and it was my fault. Shut up and don’t you tell anybody what you did.
Marie also told two friends, but they blamed her and told her to try and forget that it happened:
Forget it, it’s over, it was your fault, leave it alone.
She then turned to her priest and told him about the assault in confession. But, he blamed her for the assault and told her that God was punishing her:
He was in confessional. And just, you know, I’m separated, I had no right dating.
Marie internalized the shame and blame communicated by both her mother and the priest:
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. After a party, Linda decided to spend the night on the sofa rather than take the bus home alone at night. She woke up to the host raping her anally. The next day, she told a counselor who had been helpful in the past. But, he was very judgmental and blaming:
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.
This experience was so traumatizing that Linda decided to stop disclosing altogether:
After that, the red flag went up and I just said no, I’m not speaking to anybody about this.
Her inability to identify other support providers and her fears of similar negative reactions led her to stop disclosing for 13 years:
Well, I figured they would do the same thing that this counselor did. They would just blame me and they would discount it.
These fears were reinforced by her own uncertainty about how to define her experience:
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. Rita’s ex-boyfriend invited her out on his boat where he and one of his friends assaulted her at gunpoint. She remained in a state of shock for three days and then contacted her church’s prayer line who told her she must have wanted it to happen:
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.
Rita then turned to friends who told her she should have known what would happen and she shouldn’t report the assault because she knew the assailant. Rita decided to file a report anyway, but the police dismissed her claims because she knew the assailants:
It was as if because I knew the men that suddenly, then, somehow that was not a legitimate complaint or something.
Rita considered contacting a counselor, but the negative reactions she received from the police and her church led her to question the efficacy of such services:
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. Vanessa was assaulted when her ex-boyfriend offered to help her see her sisters whom she had been separated from when she was placed in the foster care system. When she arrived at his home, her sisters were not there and he raped her while threatening her with weights. After the assault, she ran to the nearest phone and called 911. The police took both the assailant and Vanessa to the police station for questioning. Vanessa was then taken to the hospital for the rape exam, a traumatizing experience for her:
Well, for me, I was already feeling nasty and dirty and there was semen. Um. It was just like another assault. Cold and impersonal.
She was then taken back to the police station where a sergeant accused her of lying:
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.
The police refused to file rape charges but did file simple assault charges. When Vanessa arrived at the courthouse, however, one of the assailant’s brothers pulled her aside:
[He] said if I do not drop the charges, he will burn my mother house down and rape my little sisters.
Combined with Vanessa’s negative experiences with the police, this threat of retaliation served to silence her:
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.
Although she considered disclosing to friends and family, she was afraid of being punished for skipping school. She did not reach out to the mental health system because she didn’t know that the rape would continue to affect her for so long. As the aftermath of the rape became clear to her, however, she still did not contact a therapist because she wasn’t sure that such services were appropriate for her:
[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.
Rape crisis centers were also not an option for Vanessa, primarily because she was unaware that they existed:
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. Therese was assaulted by a stranger when she went to the apartment of a man who claimed to be an old acquaintance. She tried to leave when she realized that she had never met him before, but he grabbed her and proceeded to rape her. She remained in shock for three days, feeling unable to talk to anyone. When she contacted her best friend, her friend was sympathetic, but extremely upset:
She took it almost as bad as I did.
This reaction was difficult for Therese to deal with because she felt guilty for upsetting her friend and felt she had to comfort her:
It kind of made me feel like I had to comfort her because she was taking it so hard.
Even though Therese’s friend was trying to be supportive, she was more concerned about herself than Therese. Therese’s own feelings of self-blame and shame were also too strong to be overcome. Unable to identify support providers she thought would react well, these high levels of self-blame were ultimately the reason Therese did not report the assault or contact any professional services:
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.
All of the survivors described being blamed for the assault. These survivors were blamed for putting themselves in vulnerable positions and were frequently told that they should have known better. Such responses were particularly common from community system personnel, especially the legal system. Interactions with the legal system were characterized by questions about whether the assault qualified as rape, their role in the assault, and whether they deserved the assistance the legal system could provide.
All of the survivors also received insensitive reactions. These reactions included having a support provider question, doubt, or minimize their experience. Insensitive reactions also occurred when support providers showed no sympathy for her distress or didn’t seem to consider what the survivor needed. Legal, medical, mental health, and religious system personnel were all described as reacting insensitively by at least half of the survivors who turned to them. Frequently, these insensitive reactions occurred in conjunction with blaming and doubting responses, reinforcing survivors’ perceptions that community systems didn’t care and would not provide any help.
Ineffective disclosures were also quite common. Ineffective disclosures were characterized by a lack of help/support resulting from disclosure. This code was applied when support providers refused to help. In several cases, help-seeking attempts to counselors, church, or friends/family did not result in support. In other cases, the police refused to take a report or charge the assailant with rape. Indeed, all three cases that were reported to the police were dropped and none resulted in prosecution of the offender for rape.
All but one of the survivors also described inappropriate support, mainly from friends, family, and religious personnel. Inappropriate support referred to support attempts that may have been well-intentioned, but were nevertheless perceived as inappropriate or unhelpful. Being told to keep silent or not report the assault, being treated as though they couldn’t take care of themselves, or having to comfort their support providers ultimately interfered with these survivors’ ability to receive support and comfort.
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.
All of the survivors discussed a lack of options as a reason for not continuing to disclose the assault. Many of these survivors were unaware of services available in the community (e.g., rape crisis centers) and all of them felt that there were no additional sources of support available to them. Having evaluated the likelihood of receiving support from others and determined that such support was unlikely, these survivors described having nowhere else to turn.
Even when survivors could identify providers, they all expressed extreme distrust and fears of negative reactions. Fears of being blamed, doubted, and treated insensitively were pervasive. For many, these fears were directly related to their previous negative disclosure experiences, leading them to conclude that additional disclosures would be harmful.
Six of the survivors also feared that additional disclosures would be ineffective. These survivors believed that continued disclosure would be unhelpful or would not result in the type of support they needed. They didn’t see the use of continued disclosure and felt that further discussion of the assault would be pointless. Combined with fears of negative reactions, their decision to cease disclosing was a form of self-protection.
Six of these survivors also cited self-blame or embarrassment as reasons for ceasing to disclose. They felt that it was embarrassing to talk about rape and didn’t want to put themselves through additional disclosures. The fact that they had been blamed for the assault previously served to heighten feelings of self-blame. These survivors described feeling somewhat responsible for the assault prior to disclosing, a view that was enhanced when they were blamed by others.
Finally, two survivors described questioning whether their experience qualified as rape. Because these assaults were not particularly violent, these survivors were unsure whether their experience counted as rape even before they disclosed. The fact that their initial disclosure recipients also appeared to question whether their experiences were rape served to reinforce their own doubts.
