What Parents Need to Tell Their Kids so that They Report Sexual Assault to THEM

Elizabeth Bernstein’s piece in the Wall Street Journal about the reasons women do not report sexual assault answers the President’s query that if the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh are true, then his accusers would have said something way back then. Or sometime since then.

It isn't a new subject. An abundance of cultural, sociological, psychological, structural, and economic literature (you need academic access to the data bases) links under-reporting with sexual assault and harassment. 

But even as this psycho-education seeps into the national consciousness, skeptics still ask the President's question and another: 

If these rapes are unreported, then how do they (the experts) really know? Where do they get their numbers?

The answer is that agencies sponsor studies and collect statistics about crime. The Center for Disease Prevention, for one, reporting annually, finds that one in five women are violently raped each year. Another, the Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), is an annual survey of a representative sample of households that asks about reported and unreported violent crimes, including rape and attempted sexual assault. In one such study, teenagers 16-19 years of age have been found to be 3.5 times more likely to experience sexual assault than the general population.

And they don’t all tell their parents.

The consequences of not telling—years of psychological haunting, shame, self-blame for drinking, for simply being there, social withdrawal, academic failure, depression, anxiety, relationship fears—the manifestations of post-traumatic stress— are founded in the professional literature, as well.   

Parents wanting to change that, wanting to help, who wish their children to confide in them, should this type of violence ever happen (and it might), will need to be nonjudgmental and unconditionally supportive. They'll need to bring the conversation to the dinner table, ready with not statistics, but with the reasons men rape—primary among them the pressure to be male, to prove it in this perverse way. They should be armed with a list of the 20 rape myths, such as women (girls) dress a certain way, or drink because they want to be raped.* 

To gain the confidence of their children, parents will have to assure confidentiality, and they may need to let go the idea of reporting if their child is against it, if she or he opts out. It isn’t the craziest thing, the decision not to report—as Ms. Bernstein’s article makes abundantly clear.

*A link to sexual harassment myths. Rape-myths pre-date them and I'll post those another time, along with the many reasons men rape.  

P.S. Looking for a picture of a girl torn to pieces about a rape (it's on that mac somewhere), I found these notes for an article I presented to the Council for Social Work Education about what social workers can do about on-campus sexual violence (2006).

20-59% of all college women suffer sexual assault between 16-24, 87-95% acquaintances

higher incidence with athletics, beliefs in myths and sex roles

why victims don’t report

Don’t think campus police will be helpful, they blame the victim

Too long a wait in the ER

Fear of reprisal by a stalkinga assailant

feeling overwhelmed, ashamed, or too humiliated to face others

fear they won’t be believed or taken seriously and secondary retraumatization

not knowing it was rape

not wanting family or significant others to find out

not wanting to hurt an acquaintance rapist’s chance for a better future

fear of getting in trouble for underaged drinking

But add these, too: 

• People think, not everyone needs to know. Anything sexual is personal.
• There’s dread, embarrassment, and humiliation regarding reporting and the whole event.
• Targets and actors believe bad things don’t happen unless it is deserved, the just world philosophy. Somehow, they think, the target is responsible. Both players find reasons, which diminishes the actor’s (or bystanders/friends) guilt/anxiety/compassion, worsening the consequences for the target.
• Targets of sexual harassment fear being perceived as weak, dependent, vulnerable, or incapable of handling their lives on their own— all the things women tell men that they are not in the feminist paradigm.
• Fear of inviting more negative attention, comments, jokes, behavior, retaliation, both during and after the report. 
• The expectation that the story will be minimized or worse, not believed.
• Telling over the story has been compared to a “second rape” if it isn’t received in an empathetic, supportive way. “Just world” thinking would contribute to that (you must have deserved it).
• Guilt and avoidance, not wanting to see the perpetrator dismissed. Targets of sexual harassment often tolerate abuse, protect the very person who is making them miserable, will even make excuses for him.

Linda Freedman, PhD

Chicago, Illinois