A tendency to blame the victim often hinders the prosecution of violence against women in the United States, as does a lack of coordination among multidisciplinary teams dealing with the issue, but progress is being made, experts say
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation)— The United States has made progress in its efforts to reduce sexual violence, but is still hampered by the tendency to blame the victim and poor coordination among agencies dealing with violence against women (VAW), experts in the field say.
“Sometimes we still minimize the effect of violence itself because the victim was drunk or because the woman was a prostitute or because the victim and predator knew each other,” said Jennifer Gentile Long, director of AEquitas: The Prosecutors’ Resource on Violence, a Washington, DC-based organization that gives prosecutors dealing with cases of violence against women support, training and resources.
Education of those prosecuting such cases and helping victims, and better coordination among agencies involved is crucial to improving the rate of successful prosecutions in cases of VAW, experts say.
According to Justice Department statistics released last March, the rate of sexual violence against women and girls over the age of 12 fell 64 percent between 1995 and 2005 from 5 to 1.8 rapes or sexual assaults per 1,000 women and remains at that rate. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which draws data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), estimated an annual average 283,000 rapes or sexual assaults between 2005 and 2010.
But several other surveys, using different methodology, estimate much higher numbers of rapes and sexual assaults. The BJS commissioned the National Research Council to study the disparity, and on Nov. 19 the council issued its report , concluding that the NCVS is likely undercounting the number of rapes and sexual assaults and should change its form and methodology to obtain more accurate data. This would include uncovering underreported cases, such as those where women were too intoxicated to resist assault and may not have realized they had been raped, a victim category that often is subject to bias, experts said.
The actual number of rapes, Long and others said, may be much closer to that provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Released in 2011, it estimated 1.3 million women are raped every year and a further 6.6 million are victims of other forms of sexual assault, girls between the ages of 16 and 19 being the most vulnerable.
Only about 12 percent of rape and sexual assault cases result in an arrest, according to the BJS, and of those, about 9 percent are prosecuted and 5 percent result in a conviction, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).
The problem of bias is hardly unique to the United States when it comes to prosecuting VAW crimes, Long noted. “The bottom line is everywhere that I have gone, you hear the details are different but the issues are the same: blaming the victim or that the perpetrator is a person of status.”
People “want to believe that bad things don’t happen to good people” so they may tend to doubt the veracity of a rape victim who doesn’t match the way they expect a victim to look or act or doubt the culpability of a rapist who doesn’t meet their expectations of how a rapist looks or acts, she said.
Such bias can affect a case from the outset. “As a practical matter, at least in the U.S., these issues crop up and they still have an impact on whether these cases are prosecuted and their outcome,” Long said.
The same can be true for prosecution of domestic violence, which is estimated to affect one out of four American women but for which, like overall crimes of VAW, there are no national statistics available either on prevalence or prosecution, Kim Gandy, director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“There’s no question we’re making progress. There’s much greater awareness, greater willingness to prosecute it, and greater willingness (of victims) to say ‘I was a victim of abuse.’ But there’s still shame associated with it, because that’s part of the pattern of abuse, to make her feel responsible. He’s convinced her she’s worthless and useless and it was her fault,” Gandy said.
Educating law enforcement officers, prosecutors, victim advocates and others on multidisciplinary teams about how best to handle victims of rape and other crimes of VAW and how to coordinate their investigations and preparation of cases is crucial, according to Candace Mosley, director of the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women at the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA).
“Collaboration is a huge key—people not understanding in a multidisciplinary setting how someone else’s piece fits into the puzzle,” she said. “There obviously is much progress in that area. You see the working groups and task forces where they’re meeting monthly and discussing cases. But, within those systems, there is still the turnstile effect of people leaving and coming into the system.”
The normal turnover of employees can result in the loss of experienced people in specialized VAW units or the setting of new priorities by new leaders. “In far too many places you’ll have them be at the top of their game, but there’s a change of leadership and you don’t have the same level of prosecution or the same level of commitment,” said Long of AEquitas.
“That, to me, seems the biggest failure, that there’s no emphasis on the sustainability of the units that address violence against women,” she said.
The landmark 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has helped further that sustainability by funding education programs that annually train 500,000 law enforcement agents and others involved in prosecution of VAW, and support victim services and programs to strengthen the criminal justice system to hold offenders accountable.
Reauthorized every five years, its current annual budget of $659 million is administered by the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), set up in 2004 to oversee and coordinate VAWA-related programs.
According to Antonia Kirkland, legal advisor at the human rights organization Equality Now, “Strong legislation, such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), can have a major deterrent effect, both because it raises public awareness about the issue and because when it is enforced it can make others think twice about committing such crimes. In addition to re-authorizing important legislation like VAWA and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the U.S. government should also ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) to further collaborate with the United Nations in an effort to prevent violence against women and girls in the United States.”
Experts said there is no simple way to measure true success in the prosecution of VAW, because it goes beyond the conviction rate to the treatment of victims and shaping attitudes toward such crimes among the public and those who build and hear the cases.
“In determining what is success in these cases, the conviction rate is the easiest way to measure it, but we know that’s a problem because it means you’re not charging hard cases,” said Long.
“Another measure would be … the actual prosecution pieces themselves. Are you identifying all the right issues? Are you filing the right motions? Are you making the right objections to protect the victim because that has an impact … ? Are you identifying victims... ? How are you making those decisions? Are you working in a multi-disciplinary team?
“If you’re doing all those things, presumably, you’ll start creating the kind of environment where you’ll lower the rate of sexual violence and you’ll raise the incidence of accountability,” she said.
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