The year 2013 in Nepal began with a people powered “Occupy Baluwatar” movement to address violence against women. As the movement reached its 30th day of protests in Baluwatar, Kathmandu, women and children continue to experience sexual violence at alarming rates, feel limited in their options, face barriers to reporting, experience professional backlash, are not believed, and are still waiting for changes to rely on for help. In Nepal, it is very common for a rape victim to experience victim-blaming by people, families, and systems. The attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of social, administrative, and legal system personnel often lead to secondary victimization. Therefore, many women do not report the cases at all, and of those who do report to the police, only a small number of cases are actually prosecuted.
Where does the problem lie?
ILLUSTRATION CHRISTINA ULLMAN/OHIO.EDU
As explained by Professor Rebecca Campbell (Psychologist at Michigan State University), in order to understand rape case attrition in the criminal justice system, we have to understand the psychology and psychiatry of victim behavior, and the neurobiology of trauma.
Justice can be a traumatizing experience for anyone, especially when the police refuse to prosecute the case. Police and medical doctors seek visible signs of resistance in determining whether a rape has occurred, and when these signs are absent, it is difficult to convince investigators that a rape has taken place, which essentially leads to victims giving up the case. This discourages the victims from making a report. On the other hand, the defense lawyer may ask the victim about her dress or behavior, or what she might have done to provoke the assault. They further question what she could have, or should have, done when the perpetrator was physically assaulting her. For instance, “where did the incident take place?” followed by “was there a possibility that the victim could’ve shouted and asked for help?”
As indicated in the Cornell Law Review of 2012, the court normally divides sexual universe into consensual, nonconsensual and aconsensual.
One of the most troublesome areas regarding rape continues to be the issue of consent on the part of the survivor. If the victim states that she was unable to do anything, or just laid there, the attribution is that the victim must have wanted it. If not, why didn’t she do anything? Why didn’t she fight back? Why didn’t she ask for help? Instead of taking the matter further, the case is usually closed at this point, or the victim may settle for a small amount of money as compensation, resulting in case of attrition. In this scenario, it is very important to understand the science behind rape, and how it might be useful to changing legal and judicial practices regarding rape.
Professor Rebecca Campbell’s lecture in 2012 describes that when a rape occurs, there are two neural mechanisms at work. The first has to do with hormones and emotions; and the second with the victim’s encoding, processing, and memory. During rape, the brain signals the body that it is facing a traumatic event. In response, the body releases hormones to respond to the traumatic events. The four main hormones are catecholamine, adrenaline, cortisol, and opiates. Catecholamine and adrenaline help generate the “fight or flight” response to get away from the threatening situation. Cortisol affects the amount of energy needed to flee the situation, and opiates, the natural morphine in the body, compensate for the physical and emotional pain that the victim is going through. In conjunction, the brain also processes information into memories. It takes all the information from different sensory organs and organizes it, which is called encoding.
The segment of the brain which encodes information is very sensitive to hormonal fluctuations. Depending on what hormones are in the body at the time of encoding and consolidation, it’s going to be easier or harder for the brain to do its work of encoding and consolidating information. This is a classic example of the body’s seeming to work at cross purposes. The hormones responsible for damaging the encoding process are catecholamine, adrenaline, opiates, and cortisol. Moreover, they also impair the circuits of the brain that control rational thought, which means that the victim literally cannot think during rape. Although the structural cellular damage caused by catecholamine is not permanent, telling the victim that she “could have”, or “should have,” done this or that, is useless, because victims are not even able to think of the options, let alone execute them.
Opiates are also released at very high levels, thereby blocking physical and emotional pain. As a result, the victim may give a flat emotional reaction, which can seem counterintuitive. This can happen when the emotional reaction is blunted by opiates.
One of the most troublesome issues of rape is consent. If the victim did not do anything, then she must have “wanted it”.
For some victims, the corticosteroids dumped out at very high levels reduce the energy available to the body, causing the body to freeze. Hence, “fight or flight” is not the only response that a victim may have. “Freeze” response occurs in approximately 50 percent of the rape victims. They don’t flee the situation. Their body freezes because of hormonal activities which can essentially shut down responses from the entire body. The technical name for this phenomenon is tonic immobility, which is often referred to as “rape induced paralysis”. This is the answer to the question that law enforcers and lawyers often ask regarding victims’ inactivity during rape. It is a documented neurobiological condition.
Since memories are fragmented due to stress hormones released at very high levels, it becomes difficult for the brain to consolidate information. No wonder, many victims take time to respond and recall information. It doesn’t mean that they are making it up, but rather putting the pieces together like a puzzle. Numerous researches have already proven that the laying down of the memory is accurate, recall of it is accurate, and the only issue is that the information is disorganized and fragmented.
Therefore, understanding the science behind rape may be necessary for law enforcers, medical personnel, lawyers and judicial body in order to break the cycle of attrition and understand and contextualize the wide range of victim behavior. Also, rape victims who were passive or felt paralyzed during an attack are especially vulnerable to self-blame. They experience higher levels of guilt because they are not believed or are bombarded with questions, leading to secondary victimization. Hence, it is imperative for everyone to understand that passivity is not consent in the context of rape. In the future, let there be no attrition due specifically to lack of this information.
The author has a PhD in Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology from University of Oslo
sherpalhamo@yahoo.com