Thirty-seven women expressed interest in the research. Twenty-three women met the inclusion criteria of having experienced a sexual assault, reported the assault to the police, and perceived that they were not believed by police. Participant’s perceptions of police disbelief were determined by various factors such as the short duration of police report with little or no note taking, location of the interview (not at the police station), no incident numbers provided, blaming questions, lack of a thorough investigation, no follow-up on case outcomes from the police, no charges laid, and/or no return phone calls from the police. Some participants verbalized that police explicitly stated that they did not believe the woman’s report. One participant provided a copy of the police report, which documented that the police did not believe her report. There were no individuals who refused to participate in the study, however, the researchers excluded fourteen transcripts from the analyses based on the exclusion criteria. Despite reviewing inclusion and exclusion criteria prior to the interview, there was evidence that emerged during a few interviews that some of the women were believed by police. In three cases police laid charges and the perpetrator went to court and in six cases the women chose not to pursue charges. Two of the sexual assaults were not reported to the police and two self-identified that they suspected but were not certain a sexual assault had occurred (e.g. they stated that “something didn’t feel right”, but had no recollection of a sexual assault). One participant was excluded as she unable to provide consent.
Participant Characteristics
Twenty-three women comprised the study sample with approximately half who self-identified as Caucasian (n = 12; 52%) or Indigenous (n = 11; 48%). The age of women at the time of the study ranged from 22 to 57 years of age (M = 37). Most women reported being single (n = 15; 65%), unemployed (n = 13; 56%), and earning an annual income less than $19,999 (n = 16; 69%). Various levels of education were reported, including partial high school (n = 6; 26%), high school completion (n =1; 4%) college (n = 9; 39%), university (n = 5; 22%) and two not reported.
The characteristics of the sexual assault were mixed. More than half of the women (n = 15; 65%) reported knowing the perpetrator (intimate partner [n = 1], family member [n = 3], acquaintance/friend [n = 11]) of the assault, while 8 (35%) of the perpetrators were strangers. Likewise, the response to the sexual assault varied with nine (39%) reporting that they physically resisted and/or verbally resisted the attacker (n = 11; 48%). Drugs and alcohol were a factor in many of the sexual assaults, with 57% (n = 13) of perpetrators having consumed alcohol, nine of whom, had also used drugs. For the assaults by strangers, women were unsure whether the perpetrator had used drugs or alcohol. Among survivors, half reported (n = 12; 52.2%) using substances prior to the assault. Of those, the majority used alcohol only (n= 8), alcohol and drugs (n =3) or drugs only (n =1). Three additional participants reported that they were forcibly given alcohol and/or drugs prior to the assault. Five participants (21.7%) suspected that they were drugged by the perpetrator prior to being sexually assaulted.
The thematic analysis of the women’s interviews revealed three salient themes related to the health and social impact of not being believed by the police. These included: (a) Broken Expectations, (b) Loss of Self, and (c) Cumulative Effect. Within the theme of Broken Expectations, two subthemes emerged including Loss of Trust and Re-victimization.
Broken Expectations
Overall, most participants described that the purpose of the police was to protect the public. They disclosed that this sense of safety and protection contributed to their sense of well-being and was disrupted during their report of sexual assault. Accordingly, when the women made their sexual assault reports to police, they believed that the police would assist and investigate. However, the participants explained that there was incongruence between what they believed would happen when they reported and what actually occurred. They described feelings of disappointment, being let down, having an additional pain, or that their sexual assault reports fell on “deaf ears”. “They are supposed to be there to help you and keep you safe, and I didn’t think they were doing it at all”. An Indigenous participant who reported her sexual assault to the police and waited more than 24 hours for a police response, described how she thought making a report would be the first step of the healing process after the sexual assault, but believed that her experience with the police made it [sexual assault experience] all worse:
You think that they [police] are going to protect you, right, and that they are going to do justice. What happened had happened [sexual assault] and that couldn’t be undone. I don’t know how to explain it, like kind of a step towards healing, if that makes sense. Like that would have been my first step, instead it just kind of made a new pain to have to deal with.
When the police did not act, and investigate, the participants’ expectations were broken. Before reporting, participants believed that the police response to their report would be taken more seriously. Participants described that they expected “I would get called back”, “that the assault would be investigated” or “they would take my report”. However, many said that they never heard back from police and that their concerns were never followed up. These broken expectations lead to adverse social health outcomes for participants when they perceived they were not being believed. This included loss of trust in the police and re-victimization by the police.
Loss of trust.
Many participants described a loss of trust in the police and the justice system after not being believed and/or their report not being followed-up. Much of the discussion regarding loss of trust was based on participants’ perceptions that the police did not care about them as individuals or that the police had too many other things to deal with. This loss of trust lead women to feel that there was no point in seeking assistance from the police in other situations. “We will take care of each other, because they [police] don’t care about us and…you know, they don’t believe you anyways, so don’t even bother. We will deal with our own stuff”. Another participant who was sexually assaulted and reported the assault to the police following an exam at the hospital, described feeling interrogated by the police, with the police officer’s initial question being “Did you just do it and regret it?” This experience lead to her lack of trust and subsequent protective instincts with her two young children, “I always tell my kids police are safe to go to, but there is still hesitation with that…I wouldn’t discourage them from it, but I would rather have them come to me and then I’ll help them if something ever happened”.
The loss of trust in police impacted some women who experienced further violence or sexual assaults and did not make subsequent reports out of fear of not being believed by the police. An Indigenous participant who described feeling immense shame when the police did not believe that her sexual assault had occurred, described the impact of the police response on her subsequent experience with violence, “When I first got into my domestic, the relationship was violent, like I never called [the police], I never called anytime that I got hit. I never felt like they would believe me anyway”. Similarly, despite being drugged during her sexual assault, and left “hogtied” on a street, a participant who perceived her involvement in the sex trade contributed to not being believed by the police, described the impact of the disbelief on her well-being, “Well, I was in a relationship where I was beat, beat very badly, and it took me 2 years before I reported it...because they wouldn’t believe me”. Participants’ prior experience with police greatly impacted their subsequent physical and mental health, as several described enduring subsequent abuse rather than making police reports.
Re-victimization.
Women had various motivations to report their sexual assaults to the police. Many of the women wanted to make a report to have the perpetrator charged, or to prevent others from being assaulted. Some described how they felt nervous to make the police report and only did so with encouragement from family, friends or healthcare/service providers. When the women did report, and were not believed, some felt re-victimized by the reporting experience and the questions they were asked. A young woman who was sexually assaulted after a social outing with friends on a University campus, described her interaction with the police as:
His [police officer] demeanour, like a bit of everything; his tone. I remember his tone because he was like well did you do this? Even the way he asked it was like, what were you wearing? … That’s the one thing I can really remember, and I said those questions shouldn’t stick with me for the rest of my life, but they do. I feel like sometimes that was worse than the actual incident.
Similarly, another participant who survived through involvement in sex work, commented that the police response to her report was “well you work the streets, you bring it on yourself”. Furthermore, the police officer stated, “serves you right for being out there on the corners and out at night, you women ask for it. I will never forget that; you women ask for it!” The experience of being let down by the professional who is supposed to protect you was perceived as emotionally damaging well beyond the trauma of the sexual assault. It is this disbelief from the police that left women feeling defeated, unsafe and unworthy of protection and support.
Loss of Self
All participants expressed that not being believed by police impacted them on a personal level. Many described how the disbelief from police impacted their well-being and made them feel as if a part of them had been lost or taken away. The women described feelings of loss regarding their self-worth, self-esteem, self-image, and/or self-confidence after not being believed. A woman who was drugged by her perpetrator, had a rape kit done at the hospital, reported the assault to the police and felt dismissed by them, discussed the impact of disbelief from the police on her sense of self,
It took away from who I was as a person before that, and it chipped away at my self-esteem. It made me think ok, well if these people think that I am not worthy of investigation and not worthy of fighting for, then why should I fight for myself? Why should I fight for my life?
Similarly, another participant who was sexually assaulted repeatedly by her step-brother, explained the impact that the disbelief from the police had on her self-worth, stating “You feel like if the police don’t care what happens to you, why should I, right?” The internalization of the police response was articulated by one of the women, “I do the same thing that they did to me, I sweep me under the carpet”. The words of participants portray how many of the women felt that the lack of investigation and validation of their report was synonymous with not being worthy or important enough. The lack of validation made one woman view herself as “a lying, drunk piece of shit really”.
Women also described that not being believed impacted how they perceived themselves or how they were perceived by others. Women described that they felt “guilty”, “like a liar”, “like I did something wrong”,“dismissed”, “shame” and “angry” after not being believed. Some women described that they blamed themselves or felt guilty like it was their fault for going to the bar the night they were assaulted or that they willingly went with the individual who later assaulted them. Despite being the victims of crime, the interaction that women had with the police prompted an internalization of shame and personal responsibility for something outside of their control.
Cumulative Effect
Participants described how the sexual assault negatively impacted their health. All (n = 23, 100%) women experienced negative effects on their mental health including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, and escalation or initiation of alcohol or drug abuse. Thirteen (57%) had physical injuries (e.g., bruising, cuts, head injury) and many reported negative social effects including subsequent homelessness (n = 10, 31%) and/or future unreported assaults (sexual or physical) (n = 17, 74%). At times, it was difficult for the women to specifically separate out the effects of the sexual assault from those of not being believed on their health and well-being. However, participants described that not being believed exacerbated or added additional negative effects on their overall health and well-being. Many described that the experience of being sexually assaulted and then not being believed had a cumulative effect, which made the impact worse. One participant who was sexually assaulted in high school stated that,
I became very angry at the world that I had to go through that and nobody else did and or no one else even cared or believed me. It was a very dark place in my life. I tried to commit suicide after that too at one point. I had a lot of mental health issues.
Women used various descriptors in their interviews to explain how not being believed both had a significant effect and that this effect was long-lasting. In terms of the magnitude of the impact, one woman described that not being believed “probably affected me the worst”. Another described how “it did have an effect on me emotionally, very strongly” and “you know I felt like that [emotional effects] for a very long time”. Not being believed by police also meant that there would never be closure and this left women to wonder what could have been, or how their lives might have been different. A woman who experienced sexual assault from a distant family member explained the impact of the lack of closure “who would I be if these things never happened to me? Or maybe if the police believed me and there was closure to the case, would that make a big difference to me or would it not? I don’t know.” Similarly, a participant who found the courage to report a sexual assault that had been occurring in her home when she was away from her home environment in another community, had her file transferred numerous times without any police officer taking full responsibility. She explained how not being believed added to the sexual assault, “I think it’s the whole thing, the big picture, the whole experience. You know, like why me? What did I do to deserve this?”