Survivors' Advice to Service Providers: How to Best Serve Survivors of Sexual Assault

Publication Date

11-26-2018

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Adult survivor, Policy, Rape, Sexual assault

Abstract

Recognizing the relatively low rate at which sexual assault survivors seek services, researchers in the last decade have turned their attention to better understanding survivors’ experiences with victim services. Surprisingly, limited research has directly asked sexual assault survivors for recommendations on how to improve victim services, including both criminal justice and community-based services. The current study builds on the existing literature to gather input from women survivors that can translate into ways to improve victim services. As part of a larger longitudinal study, the current investigation asked 224 ethnically diverse adult (aged 18-62) women survivors of recent sexual assault to provide recommendations for how victim services can best serve survivors of sexual assault at multiple time points. Nearly all women in the study (91%) offered specific recommendations on how to improve victim services. Recommendations included ensuring availability of a female provider, improving communication with survivors as well as within and between service providers, helping survivors obtain resources, believing and not blaming survivors, demonstrating greater understanding of trauma-related responses and approaching survivors with greater compassion, and implementing better training on effectively working with survivors. Implications for victim service provision are discussed.

Copyright Date

3-7-2018

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Taylor & Francis. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Gagnon, K. L., Wright, N., Srinivas, T., & DePrince, A. P. (2018). Survivors' advice to service providers: How to best serve survivors of sexual assault. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 27(10), 1125-1144. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2018.1426069

Rights Holder

Taylor & Francis

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Title

Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma

Volume

27

Issue

10

First Page

1125

Last Page

1144

ISSN

1545-083X

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