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Date: November 25, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:23 pm
Time: 8:23 pm
Results for victims of sexual assault
5 results foundAuthor: Success Works Ptd. Ltd. Title: Sexual Assault Reform Strategy: Final Evaluation Report Summary: The evaluation of the Sexual Assault Reform Strategy (SARS) commenced in August 2008. This report details the findings from the summative evaluation over the entire evaluation period. The Sexual Assault Reform Strategy is made up of a complex web of strategies and processes designed to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system and therefore the experience of sexual assault victim survivors who report a sexual assault to the police. The unwritten assumption is that an improved experience for victim survivors will result in an increased reporting rate of sexual assault which is, as the Victorian Law Reform Commission noted in 2004, the most underreported personal crime in our society. A further unwritten assumption is that an improved reporting rate would represent a more just, equitable and safe society. Based on all of the evidence considered for this evaluation, it is clear that the Sexual Assault Reform Strategy has started to make a real difference for many victim survivors of sexual assault and that the investment in the sexual assault reform is cost effective. However, it is also clear that more still needs to be done to ensure that access to the criminal justice system is equitable for all and that those who manage the process are able to maintain their level of specialisation. This is a journey begun, not a journey ended and now is not the time to ‘take the foot off the accelerator’. The recommendations in this evaluation have been developed to guide the future direction of the strategy. Details: Melbourne: Victoria Department of Justice, 2011. 249p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 22, 2011 at: http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/justlib/DOJ+Internet/resources/3/d/3df3cc00468072d18d509d4d58beb1dd/SexualAssaultReformStrategyFinalEvaluationReportJanuary2011.PDF Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/justlib/DOJ+Internet/resources/3/d/3df3cc00468072d18d509d4d58beb1dd/SexualAssaultReformStrategyFinalEvaluationReportJanuary2011.PDF Shelf Number: 121476 Keywords: RapeSexual Assault (Victoria, Australia)Sexual ViolenceVictims of Sexual Assault |
Author: Wilson, Doug Title: An Evaluation of the Rhode Island Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) Summary: The Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center (SATRC) of Rhode Island contracted with BOTEC Analysis Corporation with funding from the National Institute of Justice1 to undertake an evaluation of the principal legal effects on clients of the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) operated by the Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center. Local police, in the United States, have the unique role of determining the pool of defendants in crime investigations, given the ability and willingness of the victim to confirm them. Prosecutors then guided by the informal norms of the courtroom workgroup and their discretion choose from the pool of defendants. Police decisions to arrest and the prosecutor’s decision to file a felony complaint in sexual assaults constitute the primary official screening of these crimes. In the past 25 or more years, the criminal justice system has reformed sexual assault laws and communities have developed programs, such as rape crisis centers, and SART and Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) programs, which are designed to provide catalysts to the effects of legal reforms. This evaluation is the first outcome evaluation of a SART program. The evaluation describes the SART process, which is a coordinated effort between the victim, The Sexual Assault and Trauma Resource Center (SATRC), the police department, the Rhode Island Department of the Attorney General, the prosecuting agency for felony sexual assaults. It also examines the outcome of this process. The SART program was initiated in January 2002. The evaluation covers assaults for a period, from September 2002 – August 2003 following the initial implementation phase. The cases were followed until July 2004. As should be expected the program is still developing, but nevertheless it has demonstrated positive effects in that there is demand among sexual assault victims for SART services. Victims who seek SART services have significant odds of being assaulted by a friend, acquaintance or relative, have a subsequent forensic exam, and believe that the offense is first degree sexual assault. Also, users of SART services are importantly less likely to have an initial finding of probable cause found by the police. The estimated probability of a victim choosing to be a SART client, whose assault is without these assault characteristics and the police find probable cause is 3 percent, while the probability of a victim seeking SART services with all of these assault characteristics and the police do not initially find probable cause is 89 percent. At this stage in the development of the SART program there is, however, no clear effect on the legal outcome of cases. Contingency analyses examined seven hypotheses about the legal effects of SART. They are: 1. SART increases the pool of defendants. 2. SART cases that are intimate partner sexual assaults are more likely to be charged in Superior Court. 3. Victims with forensic exams are more likely to have defendants charged in Superior Court. 4. SART victims with forensic exams are more likely to be charged in Superior Court. 5. Judicial processes for SART cases move more slowly and thus understate the effect of SART because of a SART case backlog. 6. SART cases after they are filed in Superior Court are less likely to be dismissed. 7. SART cases are more likely than non-SART cases to be charged in Superior Court. The application of Fisher’s exact test to each of these seven hypotheses provided no evidence that the null hypotheses should be questioned. These results, however, should be viewed with circumspection. The statistical power of the contingency analyses was modest, due to small sample sizes. That is, a longer test of SART and a larger sample might produce somewhat different results. Also, it may be that SART efforts have helped to maintain a “level playing field” and that that the consistent null results in the contingency analyses demonstrates SART’s success at maintaining the likelihood that acquaintance assaults will be prosecuted, which is an outcome of rape law reform legislated several years earlier. That is, SART programs may be a lagged social response to social-legislative-judicial change. Finally, SART’s effect may “spillover” to the prosecution of sexual assault cases in which the victim does not use SART services. As a result there is a null difference between the outcome of SART and non-SART cases. The literature review of police and prosecution of sexual assault in other jurisdictions indicates that the reform of sexual assault laws has increased the likelihood of the prosecution of acquaintance rapes relative to stranger rapes. Nevertheless discussions with the Rhode Island Department of the Attorney General indicate that SART cases, many of which by their characteristics are acquaintance assaults and are coupled with a lack of an initial finding by the police of probable cause, are more difficult to prosecute. Furthermore, as is discussed in the literature review, informal arrest and prosecution guidelines for sexual assault continue to apply extra-legal standards, such as evidence of resistance. For example, in this study, when the police failed to find probable cause it was strongly related to a lack of injury; that is, a failure to resist. Details: Waltham, MA: BOTEC Analysis Corporation, 2005. 63p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 10, 2011 at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/210584.pdf Year: 2005 Country: United States URL: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/210584.pdf Shelf Number: 121699 Keywords: ProsecutionRapeSex OffendersSexual AssaultVictims of Sexual Assault |
Author: Campbell, Rebecca Title: Adolescent Sexual Assault Victims’ Experiences with SANE-SARTs and the Criminal Justice System Summary: The purpose of this project was to examine adolescent sexual assault survivors’ help-seeking experiences with the legal and medical systems in two Midwestern communities that have different models of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) / Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) interventions. This project had two main objectives. First, we conducted qualitative interviews with adolescent sexual assault victims regarding their initial post-assault disclosures and their pathways to seeking help from the medical and legal systems. It is important to understand how and why teen survivors decide to seek help from these programs in the first place. Although SANE-SART interventions have the potential to be useful resources to teen victims, they are only useful insofar as they are utilized by survivors. In Study 1, we conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with N=20 adolescent sexual assault victims 14-17 years old. From these interviews, we identified three distinct patterns of survivors’ post-assault disclosures and their pathways to seeking help from SANE programs and the criminal justice system: voluntary (survivors’ contact with the legal and medical system was by their choice), involuntary (system contact was not by choice), and situational (circumstances of the assault itself prompted involuntary disclosure). Victims with voluntary disclosures patterns were more likely to remain engaged with the legal system throughout the investigation process. Those in the involuntary disclosure pattern were only sometimes willing to continue to pursue legal prosecution. There were too few situational disclosures to examine the impact of system entry on subsequent system involvement. The second objective was to conduct a quantitative analysis to determine what factors predict successful prosecution of adolescent sexual assault cases. Once teen victims are “in the system” what factors determine whether a case will be prosecuted? Criminal justice prosecution is a multi-step process, from reporting to referral, arrest, prosecution (which itself has many steps), and final case outcome. Rather than focusing at any one stage, we assessed progress through this system as an ordinal variable in order to capture incremental change. We examined how differences between the two SANE-SART models—and the evolution of these models over time—predicted prosecution outcomes relative to the predictive utility of victim characteristics, assault characteristics, and medical forensic evidence findings. In Study 2, we obtained SANE program records, police and prosecutor records, and crime lab findings for a sample of N=392 adolescent sexual assault victims who sought services from the focal SANE programs. The overall rate of guilty plea/trial convictions was 40.3% for sexual assaults committed against adolescents aged 13-17. Using multi-level ordinal logistic regression, we found that cases involving younger victims (13-15) were significantly more likely to progress further through the system than assaults against older victims, and assaults committed against adolescents with documented developmental delays were eight times as likely to move further through the criminal justice system. We found no significant effects for victim race/ethnicity and alcohol use on legal case outcomes. Victim-offender relationship was a significant predictor of case progression, such that non-stranger assaults were more likely to be prosecuted than stranger assaults. The specific kinds of forced penetrations (i.e., vaginal vs. oral vs. anal penetrations) did not affect case outcomes, but the cumulative number of the assaultive acts perpetrated against the victim did increase the likelihood that the case would progress further through the criminal justice system. With respect to medical forensic evidentiary findings, the more delay there was between the assault and when the survivor had the medical forensic exam, the less likely the case would progress through the system. Cases with positive DNA evidence were five times as likely to progress further through the system, but there were no significant effects for specific physical or anogenital injuries. With respect to site differences, there were no significant main effect differences between the two SANE/SART programs studied , suggesting that one model of SANE-SART intervention was no more or less effective than the other with respect to achieving prosecution success. Details: East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 2010. 164p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 23, 2011 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/234466.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/234466.pdf Shelf Number: 122466 Keywords: CounselingRapeSexual Assault, AdolescentsVictims of Sexual Assault |
Author: Schwartz, Martin D. Title: National Institute of Justice Visiting Fellowship: Police Investigation of Rape-Roadblocks and Solutions Summary: This project began as a qualitative investigation into the views of sexual assault detectives. However, in consultation with NIJ Managers, the decision was made to add a quantitative component. Since these two parts are related, but are comprised of vastly different data gathering and analysis schemes, so too this report will be similarly split. The first part of this report covers what was designed to be an exploratory study to explore the attitudes and experiences of active and experienced police rape investigators. The second half of the study, a pencil and paper study of active duty patrol officers (as opposed to investigators), will be reported in the second section of this report. An important supposition behind this study has been that despite an enormous literature on police investigation of sexual assault, very little of this prior study involved speaking to police officers themselves. In particular, part one of the study was designed to ask police detectives what they perceived as their frustrations, roadblocks, or obstacles to successfully completing a rape investigation, and then as a follow-up to ask these same officers what they have been able to successfully do in order to bypass these roadblocks or obstacles. In these qualitative interviews a variety of subtopics was drawn from the literature to be investigated. In some cases these subtopics were ones commonly represented in the literature as problems often faced by police. In other cases, informants, women’s groups, and the various published stories of rape survivors suggested other topics that traditionally have not been discussed extensively in the police literature. Finally, some attempt was made to discuss frustrations or roadblocks that officers might have within their own organizations, with other organizations (e.g., the district attorney’s office) that might hinder successful prosecution of cases, from their point of view. In the report below, the basic literature that led to the various questions and topics will be reviewed. After this, the literature in each of the subtopics will be introduced, and the findings of this study will be explained in that area. The most important findings will appear toward the end, in dealing with false reports. Finally, a first attempt at recommendations that come out of this study will be made. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2010. 77p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 27, 2011 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/232667.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/232667.pdf Shelf Number: 122908 Keywords: Criminal InvestigationsPolice AttitudesRapeSexual AssaultVictims of Sexual Assault |
Author: Daly, Kathleen Title: Conventional and Innovative Justice Responses to Sexual Violence Summary: Despite 30 years of significant change to the way the criminal justice system responds to sexual violence, conviction rates have gone down in Australia, Canada, and England and Wales. Victim/survivors continue to express dissatisfaction with how the police and courts handle their cases and with their experience of the trial process. Many commentators and researchers recognise that the crux of the problem is cultural beliefs about gender and sexuality, which dilute and undermine the intentions of rape law reform. These beliefs affect victims adversely, but at the same time, increased criminalisation and penalisation of offenders is not likely to yield constructive outcomes. This paper reflects on the limits of legal reform in improving outcomes for victim/survivors. Given the extent of reform to procedural, substantive, and evidentiary aspects of sexual assault legal cases, we may have exhausted its potential to change the response to sexual assault. We may need to consider innovative justice responses, which may be part of the legal system or lie beyond it. Details: Melbourne: Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, 2011. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: ACSSA Issues No. 12: Accessed September 29, 2011 at: http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/issue/i12/i12.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/pubs/issue/i12/i12.pdf Shelf Number: 122955 Keywords: Sex OffensesSexual Assaults (Australia)Sexual ViolenceVictims of Sexual Assault |