January 2023 Courage in Action
Starting this month Courage has a revised communications schedule. The Courage Brief will be sent out on a quarterly basis. In addition, starting with this letter, each month I will plan to send you a short update, Courage in Action, highlighting a recent development.
In our recent Ms. Magazine article, Deny, Attack, Blame: The Prosecution of Women Reporting Rape, Courage Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Sarah Harsey and I discuss the problem of women who report sexual assault in good faith being investigated—and criminally charged—themselves.
In 2008, an 18-year-old Washington woman, referred to as Marie, reported to police that she had been raped by a man who broke into her apartment during the night and bound and gagged her (details here). The police didn’t believe her, and she was charged with making a false police report. Marie ultimately agreed to a plea deal that included probation, a fine, and forced her to attend counseling for lying.
It wasn’t until years later that police in Colorado, after searching a serial rapist’s home, found a photo of Marie bound and gagged in her apartment. If police had believed Marie in 2008, perhaps the additional rapes by the perpetrator would have been prevented.
Marie is not an isolated case. When rape victims are prosecuted after reporting their assaults, the criminal justice system commits a particularly egregious form of institutional betrayal by engaging in institutional DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). The potential for this type of betrayal is often more than enough to discourage victims from seeking justice.
What can we do about this? Research indicates police officers tend to greatly overestimate how common false rape reports are and may misinterpret common victim responses as signs of dishonesty. We can avoid this error in judgment through education. Similarly, research suggests that knowing about DARVO reduces its negative impact. Courage is committed to education about these matters as a core part of our mission to foster institutional courage.
Jennifer Joy Freyd, PhD
Founder and President
Center for Institutional Courage