scholarly journals Graphic Trauma

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 102-128
Author(s):  
Lisa Diedrich

In this essay, I explore examples of what I call graphic trauma and the processof drawing as a form of working through the experience and event of sexual violence. I contend that comics and graphic narratives are a medium well-suited for rendering trauma, and the trauma of sexual violence in particular, as I show in an analysis of Una’s graphic narrative Becoming Unbecoming and Chanel Miller’s animated short film I Am With You. I argue that for both artists, drawing becomes a form of consciousness-raising, a collaborative feminist practice of memory work that attempts to create conditions – formal, therapeutic, and political – for women to say #MeToo and “we.” In my readings of Una’s and Miller’s draw-ing as working through sexual violence, I also demonstrate close verbal/visual description as a practice of care that keeps the testimony moving, drawing out the feminist practice of memory work in time and space and across modalities. A brief coda at the end of the essay offers an image of a hybrid figure from Miller’s graphic iconography and a concept and practice she calls “the third element.” I argue that this third element functions as a formal provocation for counter- modalities that change the story of sexual assault, creating a portal to resistance and healing.

Author(s):  
Ruchi Trivedi

It takes seconds of impulsiveness for an act of sexual abuse to cross the thin line to convert into an act of sexual violence and vice-versa. There are cases where the act of sexual violence is initiated with consent, and there are acts of sexual violence that fall under the umbrella term sexual assault. This chapter examines the role of violence in sexual abuse, i.e. sexual violence. The first section reviews the definitions of sexual violence and throwing some light on forms of violence in sexual abuse and violation of consent during an act of sexual violence. The second section reviews the risk factors and causal for sexual violence. The third section presents an overview of different perspectives on violence in context to sexual abuse are mentioned and examined.


Author(s):  
Ruchi Trivedi

It takes seconds of impulsiveness for an act of sexual abuse to cross the thin line to convert into an act of sexual violence and vice-versa. There are cases where the act of sexual violence is initiated with consent, and there are acts of sexual violence that fall under the umbrella term sexual assault. This chapter examines the role of violence in sexual abuse, i.e. sexual violence. The first section reviews the definitions of sexual violence and throwing some light on forms of violence in sexual abuse and violation of consent during an act of sexual violence. The second section reviews the risk factors and causal for sexual violence. The third section presents an overview of different perspectives on violence in context to sexual abuse are mentioned and examined.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Rosser ◽  
Paula Godoy-Paiz ◽  
Tal Nitsan

Author(s):  
Alison Brysk

In Chapter 7, we profile the global pattern of sexual violence. We will consider conflict rape and transitional justice response in Peru and Colombia, along with the plight of women displaced by conflict from Syria and Central America, and limited international policy response. State-sponsored sexual violence and popular resistance to reclaim public space will be chronicled in Egypt as well as Mexico. We will track intensifying public sexual assault amid social crisis in Turkey, South Africa, and India, which has been met by a wide range of public protest, legal reform, and policy change. For a contrasting experience of the privatization of sexual assault in developed democracies, we will trace campus, workplace, and military rape in the United States.


2021 ◽  
pp. 152483802110302
Author(s):  
Caroline Bailey ◽  
Jessica Shaw ◽  
Abril Harris

Adolescents experience alarmingly high rates of sexual violence, higher than any other age-group. This is concerning as sexual violence can have detrimental effects on teens’ personal and relational well-being, causing long-term consequences for the survivor. Still, adolescents are hesitant to report the assault or seek out services and resources. When an adolescent survivor does seek out services, they may interact with a provider who is a mandatory reporter. This scoping review sought to synthesize the current U.S.-based research on the role, challenges, and impact of mandatory reporting (MR) in the context of adolescent sexual assault. Database searches using key words related to MR, sexual assault, and adolescence identified 29 peer-reviewed articles. However, none of these articles reported on empirical investigations of the phenomenon of interest and instead consisted of case studies, commentaries, and position papers. The scoping review was expanded to provide a lay of the land of what we know about the intersection of adolescent sexual assault and MR. Results of the review indicate that though implemented broadly, MR policies vary between individuals, organizations, and states and have historically been challenging to implement due to this variation, conflicts with other laws, tension between these policies and providers’ values, and other factors. Based on the available literature, the impact of MR in the context of adolescent sexual assault is unknown. There is a critical need for research and evaluation on the implementation and impact of MR policies, especially in the context of adolescents and sexual violence.


2021 ◽  
pp. 155708512110319
Author(s):  
Deborah White ◽  
Lesley McMillan

Police are central to the statutory response to sexual violence, shaping the direction an investigation may take. Evidence provided by victims is also key to the processing of sexual assault cases. From a 2013 comparative qualitative study involving interviews with police officers in one province in Canada ( n = 11) and one region in Scotland ( n = 10) who investigate such cases, we discovered striking unanticipated differences between the two groups in terms of how they perceived victims and the evidence they provide. This paper presents a thematic analysis of these data and considers possible implications and explanations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2097439
Author(s):  
Stephanie Bonnes ◽  
Jeffrey H. Palmer

In this article, we show how the U.S. military treats domestic violence and sexual assault as distinct forms of abuse, which has particular consequences for victims of intimate partner sexual violence. We explore how a specific U.S. military branch, the Marine Corps, complicates these issues further by providing services to intimate partner sexual violence victims from two different programs. Analyzing military orders and documents related to Family Advocacy Program and Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program, interviews with eight military prosecutors, and the experiences of one military lawyer, we examine program and interactional-level factors that shape victim services, advocacy, and processes. We find that there are program differences in specialized services, coordinated services, and potential breaches of confidentiality related to victim’s cases. We recommend that the Marine Corps recognize the intersections of sexual violence and domestic violence and offer more tailored services to victims of intimate partner sexual violence.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Aqif Mukhtar ◽  
Debbie A Smith ◽  
Maureen A Phillips ◽  
Maire C Kelly ◽  
Renate R Zilkens ◽  
...  

Background: The Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC) in Perth, Western Australia provides free 24-hour medical, forensic, and counseling services to persons aged over 13 years following sexual assault. Objective: The aim of this research was to design a data management system that maintains accurate quality information on all sexual assault cases referred to SARC, facilitating audit and peer-reviewed research. Methods: The work to develop SARC Medical Services Clinical Information System (SARC-MSCIS) took place during 2007–2009 as a collaboration between SARC and Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. Patient demographics, assault details, including injury documentation, and counseling sessions were identified as core data sections. A user authentication system was set up for data security. Data quality checks were incorporated to ensure high-quality data. Results: An SARC-MSCIS was developed containing three core data sections having 427 data elements to capture patient’s data. Development of the SARC-MSCIS has resulted in comprehensive capacity to support sexual assault research. Four additional projects are underway to explore both the public health and criminal justice considerations in responding to sexual violence. The data showed that 1,933 sexual assault episodes had occurred among 1881 patients between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2015. Sexual assault patients knew the assailant as a friend, carer, acquaintance, relative, partner, or ex-partner in 70% of cases, with 16% assailants being a stranger to the patient. Conclusion: This project has resulted in the development of a high-quality data management system to maintain information for medical and forensic services offered by SARC. This system has also proven to be a reliable resource enabling research in the area of sexual violence.


differences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-160
Author(s):  
Erin A. Spampinato

This essay identifies what the author terms “adjudicative reading,” a tendency in literary criticism to read novels depicting sexual violence as if in a court of law. Adjudicative reading tracks characters’ motivations and the physical outcomes of their actions as if novels can offer evidence, or lack thereof, of criminal conduct. This legalistic style of criticism not only ignores the fictionality of incidences of rape in novels, but it replicates the prejudices inherent in historical rape law by centering the experiences of the accused character over and against the harm caused to the fictional victim of rape. By contrast, the “capacious” conception of rape proposed here refuses to locate rape in a particular bodily act (as the law does), rejects the yoking of rape’s harms to a particular gender, and understands various forms of violence as equally serious (rather than creating a hierarchy of sexual assault, as current legal conceptions tend to do).


Author(s):  
Sierra Burrier

The project We Still Have Mutual Friends is a qualitative interview study into women’s experiences with sexualviolence. Through the interview process, mostly face-to-face recorded interviews, I have evaluated multiplefacets of sexual abuse/marginalization and their consequences on survivors. In total, I interviewed thirty-twowomen about their familial background, their adolescence, and depending on their age, their life experienceswith their sexuality. Some of the facets I have focused on are the disparity between a subject’s definition andtheir experience of sexual assault. I have also evaluated their self-awareness of this disparity, and why they thinkit occurs. I tried as much as I could, to ask questions in an order/way that did not create preferential answering.Because these interviews followed a standard oral history format of open-ended questions with follow-ups basedon the interviewee’s answers, instances of leading answers were possible. Seventeen out of thirty-two womenwere white, with the next largest group being Hispanic, and then Black. With ages ranging from eighteen upto fifty-eight, several generational voices are accounted for. While there were certain trends found within typesof assault, and who it was (trends not entirely new to us), one thing I discovered is a similar background everyperson shared with their family. All the women had at some point experienced some sort of “body policing.” Ihope this project has provided a more holistic view into the world of sexual violence that women face.


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