From: Time
How does public exposure affect recovery from a very private, traumatic experience?
The day after two Steubenville, Ohio, high school football players were found guilty
in juvenile court of raping a 16-year-old girl, the victim faced a
perilous new journey. Forced to confront her experience in public after photos
and video of her on the night in question were circulated on social
media, the 16-year-old is now being threatened by those siding with the
athletes, who were part of the community’s beloved Big Red high school
football team. Two girls made online threats to the victim via Twitter,
menacing her with homicide and bodily harm for coming forward and
launching the trial that led to the guilty verdicts for Ma’lik Richmond,
16, and Trent Mays, 17. The girls were arrested and taken to juvenile detention.
Both Mays and Richmond face at least one year in juvenile detention,
with Mays potentially serving an extra year for taking and distributing
images of the girl while she was naked.
But with so much attention focused on the lasting legacy the
convictions will have on the boys, there seemingly hasn’t been as much
concern for how the victim moves on from this very public exposure of a
night she would rather put behind her. As the latest threats against her
highlight, the fact that her experience unfolded in front of millions
on social media may make her recovery all the more challenging. The
social and emotional support that she does or does not receive now,
experts say, could help determine whether she will be resilient or
suffer lasting psychological damage.
“We do know that the more severe the traumatic experience is, the
more severe the reaction will be,” says Edna Foa, a professor of
clinical psychology in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and a
leading expert on trauma. Rape, regardless of the level of physical
force involved, is always traumatic, although, fortunately, the vast
majority of people who suffer trauma do not develop posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD).
But in this case, the victim was betrayed by a young man she trusted.
In texts sent before the girl became aware of the online photos and
videos, Mays told her, “I’m going to get in trouble for something I
should be getting thanked for taking care of you.” She later responded,
“It’s on YouTube. I’m not stupid. Stop texting me,” the New York Times reported.
Two of her former best friends testified for the defense in the
trial, claiming that it wasn’t unusual for her to get drunk and to lie.
Such betrayals worsen trauma: traumatic experiences that involve
disrupted relationships tend to be the most likely to cause lasting
psychological harm because they undermine trust.
In addition, social rejection and victim-blaming can potentially
cancel out the resilience provided by support, according to Foa. “People
saying things like ‘Get over it’ or ‘Maybe you had something to do with
it’ — that we find to be a really negative predictor [of recovery],”
she says.
Rape victims — and even those injured in less stigmatizing ways, such
as during natural disasters or accidents — often feel shame and guilt
over the experience and blame themselves for what happened. What may
make recovery even more difficult for the Steubenville victim is the
fact that evidence of the night’s events were widely distributed,
including in a 12-minute video that mocked her inebriated and
unconscious state. “We don’t have data on it, but I think it would add
to severity,” says Foa. “It’s another dimension of the severity that she
was so exposed.”
But there is a fine line between the harmful effects of such public
exposure and the potential benefits of not having to hide or conceal
emotions. When Jessica Stern, then 15, was raped at gunpoint in her
home, along with her 14-year-old sister, in the late 1970s, the incident
was kept quiet. Her widowed father didn’t even return home early from
his business trip following the attack; the police questioned her as
though she were covering up for having a secret boyfriend. And law
enforcement did not inform the public; the man went on to rape least 42
other girls and women, as Stern later detailed in her book Denial.
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