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Accounting for the “Second Assault”: Legal Organizations’ Framing of Rape Victims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Patricia Yancey Martin  and
R. Marlene Powell
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Abstract

What organizational and community conditions influence legal officials to treat rape victims “unresponsively”? Our analysis is guided by Goffman's theory of organizational frameworks and frames of activity and March and Olsen's institutional theory of organizations. Using data from 130 organizations in Florida that process rape cases, we compare six types of organizations (including hospital emergency rooms and rape crisis centers) on eight criteria and review their frameworks and frames of activity relative to unresponsiveness. We use the issue of victim legitimacy to illustrate the utility of our model. Our results show that well-meaning staff in legal organizations are oriented to routinely treat victims unresponsively. Their organizations routinely orient them to be concerned with, for example, public approval, the avoidance of losing, and expediency more than with victims' needs. In our conclusion, we identify ways legal officials and rape crisis centers can promote responsive treatment of victims. We also call for research on legal organizations that are responsive to victims and for a nationwide discourse on the “politics of rape victims' needs” as a means of addressing the gender inequality issues that underlie rape crimes and laws and orient legal officials to treat victims unresponsively.

Type
Symposium: Women, Law, and Violence
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , Fall 1994 , pp. 853 - 890
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1994 

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References

1 Jurors in the case wished the victim had been more emotional and visibly upset, like a young woman from Georgia who testified and was formerly raped by the same man. As a result of the jurors' statements, the Florida legislature passed a law in 1990 forbidding the use of a victim's dress or clothing in deciding on rape cases.Google Scholar

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We assume here that four conditions characterize legal organizations: The organizations' leadership directs the organization to fulfill its official mission; staff are competent to do rape processing work; legal organizations are (relatively) free of corruption; and staff are no more or less biased against rape victims than the general public is. Our analysis may not apply when other conditions exist. For example, if elected officials use their office and organization to feadier their nest financially or to give their friends jobs, and if official goals are downplayed or subverted, dynamics other than those we identify would have to be taken into account. See Alice Vachss, Sex Crimes (New York: Random House, 1993) (“Vachss, Sex Crimes”). Google Scholar

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117 Cf. Martin ex al., Sexual Assault (cited in note 33), for exceptions to this claim.Google Scholar

118 Cf. Martin et al., 16 Admin. Soc. Work (cited in note 44).Google Scholar

119 But see Martin, “Local Politics” (cited in note 34).Google Scholar

120 Cf. Kerstetter, 81 Criminology (cited in note 11); Koss, Am. Psychologis (cited in note 39).Google Scholar