Can we reimagine how victims are supported in sexual violence cases?

Reimagining how victims are supported in sexual violence cases

It's time to change how victims are supported

Public safety agencies face a common challenge: Few rapes and sexual assaults are reported to law enforcement, and even fewer lead to convictions.

Worldwide, less than 10% of victims seek assistance from law enforcement. In the United States, 60% of rapes or sexual assaults over the last five years were not reported to the police. Obviously, if rapes go unreported, they can’t be prosecuted—and perpetrators cannot be brought to justice. That’s one reason why convictions are rare; in the U.S., fewer than 7% of rape or sexual assault reports lead to conviction. In England and Wales, only 2.9% of all sexual offences and 1.3% of rapes reported resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed¹.

It’s time to re-center the process

There are a number of reasons why these crimes go unreported, one being that the investigative process is not designed around the victim and their needs. Instead, it is largely centered around organisational and institutional procedures, many of which can be considered inefficient and unnecessarily intrusive.

For instance, victims must make repeat visits to the police station or courthouse, which can result in lost income and months or years of disruption to victims’ lives. Police investigations may also force victims to relive their trauma again and again, making them feel like they are the ones being investigated.

We clearly need to reimagine how the victim is considered in this process. Supporting, reassuring, and helping victims recover should be considered just as important as bringing perpetrators to justice. An emerging approach to “service experience” in public service design can help. By reframing public service delivery to put people at the center, agencies can make experiences more simple, human and secure—the fundamentals that citizens expect from government, and the ones that are even more important to victims in highly sensitive cases of sexual assault.

Creating a victim-centered approach to sexual assault cases can improve outcomes not only for victims, but also for justice, law enforcement and society overall. Here are just six of the potential outcomes:

1. Increased access to justice.
   Putting victims at the heart of the process encourages more victims to report and increases the likelihood of them staying engaged until their case reaches a justice outcome.
2. Victim empowerment.
   From an information management point of view, agencies should evaluate how they can make victims feel empowered and in control of their data. This can help victims feel in control as their cases progress.
3. Increased communication and transparency.
   Communicating regularly with victims—and informing them of good and bad news—makes victims feel like they are being listened to and builds trust in public service agencies.
4. Less intrusive processes.
   A victim is a person, and not another piece of evidence. That person has a right to (and will want) a degree of privacy. Agencies need to understand and respect their privacy and reinvent their approaches to be as least intrusive as possible to their lives and persons.
5. Improved environments.
   Leveraging settings other than police stations can help victims feel more at ease, especially soon after a sexual assault. Training support staff (including officers) to approach the situation from a victim-centric mindset, with greater levels of empathy, can build more trust and confidence in the process from the outset.
6. Increased community awareness.
   Targeted outreach drives awareness of the resources available to victims to support their physical and mental wellbeing. Educating the public on how the process works also helps increase reporting and builds trust in agencies.

Making a victim-centered approach a reality at public safety agencies will take creativity and dedication. Let’s talk about the ways we can get there, to help victims of sexual assault get the support—and justice—they deserve, while rebuilding trust in the agencies that serve them.

^{[1] Outcomes assigned to offences recorded in the year ending March 2022, by outcome group and offence group, England and Wales}