This second edition provides a comprehensive, social ecological review of women's rape and sexual assault disclosures and how support providers can better respond to them and challenge rape culture. Women who have been raped and sexually assaulted are often retraumatized by negative social reactions from family and friends, healthcare professionals, institutions, and society at large. Sarah Ullman educates supporters on more appropriate responses that empower survivors and help them heal. Drawing on interviews with survivors and support providers, she offers powerful, provocative insights to therapists, other frontline workers assisting survivors, researchers, and students. She reviews transtheoretical research on why, how often, and to whom women disclose; the impact of social contexts on disclosures; and social reactions from informal support networks and professionals in a variety of institutional settings. New to this edition is updated research addressing social media, social phenomena like the MeToo movement, and informal supporters' experiences with survivors. While most research still focuses on White, heterosexual, and cisgender women, emerging findings on LGBTQ+ individuals, cis males, people of color, and people with disabilities are reviewed where available.
Sarah E. Ullman, PhD, is Professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her research focuses on sexual victimization of women and rape's impact on mental and physical health. Dr. Ullman has conducted multiple longitudinal studies on sexual assault survivors and how social reactions from support sources affect their coping and recovery. She also interviewed survivors and service providers about their disclosure and help-seeking experiences and codeveloped an informal support network intervention for survivors and their social networks. She is conducting a large multimethod, dyadic study to better understand disclosure, social reactions, and their impacts.
Introduction Chapter 1. The Social Context of Talking About Sexual Assault Chapter 2. Theories of Rape and Women's Disclosure Chapter 3. Why, How Often, and to Whom Do Women Disclose, and What Factors Influence Whether Disclosure is Healing? Chapter 4. What Social Reactions Do Victims Receive When Disclosing Sexual Assault? Chapter 5. Impacts of Social Reactions on Survivors Chapter 6. Informal Supporters' Experiences Helping Survivors Chapter 7. Formal Supporters' Helping Survivors: Advocates and Clinicians Chapter 8. Conducting Interviews With Survivors of Sexual Assault Chapter 9. Challenging the Rape Culture: Recommendations for Change
