On Understanding Reports of Misconduct and Sexual Assault Allegations
By Waheeda Saif, LMHC
Board Member of FACE – Facing Abuse in Community Environments
“We should not rush to judgement, but we should also be slow to doubt”
– Dr. Leigh Gilmore
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for reports of impropriety – especially when the accusers are women and the accused are men – to be met with doubt and a raised eyebrow. Our society is tuned and conditioned to doubt women’s testimonies and give the benefit of the doubt to the accused, because after all, “think of the implications of these accusations on his life!”
To understand why women’s reports of impropriety, especially sexual misconduct at the hands of men, are filled with inconsistencies and behaviors that would be questionable by any objective viewer, it is imperative to evaluate brain chemistry, psychology, and also the larger societal, cultural, and religious frameworks these women and those around them inhabit.
Absent a critical understanding of the normative cultural, religious and psychosocial contexts both victims and perpetrators operate within, it is impossible for those reading reports of sexual impropriety to fully appreciate the nature of both perpetrators and the institutions who support them, whether intentionally or unwittingly.
It should first be understood that this issue affects all communities, including religious communities; the Muslim community is no exception. A recent poll conducted by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) found that roughly 10% of those polled reported knowing someone who had experienced unwanted sexual advances from a faith leader in their community. (People polled identified as Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, White Evangelical, Non-Affiliated and the General Public.) These numbers are not surprising when compared to national statistics of sexual assault. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports that 1 in 5 women, and 1 in 71 men will be raped in their lifetime.
In the United States, 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men will experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetimes. 91% of victims of rape and sexual assault are female, and 9% are male. Despite popular belief, in eight out of ten cases of rape, the victim will know the perpetrator. Rape is also the most underreported of crimes – 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.
It is absolutely critical to note, in contrast, that the rate of false accusations is extremely low – between 2 – 10%, being closer to 2%. For example, a study of eight U.S. communities, which included 2,059 cases of sexual assault, found a 7.1% rate of false reports. A study of 136 sexual assault cases in Boston found a 5.9% rate of false reports. Researchers studied 812 reports of sexual assault from 2000-2003 and found a 2.1% rate of false reports (National Sexual Violence Resource Center). It is important to keep these glaring statistics in mind when reading through reports of sexual misconduct and assault.
Traumatic Memory Neural Networks
Survivors’ accounts of their experience are often discounted because their recounting is fragmented and non-sequential. If they are not able to give an exact timeline and sequence of events, or if they are unable to recall key details, they may be deemed to be outright lying, or “misunderstanding” the situation. To fully grasp why survivors’ stories are recounted in the ways they are, it is essential to take into account the brain chemistry involved in encoding traumatic memories, which differ greatly from how ordinary (non-traumatic) memories are encoded.
Traumatic experiences affect the functioning of three key regions of the brain: the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and the hippocampus. The prefrontal cortex is the portion of the brain responsible for executive functioning, including focusing attention, rational thought processes and inhibiting impulses. In states of high stress, fear and terror, the prefrontal cortex often shuts down in response to a surge of stress chemicals. When this main executive center of the brain goes “offline,” individuals are less able to willfully control where to direct their attention, how to make sense of what they are experiencing, and consequently, less capable of recalling that particular experience in an orderly or linear way.
Very early in the midst of a traumatic experience when the prefrontal cortex is no longer in control, our brain’s fear circuitry, the amygdala, takes over. The amygdala directs which details receive the most attention. Alternatively, it can direct attention away from the horrible sensations of the experience by focusing attention on otherwise meaningless details as a means of self-preservation (the blue sheets, the light in the window, etc.). This is the brain’s way of “fleeing” when actual flight in the flight-fight-freeze-submit response is not possible. As a result, details retained and eventually coded into memory may be fragmented and inconsequential.
The brain’s fear circuitry also affects the functioning of the third key area of the brain, the hippocampus, which encodes experiences into short-term memory and eventually stores them as long-term memories. Fear impairs the ability of the hippocampus to encode and store contextual information (e.g. the layout of the room where the assault happened). It also impairs its ability to encode time sequencing information.
While both ordinary and traumatic memories may exhibit lapses and errors in the recalling of details, in traumatic memory, the forgetting can become the most important aspect. Traumatic memory encodes only the essence of having lived through the traumatic experience, without retaining the details. In fact, it is very common for the brain and body’s survival mechanism to “forget” – it is not that the survival mechanism forgets, it is that the survival mechanism is the forgetting.
Our understanding of how memory, both traumatic and not, functions and is encoded is based on decades of research into the neurobiology and psychology of the human brain. It is imperative that we take into account these indisputable understandings of trauma recounting when listening to the stories and narratives of trauma survivors.
Islamic Doctrine as a Barrier to Reporting on Abuse
Islamic ordinance to “make 70 excuses for your Muslim brother (or sister)” and to “hide the sins of your Muslim brother” is often the argument used in favor of not bringing to light credible allegations against perpetrators. It is essential to differentiate between personal, private sins and abusive behaviors which victimize others, especially when there is ample historical and anthropological evidence to prove that someone who engages in abusive behavior rarely stops from repeating these behaviors with different individuals.
There is no disagreement that when a Muslim commits a personal sin (drinking alcohol, adultery, gambling) within a private context, their sins should not be exposed, gossiped about, or discussed publicly. Their transgressions should remain between themselves and their Creator alone. However, when the sins of a Muslim include maleficence towards another individual, especially when there exists a power dynamic (one person by their position, status, class, gender, etc., holds more power or “sway” over another person), this particular rule is not contextually applicable. Rather, there is an Islamic imperative that the abuser be made public to both ensure justice (which does not always equate to legal justice) and to warn other potential future victims (both individuals and communities). It is important to understand that even a consensual relationship, between two consenting adults, can still be problematic, if one of those adults has more influence due to his position and authority (for example, the religious leader of a community) – at the very least, power differentials make it difficult to establish complete, un-coerced and enthusiastic consent.
Of course, it needs to be acknowledged that the current climate of intense vitriol and Islamophobia makes the Muslim community hesitant to “air dirty laundry” – bring to light any torrid accusations against Islamic scholars of impropriety, especially against women – for the fear of stoking further Islamophobic rhetoric. The more popular and public the Muslim “scholar,” the more reluctant the community is to discuss his failings in public.
Why do women take so long to report?
Historically, both in cultural and religious contexts, women have not been believed. There are often unrealistic burdens placed upon survivors by both secular/legal and religious authorities: is there evidence of sexual misconduct via a rape kit? Are there witnesses to the crime? The fact remains that most rape kits analyze DNA evidence which could be equally attributable to consensual sex and are not, standing alone, evidence of coerced sexual intercourse. And, most crimes, especially those of a sexual nature, are explicitly done in private.
There is also a gap in our understanding when considering the experiences and reactions of survivors of sexual assault. Sexual assault survivors often behave in ways that are not easily understood by those unfamiliar with the psychology of trauma, and may even be in direct conflict with their own best interests. Frequently, sexual assault survivors do not speak out, maintain relationships with their abusers, and initially downplay or even deny the assault (as mentioned earlier, most survivors know and have previous relationships with their assailants, which makes severing ties difficult). While these reactions may seem counterintuitive, they are in line with well documented and decades long research into sexual assault trauma.
In many cases, survivors are reticent because they have absorbed unspoken messages from their family, friends, and community that it is not safe to speak up: they will not be believed, and their lives will be disrupted. Many opt to, both consciously and subconsciously, maintain the status quo, rather than cause waves that will unsettle the fine balance they’ve maintained. This does not indicate that survivors do not suffer. In fact, in it not uncommon for sexual assault survivors to suffer from flashbacks, depression, anxiety, eating and substance use disorders, and dissociation. Survivors cite many reasons for not reporting a sexual assault, such as including fear of reprisal, belief that authorities would not or could not do anything to help, not wanting the offender to “get in trouble with the law,” not wanting family and others to know, not feeling like they had enough proof, fear of the justice system, not knowing how to report, feeling the crime was not “serious enough,” fear of the lack of evidence and finally, being unsure of the perpetrator’s intent (Wolitzky-Taylor et al, 2010). It is also not uncommon for sexual assault survivors to doubt their own experiences, be threatened and coerced into silence by their perpetrator, or to have a great fear of backlash, especially when their perpetrator is well known and respected within their shared community.
Additionally, women are often considered tainted witnesses – inherently unable to give ample testimony of their own experiences. They often encounter a significant struggle to determine whether or not to come forward – a decision that is made more difficult when they take into account the ramifications and fallout of their doing so.
A recent example includes Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her reluctant testimony against then Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. She began with the statement, “I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school.” Perhaps surprisingly, Dr. Blasey Ford’s race and class privilege did not shield her from accusations of misremembering and more abhorrently, intentionally maliciously maligning Brett Kavanaugh – a man held in high esteem, and whose rise to success and prominence was a foregone conclusion.
Unfortunately, most women, especially women who find themselves at the crossroads of multiple identities, such as being Muslim, a woman of color, perhaps of lower socioeconomic standing, and with little or no education, fare far worse than Dr. Blasey Ford did. After all, if her being White, coming from a higher socioeconomic status and attaining a doctorate did not save her from the backlash and doubt cast upon her sexual assault survivor testimony, what hope do other women have? As we saw in the seminal case of sexual harassment allegations against a Supreme Court nominee – Anita Hill’s race was often cited as one of the reasons her testimony was dismissed.
Dr. Leigh Gilmore examines how historically, women’s testimony has been dealt with extreme bias, always under the guise of “due process.” She also identifies whose “life stories can routinely rely upon of the attribution of credibility and whose can be routinely discredited as less worthy. Doubting women’s stories has always ‘felt to be just, law abiding, and righteous’” (2018). This was evident in the immediate fallout of the #MeToo revelations – which, it is important to note, included very few public accusations in a sea of millions of survivor stories, which only spoke of their own experience and trauma. Also of note is that many prominent public cases remain uncharged and unmitigated in courts of law. In these cases, “doubt” was given credence before it was warranted and called for, inherently introducing a false appearance of fairness by suggesting, that “he said/she said” represented an equal duality, that was free of any gendered and racist biases – both of which we have ample evidence of existing within all of our structural systems.
As Dr. Gilmore argues “where there is a direct choice between ‘he said/she said,’ we default to the speaker we are habituated to believe, but we also supply exculpatory explanations that diminish the harm of the sexual violence (‘it’s rare,’ ‘it’s not that bad,’ ‘she seems fine,’ ‘why ruin his life over an indiscretion’)” (2019). Because of this prevalent narrative, an atmosphere of forgiveness for the accused is cultivated, while the survivors are doubted and often threatened when they come forward. Men are believed, and when they are not, they are still protected, or are simply forgiven.
As a community, especially one that espouses Prophetic values of morality and uplifting the oppressed, we must shift the focus from protecting the idea of unchallengeable, infallible scholars, and religious leaders, to holding faith leadership accountable and creating healing and holding spaces for survivors. When we uplift and believe individual survivors, we send the strong message to those who have not yet come forward that they too will be held and believed, and that the trauma of sexual violence is not their shame to carry. The goal is to ultimately create a community, where both men and women can continue to engage with their religious associations and leadership, with the trust and faith that they will be held to the expected standards and morals of conduct; and that when these leaders and institutions fail, they will be held accountable, and the wronged will be held by their community.
References:
Gilmore, L. (2019). Frames of Witness: The Kavanaugh Hearings, Survivor Testimony and #MeToo. Speech delivered during Riverside Trauma Center’s Annual Conference: Staying Steady in Unsteady Times.
Gilmore, L. (2018). Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives. Columbia Press.
Hopper, J. & Lisak, D. (2014). Why Rape and Trauma Survivors Have Fragmented and Incomplete Memories. Time Magazine.
Mogahed, D. & Mahmood, A. (2019). Unwanted Sexual Advances from Faith Leaders are Equally Prevalent across Faith Groups. Institute of Social and Political Understanding.
Wolitzky-Taylor et al (2010). “Is Reporting of Rape on the Rise? A Comparison of Women with Reported Versus Unreported Rape Experiences in the National Women’s Study-Replication”. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 26, Issue 4.