Factors affecting Survivor Blame and Endorsement of Sexual Assault Myths: The Impact of Police Officer Response to Sexual Assault Allegations

---

Authors

Inara Nanji¹ , Melissa Boyce¹

1. University of Calgary

Conference / event

Research Poster Presentations Psychologists’ Association of Alberta, June 2021 (Calgary, Canada)

Poster summary

Research shows sexual assault offences are often underreported due to survivors' fear of secondary victimization and stigma. Extra-legal factors like survivor behaviors and police responses influence sexual assault myth endorsement and survivor blame. This study examined whether the intoxication levels of the fictional survivor and perpetrator (intoxicated vs. sober), post-assault contact (contact vs. no contact), and police response (validating vs. dismissing) influenced undergraduate participants’ endorsement of sexual assault myths. Results showed no significant overall effects, except that participants with a low belief in a just world endorsed more myths when the police response was dismissive. Findings emphasize the need for police training and educational interventions for legal decision-makers.

Keywords

Sexual Assault, Survivor blame, Myths, Police, BJW

Research areas

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Law, Arts

References

No data provided

Funding

No data provided

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2024 Nanji et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.