This study started from the awareness on the police who could become the secondary offender to give another psychological suffer to victims of sexual assault during the criminal investigation. The purpose of this study was to contribute to restoring a ...
This study started from the awareness on the police who could become the secondary offender to give another psychological suffer to victims of sexual assault during the criminal investigation. The purpose of this study was to contribute to restoring and improving the public trust on the police by establishing an ultimately fair investigation system through finding out the factors influencing the secondary damages. For this reason, he subject of this study was the police officers who are in charge of sexual assault investigations.
In exploring the factors affecting the secondary victims of sexual assault, job-related characteristics such as the period of service, previous experience of sexual assault cases and personal characteristics such as violence tolerance, level of acceptance on rape myth, and ambivalent gender discrimination were examined. Also, crime control-oriented subculture was examined as an organization-cultural characteristic.
The level of general perception on the respondents' attitude toward sexual assault was 2.21 (SD = .654), which was below average. Particularly, it appeared that suspicion (M = 2.75, SD = .895), prejudice (M = 1.93, SD = .755) and lack of sensitivity (M = 1.93, SD = .750) were lower than average level.
Among the personal characteristics, rape myth (β = .514, p <.001), violence tolerance (β = .187, p <.001) and hostile gender discrimination among ambivalent sexism(β = .171, p <.01) influenced suspicion on the victims of sexual assault. As for prejudice against victims of sexual assault, it showed that prejudice was more prevalent with unmarried (β = -. 112, p <.05), and in order of rape myth (β = .543, p <.001) and hostile gender discrimination (β =. 226, p <.01), and violence tolerance (β = .087, p <.001). In the case of lack of sensitivity, rape myth (β = .471, p <.001) and hostile gender discrimination (β = .019, p <.01) had an influence on.
Among the job-related characteristics, the younger the respondents were, the less sensitive toward sexual victimization they were(β = .590, p <.001). The period of service(β=.590, p<.001) and previous experience of sexual assault cases were statistically significant(β = .163, p <.01), respectively.
The result of this study showed that the police officers' perception of sexuality (violence tolerance, rape myth, and ambivalent gender discrimination) played an important role in prejudice, suspicion and lack of sensitivity to victims during the process of sexual assault investigation. The more previous experience of sexual assault cases police officers had, the stronger attitude of secondary victimization of sexual assault they showed. This suggests that not only personal perception on sexuality but also the process and experience of investigating the cases might result in secondary victimization of sexual assault consciously or subconsciously. It is necessary to educate the police officers to eliminate the prejudice against victims of sexual assault that the victim of sexual assault does not fall into the category of "real victims" or "it is not genuine sexual assault." as an organizational policy, and to establish and fulfill the specific guidelines of investigation.