Survivor strategies: rebuilding intimate relationships and sexual wellbeing following sexual violence

Introduction

Sexual violence is an umbrella term used to describe a wide variety of sex-related crimes including rape, sexual assault, incest, genital mutilation, intimate partner violence and sexual harassment in physical or digital environments. Almost one in three women globally have been subjected to intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or to both at least once in their lifetime (Borumandnia et al. 2020; United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Statistics Division 2015).

The global landscape of sexual violence continues to be dominated by widespread impunity: legal definitions and interpretations vary over place and time, and prosecution and conviction are rare, while in some countries certain groups of people such as married women and girls, or lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex people, may face additional socially or legally sanctioned sexual violence and persecution (United Nations Human Rights Council 2021; Human Rights Watch 2023; ILGA 2023). In countries where marital rape is not criminalised, women and girls who are raped by their husbands cannot take legal action. In countries where male same-sex practices are criminalised, men feel unable to report sexual assault by other men, although male rape remains widespread in institutional settings such as prisons (Caravaca-Sánchez, Aizpurua, and Wolff 2022).

While scholarly and activist attention has been given to highlighting experiences of trauma and violence, much of it fails to acknowledge the possibility of rebuilding intimate relationships, achieving closure and having a successful life. Recognising processes of self-healing can reveal the many ways in which people can and do build satisfying intimate relationships and reclaim sexual wellbeing after experiencing sexual violence. To this end, the papers in this themed symposium on survivor strategies bring together newly developing work on the experiences of people of a variety of genders and sexualities from varying cultural and class backgrounds. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks offered by intersectional feminism, and restorative and pragmatic justice, the authors included use a variety of methods, including innovative qualitative approaches, life story analysis and auto-ethnography to explore these concerns. Rather than seeking to define people and their lives by the experience of sexual violence, the papers included here consider how victim-survivors engage with and integrate their experiences so as to build a life in which the experience of sexual violence is only one part of their identity, whether minor or significant. The papers reveal three key practices of survival: recognition, the reframing of narratives, and restorative justice.

Recognition

When sexual violence is part of an intimate relationship, recognising it as violence can be a confusing and confronting process, with people affected by it variously identifying as victims or survivors at different moments in their lives, and with some identifying with neither of these categories (Bergen 1995; Finkelhor and Yllo 1985; Gavey 2019; Tarzia 2021). Acknowledging that sexual violence has taken place is however an essential part of the healing and reconciliation process for victim-survivors regardless of context (Bagwell-Gray 2019; Oosterhoff, Zwanikken, and Ketting 2004; Rosenthal et al. 2005 in Sorsoli, Kia-Keating, and Grossman 2008; Tarzia 2021).

In their paper in this collection, Helenard Louw and Madiba Kingsley explore the experiences of five heterosexual working-class men in Cape Town, South Africa, who were paralysed as a result of gang-related violence. The men had physically and sexually abused their wives prior to their injuries, but then began to experience intimate-partner violence perpetrated by their wives or partners. Recognising that they had been abusers was an important part of accepting their new status. Respondents constructed their current dependency in different ways: as a consequence for their abusive history, as a humbling opportunity to recognise love from a partner who had not left them, as a reflection of their marital vows, and as a realisation that their prior violence had had an impact on their children.

In a different context, Saakshi Saxena and Pauline Oosterhoff use autoethnographic methods to explore whether and how young unmarried North Indian female victim-survivors of sexual violence in intimate relationships reclaim sexual well-being. Through personal reflections and in discussion with other victims, it became clear how long it took for some women to recognise that they had been in an abusive relationship where sexual violence had co-existed with other forms of emotional pressure or coercive control. Recognising having been sexually abused by a trusted intimate partner was difficult, particularly when it involved navigating feelings of guilt and shame for transgressing gender norms concerning premarital sex. While it took time for women to recognise and disclose their experiences of sexual abuse to themselves and to others, participants found that the help they received from friends, families and new partners was instrumental in their journeys towards reflection and healing.

Reframing narratives

All of the papers in this collection highlight the importance of reframing narratives as part of healing processes and in rebuilding intimate relationships. Prior to their injuries, the five South African men in Louw and Kingsley’s study took masculine pride in their physical and sexual strength. They initially regarded their intimate partners as vindictive individuals who wanted to take revenge on their formerly violent husbands. But gradually they reconstructed their narratives and began to see some of the care, stability and love their partners had also given them. Their new status forced them and their wives to engage in difficult and honest discussion about sexuality and find new ways of making intimacy work. Religion often played an important role in this reframing and in helping participants see themselves as ‘changed men”’.

The five Indian women in Saxena and Oosterhoff’s study who suffered sexual violence came from relatively privileged, well-educated, upper-middle-class, dominant-caste backgrounds, and had access to therapists. In a society where unmarried women are not supposed to be sexually active, the victims of sexual violence can easily be blamed by others or by themselves. Part of the reframing here entailed acknowledging that they had been silent about their sexual preferences as they had not recognised their own sexual agency and did not know their desires or boundaries. Their inexperience, unequal gender norms, and the quasi-secret status of the relationship facilitated manipulation. Reframing the experience as a moment in a process of lifelong sexual learning enabled them to reduce self-shame, and helped them to imagine different kinds of relationships in which they could communicate with partners more directly. Personal and therapeutic networks enabled such a reframing. Although some close friends may have been dismissive of the abuse and its impact on the victim-survivor or engaged in victim-blaming, others responded with empathy and shared their own experiences of abuse.

In their paper, Nathaly Llanes-Díaz, Olga Odgers-Ortiz, Ietza Bojórquez-Chapela and José Francisco Valenzuela-Barreras analyse the life stories of five gender- and sexuality-diverse Central American migrants with histories of sexual abuse. At the time of the study, all the individuals were living in a migrants’ shelter in Tijuana, near the border of Mexico, on their way to the USA. Rather than focusing on the violence and contributing to a victimisation narrative, the researchers used a sexual life-story technique that explicitly asked study participants about their aspirations and their sexual and romantic desires. All had experienced multiple forms of prolonged or/and repeated sexual violence, and while violence remained an important theme in their life stories, respondents also demonstrated the ability to imagine greater gender and sexual freedom outside of their countries of origin. Among the main reasons for migrating was the desire to find a healthy relationship and their inability to imagine doing so in their countries of origin. Some were also sexually active during their migration journeys, using virtual platforms and social networks to find partners they felt romantically attracted to and who they could trust.

Restorative justice

Without access to legal remedies, and with perpetrators walking free, victim-survivors often find other means for restorative solutions, with or without the help of experts. Restorative justice involves engagement with perpetrators to try to repair the individual and collective harm caused by violence and sexual abuse. By facing the perpetrator and being able to talk about the crime’s impact, the victim-survivor’s sense of agency and dignity can be restored, while the perpetrator is confronted with the need to recognise the humanity of the victim-survivor. With the majority of victim-survivors not reporting sexual violence to the police or other authorities, restorative justice has the potential to assist significant groups of people to integrate the trauma and move forwards. To this end, in their study Ignacio Elpidio Dominguez Ruiz, Malin Roiha and Olga Jubany explore the perceptions and experiences of mental health professionals regarding the potential of restorative justice to provide for the victims of anti-LGBT hate crimes in six European countries. Hate crimes against gender and sexuality diverse people affect not just the victim, but also other gender and sexuality diverse people and the groups and organisations who work with them. They send a threatening message to everyone who is close to, or identifies as, a member of the group. Non-governmental organisations working with gender and sexuality diverse communities are frequently concerned about secondary victimisation and the negative effects that the criminal justice process can have on the victim-survivor. Traditional retributive justice systems and processes provide limited scope for victim-survivors to initiate action or speak out, frequently viewing victim-survivors as the passive objects of abuse. In contrast, restorative justice approaches take a tailored approach to each case, supporting victims flexibly and viewing them as active subjects in the justice process. Such approaches provide victim-survivors with the opportunity to express themselves, talk about what happened, and reflect on the harm inflicted upon them directly with the perpetrator(s) in a safe and mutually agreed upon space.

In the other papers included in the collection, some victim-survivors found alternative less formal ways to engage with ex-partners to discuss the abuse. The five paralysed men in Helenard Louw and Madiba Kingsley’s study found themselves in a reversed power relationship when engaging with their former victims. They acknowledged their own past actions in order to reposition themselves in relation with their perpetrators. For three Indian victim-survivors in Saxena and Oosterhoff’s paper, articulating the impact of the abuse they had suffered, and talking to the perpetrator about his intentions, helped restore dignity and build satisfying intimate relations with other people.

Rebuilding lives

Together, the papers in this symposium suggest how recognising sexual violence, taking time to analyse and reframe what happened, and acknowledging one’s role and actions in the relationship and the sexual violence process are important building blocks for reconstructing life after trauma. The sexual violence described in the included studies often manifested itself in physical, emotional and verbal coercion and abuse within intimate relationships or (institutional) care settings together. The motivations of the perpetrators in the settings that the papers describe are complex and conclusions about their traits are beyond the scope of this discussion. But it is remarkable that victim-survivors from highly diverse backgrounds can actively regain a sense of agency and dignity through restorative justice and in other ways, while neither dismissing the importance of ending impunity, nor putting their lives on hold while waiting for this to occur. In moving forwards, researchers and practitioners should acknowledge both the violence itself and the practical and strategic steps that victims take to integrate these damaging events into their lives. More forward-looking research is needed that uncovers and supports the hopeful strategies taken by victim-survivors to build and enjoy satisfying sexual and romantic relationships.

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