Editor's Note
Victim or Perpetrator: Who Decides?

I'm one of those people who have few boundaries; for me there's no line between work and family: they both blend into the whole that is my life-and-work. What I do for work affects how I live my life, and what happens in my life affects my thinking about work.

This month the crossovers were constant.

As part of their sustained, now year-plus campaign of terror against my family, white supremacists have now perpetrated two gang rapes and mutilations of my (male) partner in his home. After the first one, in February, my partner drove himself to the local emergency room that was associated with a well-regarded Sexual Assault Treatment Center (SATC). I met him there, and we began a 9-hour odyssey that even he felt was more traumatic than the initial hate crime we were there to treat.

Among other insults we were subjected to, the two female police officers from "sensitive crimes" (i.e., those whose job regularly involves responding to sexual assaults) interviewing my partner made several anti-male comments within his earshot, at one point saying to him, "You have to cut us some slack. We're not used to dealing with male victims." More than once, emergency room staff referred to him as the perpetrator, even though he was sitting there with bleeding epithets carved into his arms and legs, and with a visible ring around his neck where the attackers had strangled him with a rope. When the police officers wanted him to remove his clothes to photograph the carvings and he asked to have me present -- I was being interrogated by another police officer down the hall -- they decided they wouldn't wait to retrieve me and began physically pulling his clothes off against his will.

Eventually, even though my partner has disabilities that make it physically impossible for him to have made some of the cuttings, they decided that no assault had taken place: he had self-mutilated, they declared, and made up the rape.

With the police's refusal to take our case, we joined the 30-40% of people who come to that sexual assault treatment center who the police determine on the spot to have "unfounded" cases. Although it is perversely comforting to know we have a lot of company in being labeled liars by police, as a professional in a field that deals with physical and sexual assault, I have to wonder: given the police's decision, would our case be reflected in statistics about rape? Is the number of abuse and assault cases reported by victims actually far higher than the statistics show because police refuse to take so many cases? What are the demographics of the victims who are believed and those who are not? Would analyses of these "made-up" cases reveal a gender bias (among, most likely, other biases)?

Luckily, the SATC staff who finally got to examine and treat us hours after we had arrived at the hospital were wonderful. They have been unfailingly supportive of us since, going out of their way to provide ongoing support. Yet even here, the victim being male is problematic. One night my partner decided he needed additional support, and called the SATC's after-hours line to talk to a counselor. After he explained to the woman answering the phone that he'd been raped and wanted some referrals she said, "I'm sorry, I don't understand. Whom did you assault?" He hung up on her.

This week my counseling session was moved out of it usual setting in the SATC's examination center to their offices, which are in a suite that is conspicuously labeled, "Women's Health Department." How welcome and understood, I wondered, would a male rape survivor feel if he went there for counseling? Would he worry that he wouldn't be believed or supported if he said his rapist had been female?

I'd like to say that our experience after the second gang rape in May was better, but it was not. Then, too, the police seemed unable to accept that a man had been sexually assaulted. Despite my being there, explaining the campaign of terrorism against us, and begging them, and despite the fact they had to step over blood and fecal matter all over the entryway in which my partner had been assaulted, one police officer kept his gun trained on him and kept demanding, "Did you do this to yourself?" My partner's response to having a gun aimed at his chest and being accused of assaulting himself after just being gang raped in his home for the second time in three months was to scream at them to get out of his house. That, in turn, resulted in the police quickly leaving, saying we were being "uncooperative" and that they therefore would not investigate further.

I presume rape number two went officially uncounted, as well.

So when the controversy erupted over a domestic violence program saying that, given the statistics, too much time was being spent on male victims, I had to wonder. We tried to report our crimes, and failed. How often does that happen? When male domestic violence survivors reported they had been re-victimized by domestic violence advocates who insisted that because they were male they must be the perpetrator, not the victim, of abuse, I had to nod my head and say, "Yes. We've experienced that." And when I read article after article in the press about male nursing home residents being sexually assaulted, I had to wonder, "What kind of response did they get from those who are supposed to help them?"

Our field's current emphasis on developing a coordinated response to elder and vulnerable adult abuse involving adult protective services, law enforcement, domestic violence programs, sexual assault centers, ombudsmen, and the like is absolutely critical. We must do this to ensure that victims get the kind of support and assistance and choices they need. But, as my personal experience as well as some of the articles in this AAR show, there appear to be biases in these systems that may be re-traumatizing victims -- especially victims that don't fit what we think of as the "normal" victim profile -- far more than they're helping them.

We owe it to those victims to do an honest assessment of ourselves and the systems we interact with: to what extent have these systems been built on assumptions that grew from -- and therefore result in continuing -- the silencing and erasure of some victims?

-- Loree Cook-Daniels