Understanding the relationship between female sexual assault survivors' perceptions of police investigations and their reasons for not reporting their assaults

Abstract

Since the 1980's a number of amendments have been made to the Canadian criminal justice system and Canadian police services in an effort to increase the reporting of sexual assault cases. According to the Department of Justice Canada (1997) the term sexual assault is used to refer to criminal acts, which range from any unwanted sexual touching to forced intercourse. However, despite reforms, under-reporting continues to remain drastically high. This study uses Anthony Giddens' social theory of structuration as a theoretical framework and employs semi-structured in-depth qualitative interviews as a data collection method to analyze and further an understanding of female sexual assault survivors' perceptions of police investigations and their reasons for not reporting their assaults. The data collected for this study was analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings suggest that survivor perceptions of police investigations had an impact on their decisions not to report their assaults to police. Additionally, survivors indicated that their decisions not to report were also contingent upon the overarching theme of fear of being discredited. Within this theme, the sub-themes of self-blame and guilt, previous sexual history, lack of understanding of police investigation, and distrust of the Canadian criminal justice system also impacted participants' decision-making processes in regard to that which they elected to report to police. These findings were analyzed using Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration, and can be used to further our understanding of why sexual assault survivors may choose not to report their assaults to police.