Why women don’t talk about sexual assault

At a time when sexual misconduct allegations are turning up in every corner of society, from Hollywood and the White House to the Supreme Court and the media, one question recurs: Why don’t women talk about it when they’ve been sexually assaulted?

Dori Marshall, assistant professor of psychiatry in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, says it’s extremely common, especially for young women who have experienced sexual assault, to stay silent for a long time.

“We see it all the time in kids who end up in the hospital or who are depressed or anxious or have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,” says Marshall, who specializes in treating adolescents at UBMD Psychiatry. “They bury it for years.”

She said that’s because, unlike many other types of assault, sexual assault creates a profound sense of self-blame in the victim.

“There is a sense of shame that comes with sexual assault,” Marshall says. “People who have been sexually assaulted feel that they are dirty, that this is somehow a reflection of them since it happened to them.”

Victims fear they will be blamed by others.

“What do we often say to children when they get hurt,” Marshall asks. “We say, ‘You got hurt, well you shouldn’t have been running in the house.’ They’re used to being told they got hurt because of their own action, or inaction, so when something as intimate and deeply personal and painful as sexual assault happens, they’re afraid of what other people’s reactions will be.

“And they’ve often heard survivors get blamed,” Marshall continues. “They’ve heard others say, ‘well, they were asking for it, they went to a party, they used a substance,’ as if it’s their fault for getting hurt if they imbibed those things. If you see others in the news or in social circles being blamed for being sexually assaulted, that makes other people more reluctant to come forward and say, ‘This happened to me.’”

The national controversies about sexual assault that have embroiled the nation’s political institutions have only reinforced those concepts, she adds.

“When you hear that the person who allegedly assaulted a woman or child is being held up as a role model that the Senate wants to put on the Supreme Court, that makes people all the more fearful about coming forward.”