Citation

Collings SJ. S. Afr. J. Psychol. 1987; 17(1): 20-24.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1987, SAGE Publications)

DOI

10.1177/008124638701700104

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the reasons why many rape victims fail to report their victimization to public agencies. The study sample comprised 54 victims of unreported rape (38 Afrikaans-speaking white females and 16 English-speaking white females) who had responded to media appeals. In line with recent conceptualizations of crime victim decision making, barriers to reporting were examined at three levels of abstraction: the intrapersonal level (victim immaturity, victim guilt, or self-blame); the interpersonal level (fear of rapist retaliation, fear of further victimization by family and friends); and the institutional level (fear of victimization by the police or the criminal justice system). Interpersonal barriers were found to constitute effective barriers to reporting in 34 cases (63%), institutional barriers in 20 cases (37%), and intrapersonal barriers in 12 cases (22%). Analysis of the relationship between victim characteristics, rape circumstances, and reporting barriers revealed that the importance of reporting barriers can be predicted to a significant extent by selected rape-descriptive variables. The study findings are discussed in terms of their practical and methodological implications.

Language: en