Can you be prepared for sexual assault?

December 23, 2006 11:56 AM

Can people be trained to better withstand or recover faster from sexual assault? I'm thinking specifically of people being sent into situations where being sexually assaulted is a high risk (e.g. law-enforcement undercover in the sex-trade, humanitarian aid workers in combat zones, soldiers)...

My understanding is that, physical trauma aside, a lot of the psychological damage comes from feelings of guilt...can people be prepared beforehand for this? I know American soldiers may be trained to withstand interrogation techniques (including "sexual embarrassment"), but this is not explicitly mentioned.

The obvious follow-up questions: a) is it at all effective (I assume it wouldn't be 100% effective) and b) is this training actually done?

posted by sarahkeebs to society & culture (13 comments total)

Can people be trained to better withstand or recover faster from sexual assault? I'm thinking specifically of people being sent into situations where being sexually assaulted is a high risk (e.g. law-enforcement undercover in the sex-trade, humanitarian aid workers in combat zones, soldiers)...

I don't really know the answer to your question, but I find it highly unlikely that an organization, especially a police dept, would adopt a passive attitude to the chance that one of their own would be raped. I could see an undercover cop getting roughed up or something, but I think those kinds of investigations are set up with surveillance and backup such that if it goes bad, guys with guns can move in fast. I can't see it getting to the point where an officer is getting raped, there's nothing his/her colleagues can do about it, and so they find it worthwhile to offer precautionary sexual assault counseling.

Some military people go to SERE school where they might be taught some of what you're talking about.
posted by Brian James at 2:01 PM on December 23, 2006

I think there would be a couple issues:

1. The military application of this would seem to be the most useful (and various studies seem to back up the idea that a lot of female soldiers are sexually assaulted), but.... as various news stories have shown recently, the Armed Forces aren't exactly the most progressive group when it comes to advocating for women's rights. I feel like it's still an uphill battle to prove that female soldiers deserve sexual dignity, let alone to put programs in place that would shield them from the traumatic after-effects of sexual assault (whether from the enemy or from their fellow soldiers).

2. It seems like there's still a fair amount of work being done just to create programs to deal with helping rape survivors, and to fund those programs and get the word out. The idea that the victim isn't the one to blame for the attack (the various strains of "She was asking for it") has only recently started to fade from popular consciousness, and it's still pretty strong in a lot of ways (shifted from examining her clothing and sexual history, maybe, but it still seems like the first thing said about many rape victims is "What was she doing in that part of town / alone in his room/ etc."). With so much still to be done to provide comfort and therapy and resources for actual victims, I think it would be unusual to find a lot of energy being put into preparing potential victims.

3. From what I've seen, the work that is being done in rape prevention is (rightly, in my opinion) focusing on how to prevent people from becoming attackers rather than how to prevent people from becoming victims.

All that said... I did find this great page of research from the National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center, which might have some info that helps. The VA also has some articles designed for both soldiers and therapists on dealing with PTSD, some of which may also apply at least a bit.
posted by occhiblu at 2:30 PM on December 23, 2006

I meant to add: It also seems that most of the post-rape therapy that is considered effective is a strong support network of non-judgmental friends and family, and therapy if necessary. Other than making sure that you have a good support network in place, and being willing to pursue therapy in general, I'm not sure you can shortcut that sort of recovery.

That is, psychologically healthy people with strong, healthy coping skills in general probably recover better from trauma, so you can encourage people to be psychologically healthy and to develop strong, healthy coping skills, but because "psychologically healthy" and "strong, healthy coping skills" are going to vary so much person to person, I'm not sure there's ever going to be a standardized blueprint you can hand to someone and say "Follow these steps and your trauma will go away."
posted by occhiblu at 2:37 PM on December 23, 2006

I'm thinking specifically of people being sent into situations where being sexually assaulted is a high risk

Prison populations are at very high risk. You may be able to find something applicable by researching correctional intake programs.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 2:37 PM on December 23, 2006

There are companies and organisations which prepare people to go into the kind of overseas situations you talk about -- humanitarian aid workers in combat zones and so on. They would be the same companies who prepare you for things like being kidnapped for cash or being taken prisoner by a conquering army.

But I'm pretty sure from reading about this kind of thing that all they prepare you for is the pure survival aspects of the situation, things like whether to fight back, the best way to do so, and of course any way of preventing the attack happening in the first place. Trying to somehow battle-harden you against the psychological aspects of the experience would be way out of their league.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 3:11 PM on December 23, 2006

Googling "prevent ptsd" turns up discussion of a few methods that have been considered. However these are focused on intervention immediately after, not before, severe trauma (not necessarily sexual):

• critical incident stress debriefing (more details)
• Foa’s protocol for prolonged exposure a.k.a. Foa's brief prevention program or PE
• cognitive behavioral therapy
• various drugs including propranolol, Inderol, and Paxil

posted by nakedcodemonkey at 3:24 PM on December 23, 2006

On preview, NCM beat me, but here goes anyway.

There are interesting pharmacological interventions being explored to reduce the chances of PTSD developing. These are drugs that are given in a single dose within 12 hours or so of the original trauma. Of course, this is not exactly a preparative therapy, but the drug would need to be nearby and available at the time of the trauma.

They work by supposedly blunting the association of the autobiographical memory with the affective valence of the traumatic experience. So, if a person experiences trauma and takes the drug, they would be able to recall the events afterward with as great precision as if they had not taken the drug, but their recall would not as vividly revive the fear, anger, or shame that they felt at the time.

Two drugs that have been explored for this purpose are propranolol and guanfacine. Both, however, have been challenged as to their efficacy.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 5:15 PM on December 23, 2006

The elephant in this thread, so far, is that sexual assault is, first and foremost, assault, in terms of its potential for long term psychological damage to an individual. The feelings of depersonalization, objectification, fear, and resultant anger stemming from rape are similar to feelings reported by vicitims of armed robbery and other violent crimes which have no sexual component, but these may also interact with feelings of modesty or shame when rape is the form of assault.

The mind has a number of self-protective mechanisms that operate when a person undergoes any kind of trauma, that probably operate well below the level the concious mind can directly influence. Memory suspension, pain inhibition, adrenaline responses and even extreme responses like compartmentalization that are regularly seen in cases of repeated trauma or torture are not likely to be produced by a mind that is not under the full pressure of traumatic stimulus. But unlike survival and evasion training, where practical skills such as navigation, foraging, concealment, and covert signaling need to be "practiced," and can later make the difference in survival, there is no evidence that the best protective mechanisms for trauma can be "practiced," or that a training scenario which is not actually harmful to the subjects, but still provokes a full sub-concious protective response, could even be devised. In the same way, survival and evasion training courses do not routinely start with breaking the trainee's arms or legs, even though those are fairly common injuries resulting from bailing out of military aircraft, and are "realistic" complications of the "experience" of being shot down over enemy territory.

Also, there is some sense that for many people, training which tries to "prepare" individuals for traumatic experiences in a realistic way, causes them people to fearfully anticipate the experience, even more so, sometimes even leading to unreasonable fears of the experience, disturbed sleep patterns, and altered behavior. Exposing people prophylactically to visual or physical shock does not reliably inure them to future shock in all, or even most cases. If you faint at the sight of blood, having you work in an abattoir for 2 weeks to desensitize you to that "stimuli" may not be realistic. Unless there were some way of "proving" that a class of people recieving some type of extensible training were less affected by sexual assault than others, because of that training, I doubt any responsible government agency would consider funding or developing such training, and if there is a reasonable belief such activities could actually harm trainees, there would be an active resistance to it.
posted by paulsc at 6:01 PM on December 23, 2006

Rohypnol has the reputation of making you forget what happens from some point after you take it; I've never heard of a drug which can make you forget events which took place before ingestion.

But I do know three different people who've had head injuries which have made them forget-- permanently-- everything that happened to them up to about 6 hrs. before the injury and about 8 hrs. after. You'd think there might be some way of using that therapeutically (no pun intended).
posted by jamjam at 6:20 PM on December 23, 2006

It's not about preparation, but as far as a quick recovery: EMDR is a somewhat controversial therapy that usually works in 8-10 weeks. You have to be ready for it, which can mean regular therapy beforehand - by ready, I mean you have to have a strong support system and you can't be suicidal.
posted by IndigoRain at 8:33 PM on December 23, 2006

Let me clarify - EMDR is usually intended for post-traumatic stress, which a rape victim would likely have.
posted by IndigoRain at 8:34 PM on December 23, 2006 [1 favorite]

I came across this book many years ago and still have it on my bookshelf. I guess it could be prescribed for those likely to find themselves in high risk environment.
posted by mycapaciousbottega at 10:38 AM on December 24, 2006

Thanks for all the resources...and nakedcodemonkey, thanks for reminding me about prisons...that one didn't even occur to me (although it seems pretty obvious in hindsight).

More specifically, what I was curious about was the fact that SERE training and similar programs focus on some pretty tiny minutiae (MacGyver-esque ways to survive in extreme conditions, et cetera) and yet sexual assault, which seems much more likely, isn't covered. That and the fact that I know people who've developed serious PTSD from (relatively!) minor incidents, and people who've recovered remarkably from much more brutal experiences. I suppose it just comes down to what occhiblu said: personal aptitudes.
posted by sarahkeebs at 9:33 AM on December 27, 2006