Bystander reluctance in the aftermath of collegiate sexual misconduct

Abstract

Most collegiate sexual misconduct victims disclose their experience to a friend, whose reaction and subsequent action are vital for a victim’s social-emotional recovery. The current study focuses on this broader peer community that has learned about an assault and their motivation or reluctance to take action in its aftermath. Thirty-nine undergraduate students were interviewed about the one or more times they had heard of someone else’s uncomfortable sexual encounter, for a total of 86 recalled incidents. Overall, students who learned of misconduct were affected by their newfound knowledge: they were shaken when an assault was discussed lightly, they evaluated the severity of the assault, they prioritized the victim’s wellbeing when considering actions to take, or they were surprised to hear of the assault in the first place. Yet grounded theory analysis identified four main barriers—a belief that the situation is not serious enough, a desire to avoid harming the victim, a lack of knowledge and confidence with their role, and a preference to take action outside of formal channels—that often prevented these reactions from translating into responsive action, leaving victims with less social support and continuing the underreporting of sexual misconduct. Recommendations include expanding bystander intervention training to include an assault’s aftermath and adding educational programming that challenge rape myths.

Keywords

Bystander intervention college students disclosure sexual assault social reactions social support

Introduction

The prevalence of collegiate sexual misconduct persists at high rates, ranging from 19% and 44% for women (Cantor et al., 2015; Krebs et al., 2009; Muehlenhard et al., 2017) and between 5% and 8% for men (Banyard et al., 2007b; Cantor et al., 2015). These victimization rates are typically higher among students of color (Carmody & Washington, 2001; Section 4–12 in Krebs et al., 2010), bisexual and lesbian women (Martin et al., 2011), and transgender, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming students (Cantor et al., 2015). However, few who experience collegiate sexual misconduct use resources provided by the university (5% by Fisher et al., 2003), a professional support provider (8% by Orchowski & Gidycz, 2012), or the police (6% by Sinozich & Langton, 2014).

While a minority of collegiate sexual misconduct victims use formal resources, studies have shown that anywhere from 55% to 84% of female victims and 44% of male victims disclose their experience to a friend (Cantor et al., 2015; Orchowski & Gidycz, 2012; Walsh et al., 2010). In fact, friendship is the most common relationship between a collegiate misconduct victim and disclosure recipient (Ahrens et al., 2007; Dunn et al., 1999; Paul et al., 2013). Furthermore, the reactions of these disclosure recipients play an important role in the coping and wellbeing of misconduct victims, with negative social reactions increasing a victim’s risk of PTSD (Ullman & Filipas, 2001), inhibiting future disclosures (Ahrens, 2006), and increasing feelings of self-doubt regarding the legitimacy of their experience (Ahrens, 2006). Thus, there exists a population of college students who play an important role in the aftermath of an assault.

Understanding the experiences of these disclosure recipients, and any barriers they may face to taking any responsive action, is vital. Just as bystanders can intervene to prevent an assault, bystanders also hold power in the wake of an assault, potentially serving as critical sources of emotional and social support to victims. The current study used semi-structured interviews to explore the experiences and actions of 39 college students who learned about an instance of sexual misconduct. The exploratory approach of this study helps elucidate the norms and barriers that exist in deterring responsive action from those in a victim’s social support network and in the community overall, while focused on the particularities of a college campus. The findings from this study point to a need for universities to provide more educational materials to the collegiate community at large, empowering a victim’s network to best support them and correcting beliefs in rape myths.

Bystander intervention as preventative action

Prior and ongoing discussions on bystander intervention shift the norms to give bystanders the responsibility, not just the option, to get involved to prevent a misconduct incident. As a framework, bystander intervention takes a more “ecological approach to prevention” (McMahon & Banyard, 2012) by considering the role of community members not directly involved in a potential assault, such as changing social norms around victim-blaming or stepping in to halt predatory behavior. As a consequence, a bystander intervention framework expands the focus of prevention efforts beyond a potential victim or perpetrator.

The popularity of collegiate bystander intervention has dramatically increased in recent years (McMahon & Banyard, 2012), taking the national stage with a 2014 White House-led initiative called “It’s On Us” (Somanader, 2014). Analyses of collegiate bystander intervention programs find that they increase self-reported active bystander behaviors (Coker et al., 2011), increase bystander confidence (Alegría-Flores et al., 2017), decrease rape myth acceptance (Alegría-Flores et al., 2017; Coker et al., 2011), and reduce interpersonal violence victimization and perpetration rates (Coker et al., 2016); these effects can persist months after the program (Alegría-Flores et al., 2017; Banyard et al., 2007a). Despite these programs, barriers to successful preventative bystander intervention still exist on college campuses (Exner & Cummings, 2011), such as the “reluctance to stop someone from having a ‘good time’” (DeMaria et al., 2018).

Both the evidence of effective preventative bystander intervention and the prevalence of bystanders being involved in an assault’s aftermath by becoming disclosure recipients motivate more attention for responsive bystander intervention, with potential for widespread reform of how disclosure recipients respond to sexual assault victims.

Bystander intervention as responsive action

Previous studies have explored the emotional experience of disclosure recipients. People who are told about an incident of misconduct often face emotional distress themselves (Banyard et al., 2010; Christiansen et al., 2012), with those closest to an assault victim occasionally denoted as the “secondary victim” (Christiansen et al., 2012) or “secondary survivor” (Remer & Ferguson, 1995). Disclosure recipients can experience a range of emotions and outcomes, including anger at the perpetrator (Ahrens & Campbell, 2000; Lorenz et al., 2018), fear about not properly supporting the victim (Ahrens & Campbell, 2000; Christiansen et al., 2012; Milliken et al., 2016), satisfaction in their response to a disclosure (Ahrens & Campbell, 2000; Banyard et al., 2010), or a change in relationship quality with the victim (Ahrens & Campbell, 2000; Banyard et al., 2010; Christiansen et al., 2012). The informal support network around a victim feel emotionally involved in the aftermath and attempt to evaluate the quality of their own response.

However, a lack of responsive action from disclosure recipients has been shown to cause further distress to sexual misconduct victims. Relyea and Ullman (2015) studied the negative social reaction of “unsupportive acknowledgement,” where a disclosure recipient acknowledges the assault but provides no further support, instead distracting the victim, responding egocentrically, or ignoring the victim’s emotions. The authors conclude that “this lack of support was associated with worse coping than even more hostile reactions such as being blamed or stigmatized.” To improve outcomes and coping among sexual misconduct victims, it is vital that more disclosure recipients take action, as 94% of victims in Relyea and Ullman’s sample experienced unsupportive acknowledgement after a disclosure.

Despite these prior studies on the emotions and relationships of disclosure recipients, there still remains a gap in the literature for the nuanced motivations and barriers behind actions taken (or not taken) by college students in the wake of a disclosure. Lorenz et al. (2018), Relyea and Ullman (2015), and Christiansen et al. (2012) did not limit their population to college students. Ahrens and Campbell (2000) and Banyard et al. (2010) focused on collegiate disclosure recipients, but used a survey to gather their findings. While Milliken et al. (2016) interviewed collegiate disclosure recipients, they limited their sample to only women and primarily focused on their emotional experience.

Some bystander response training programs already exist on college campuses, such as “Helping Advocates for Violence Ending Now” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which seeks to increase “knowledge of resources and active listening skills” and “self-reported acts of supporting survivors” (Alegría-Flores et al., 2017). While these programs are promising, the success of future programs would be aided by a deeper understanding of a victim’s support network to identify specific barriers that prevent disclosure recipients from giving support.

Methodology

The author received Institutional Review Board approval before research began and followed the approved protocol. This study recruited 39 undergraduate seniors (“participants”) to participate in a semi-structured interview about times they heard about someone else’s uncomfortable sexual experience. The participants all attended the same four-year, private research university in the northeastern United States. (It must be noted that at the time of the study, the author was an undergraduate student at the same university.)

A university-sanctioned internal student database was used to gather all email addresses of undergraduate senior students. From that pool of eligible participants, the author used a computer program to randomly select 150 email addresses to receive the recruitment email. In the recruitment email, the intentionally vague description of an “uncomfortable sexual experiences” was used to capture the full spectrum of misconduct and to protect against any individual definitions of sexual misconduct. The types of “uncomfortable sexual experiences” learned by participants included stalking, verbal harassment, groping, flashing, unwanted or forced kissing, unwanted or forced penetration, unwanted or forced oral sex, and verbal or physical pressure during a sexual encounter. However, an incident recalled by a participant may not meet the definition of sexual misconduct established by university policies or legal standards.

From the 150 students who received the recruitment email, 39 students responded and were interviewed, with each interview lasting an average of 30 minutes and occurring in a quiet meeting room on campus. With participant’s permission, all interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed by the author. Participants received $10 for their time and emotional labor. Funding for participant compensation came from a university-sponsored undergraduate research grant. Interviews were conducted during a six-week window in early 2017. Twenty-seven students declined the interview for reasons such as never having heard of someone else’s uncomfortable sexual experience (n = 13), a lack of interest (n = 6), or a lack of time (n = 1).

Each semi-structured interview began with the author asking the participant to recall a time they learned of another person’s uncomfortable sexual encounter. For each recalled encounter, the participant was asked how they first learned about the incident, with further questions exploring their relationship with the involved individuals (e.g. victim, perpetrator, a third-party information source), the context of hearing about the incident, their reaction, and any actions they took with the information. Interview questions were adapted to each participant’s story and modified over the six-week interview period to better focus on responsive action. The author would prompt the participant to recall another example if the initial instance seemed exhausted; most participants recalled two to three examples, for a total of 86 instances.

While participant demographics were not collected to maintain privacy, per IRB protocol, some participants offered information about personal sub-group affiliation as it related to the matters discussed. The most common sub-groups mentioned were the LGBTQ community (n = 6), a sports team (n = 5), and racial minority groups (n = 3). Among all 86 misconduct incidents recalled by participants, 77 involved a different-gender encounter (n = 70 female victim and male perpetrator, n = 7 male victim and female perpetrator) and 7 involved a same-gender encounter (n = 5 male victim and male perpetrator, n = 2 female victim and female perpetrator). Gender of the victim and perpetrator was inferred by the gendered language and pronouns used by participants. In two incidents, the gender of the perpetrator was unknown by the participant. All names used in participant quotations are pseudonyms.

Analytic approach

Techniques from grounded theory served as the method to generate themes and sub-themes in participants’ responses. During the six-week interview period, the author noted patterns across responses. No further participants were recruited after the 39th participant due to frequent repetition of themes in the later interviews.

The author used the transcripts of all interviews (108 single-spaced pages in total) to conduct line-by-line open coding and create a comprehensive set of initial concepts, which were then synthesized into a list of sub-themes using axial coding (“relating codes to each other using inductive thinking” from DeMaria et al., 2018). The first analysis of the data focused on the relational structures between the participant, victim, and perpetrator. However, subsequent visits to the transcripts and original audio recordings made clear there were prominent themes that appeared across multiple relational structures. Subsequently, the relational framework was dropped and all interviews were carefully read again to record and better understand these common themes. Finally, the author used axial coding again to consolidate and connect the most prevalent sub-themes to the four overarching themes that will be discussed.

Verification of the themes, which is standard for assessing qualitative research based on grounded theory (Creswell, 1998), was conducted in two ways. Leveraging the aforementioned constant comparison method, as introduced by Glaser and Strauss (1967), ensured the themes presented here are true to the data and minimally biased by an individual interpretation. Second, the presentation of each sub-theme includes multiple extended direct quotations from participants, which allows readers to inspect the connection between the raw data and the author’s analysis (role of exemplars described by Mishler, 1990).

Results

Participants faced four main barriers to taking responsive action after learning of someone else’s experience of sexual misconduct (see Table 1). The most frequent barrier was participant’s belief that the situation was not serious enough to warrant further action. Participant’s desire to avoid harming the victim, along with their lack of knowledge and confidence with their own role, hindered their involvement with any responsive action. Finally, the fourth theme explores the incidents for which participants did take responsive action, namely why much of this action occurred outside of formal channels, such as professional counseling services or the police.

Table 1.

Four main themes in the 86 recalled incidents with sub-themes, frequency, and example quotes.

Theme	Sub-Theme	Frequency*	Example Quote
Belief that the situation is not serious enough	No action needed	35	“I don’t think she was asking for help when she told me.”
Belief that the situation is not serious enough	Doubting an incident’s existence	12	“I believe him that nothing happened.”
Desire to avoid harming the victim	Avoiding further discussions	21	“I didn’t want to do anything that would make her uncomfortable.”
Desire to avoid harming the victim	Withholding one’s own perspective	10	“I didn’t wanna, like, plant that in her mind that she should be worried, um, because she didn’t seem that way.”
Lack of knowledge and confidence in one’s role	Personal inadequateness	19	“I wasn’t close enough friends with her to actually be, like, have the serious conversation with it.”
Lack of knowledge and confidence in one’s role	Unsure what to do	12	“Obviously, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to ask.”
Responsive action outside of formal channels	Preference for informal action	26	“It’s almost like I hope that the stigma instead deals with it without going through formal channels.”
Responsive action outside of formal channels	Negative perception of formal resources	7	“I just assumed it would be, like, a really arduous process talking to the police.”

* Recalled incidents could fall under multiple themes, one theme, or no themes.

Belief that the situation is not serious enough

The most common barrier was a belief that the situation was not serious enough to warrant responsive action, either due to a lack of urgency in the situation (number of incidents = 35) or a disbelief that any misconduct occurred (n = 12).

No action needed

Some participants were hesitant to take responsive action because the misconduct incident was not perceived as grave enough. They believed that the incident occurred but did not qualify as assault, and consequently saw no need for action:

The way that she [the victim] described it wasn’t…it didn’t, like, cross that line. From the way that she described it to me, it was consensual, but he’s [the perpetrator] just, like, really creepy. (Participant 1)

I don’t think she [the victim] feels this way either, like, she’s not like, ‘Oh, he assaulted me, I need to, like, have a Title IX case’. And I was kind of like, ‘Yeah, this is not the same thing’. (Participant 14)

We’re not talking about rape, of that I’m sure. Rough behavior in an otherwise consensual sexual interaction—that I can see. (Participant 29)

Participants’ dismissal of an incident’s severity often depended on their perception of the perpetrator as innocent, or at least lacking malice. When clarifying that an incident was not serious enough to warrant action, many participants cited the perpetrator’s awkwardness, inebriation, or poor communication:

[Learning of the incident] doesn’t really change my perception of her [the perpetrator] either. Like to me, that just sounds like a story of her being really drunk and not, like, being aware of the fact that he’s [the victim] not into it. (Participant 17)

I didn’t think, like, that poorly of her [the perpetrator], either, because the way my friend described it wasn’t, like, he [the victim] hated her for doing this, it was, like, more of a misunderstanding where he didn’t want to but then, you know, he felt like she didn’t really have any malicious intentions. (Participant 31)

A detailed example of how an assessment of the perpetrator influences an interpretation of the situation can be found in Participant 18, who compared the two perpetrators of two incidents she recalled. In one instance, a sober “Peter” assaulted a friend of Participant 18’s who had blacked out from alcohol. In another instance, “Ben,” while in an authority position in an extracurricular organization, had sexual relations with a new member, Samantha, who believed that she had to participate to become a full member. At the end of the interview, Participant 18 clarified why she wished action was taken against Peter but not Ben:

With Ben, it seemed to me, like, confusion, which is in no way acceptable, but it didn’t seem like he waited for Samantha to get really drunk and then took advantage of her because he had made her drunk. I would be just as upset if he had done that to her. Whereas with Peter, it seemed to me that he knew what he was doing and would continue to do it and he didn’t care. (Participant 18)

While these participants, perpetrator intentionality was a crucial requirement for responsive action, others considered the victim’s demeanor. These participants believed that the misconduct incident was real and serious, but still thought that there was no need for action because the victim described their experience and emotional state with no sense of urgency:

I don’t think she was asking for help when she [the victim] told me. (Participant 10)

After we had had that initial conversation where she [the victim] had described to me her sexual assault, um, she, I think, had probably come to terms with it at that point and had been going through counseling and I think, maybe, that’s why it seemed [pause] not as though it wasn’t a big deal, um, but as though it wasn’t devastating. (Participant 12)

In these examples, the disclosure recipients took their own assessment of the situation—the severity of the misconduct, the intentions of the perpetrator, or the emotional state of the victim—and decided that there was no need for intervention. Participant’s own interpretation of the situation served as a barrier to responsive action.

Doubting an incident’s existence

There were nine instances when a participant learned of an incident second-hand, such as hearing a rumor that a friend was a perpetrator, but did not believe it was real because of unreliable information:

It was maybe second-, third-hand information, uh, so not exactly reliable…You don’t want to antagonize someone who’s your friend based on something that might be nothing. (Participant 29, who heard a rumor that identified their friend as a perpetrator)

I do feel like it was almost fourth- or third-hand, where I’m hearing from someone else who’s hearing from someone else who’s probably hearing from someone else, and, I don’t know, a lot gets lost, you don’t know what’s happening. (Participant 21)

In three other incidents, participants received a disclosure directly from the victim and still did not believe that the incident had occurred. These participants attributed their doubt of the victim’s story to the victim’s behavior following the incident, their knowledge of the victim’s activities, and their own close ties to the perpetrator:

Ok so clearly this is something that is, like, very severely affecting you, yet you’re [the victim] kind of, like, tossing it off like it’s no big deal. And, like, maybe that’s how some people cope but for me it also gave me this sense of, like, ‘Are you lying about this story? Like what actually happened?’ (Participant 34)

She [the victim] was actively involved in, like, the campus sexual assault prevention efforts…which also was, like another element of doubt I had about her whole, like, story because she had intimate knowledge of how the process works and, like, if she knew that he was a problem, she would have, like, done something about it earlier than eight months after…and also, I think the overriding thing was that I knew Blake [the perpetrator] very well and just could not imagine that being a thing. (Participant 13, discussing a victim who reported an incident eight months after it occurred)

These participants did not consider taking action with the knowledge they received because they did not fully believe in the existence of the misconduct. In cases where the participant did trust that the misconduct happened, they did not think the situation required urgent action. Regardless of the reasons why, the outcome was the same: participants took no responsive action, not even providing emotional support to the victim who had just disclosed to them.

Desire to avoid harming the victim

The vast majority of participants who learned about an incident of misconduct knew the victim (n = 74 of 86 total incidents), often discussing their close relationship with and concern for the victim. In 21 incidents, this close relationship hindered responsive action when participants feared that any further discussion of an incident would exacerbate the victim’s emotional distress. Furthermore, in 10 other incidents, participants intentionally withheld their own perspective on the incident when the victim described it in a nonchalant way.

Avoiding further discussions

In 21 instances, participants cited their reluctance to reintroduce a conversation about the misconduct out of fear that such a conversation would negatively impact the victim:

I thought…it might be uncomfortable for her [the victim] to talk about it with me. So I just, I just kind of let it go and didn’t really say anything to her about it. (Participant 6)

I didn’t want to do anything that would make her [the victim] uncomfortable, um, because she was going through a really tough time…like, I didn’t wanna do anything that she wouldn’t want to do herself and then have added pressure or stress. (Participant 37)

Participants assumed that discussing an incident with the victim would bring the victim discomfort, even if the victim initiated the disclosure directly to the participant.

Withholding one’s own perspective

In an attempt to avoid harming the victim, participants also withheld expressing their perspective of the incident after the victim introduced it in a joking or nonchalant manner (n = 10). These participants noted a tension between the way that the victim jokingly portrayed the incident versus their serious interpretation:

We were all kind of, like, not sure how to respond, but I think that was her [the victim’s] way of bringing it up to us, cause it clearly had caused her a lot of distress but that was kind of her way of, um, more lightheartedly bringing it up. And, like, I wasn’t sure how to respond, cause it’s such a non-funny thing. (Participant 35)

It seemed like it was, like, fine at first, but it pretty quickly devolved into something where you could tell that something pretty serious had happened. However, it was not, like, this person did not tell it as if it was like a very serious topic…It was definitely a, um, [pause] not how I would expect to hear about an instance of, like, sexual discomfort. And he [the victim], this person did say they were, like, uncomfortable in this environment, but again, it was in a, it was a very kind of, like, light tone. (Participant 30)

However, even when participants were uncomfortable hearing about the incident, they chose not to share their interpretation with the victim to avoid the risk of adding emotional stress:

And I was like, ‘Umm, I, I don’t know if it’s that funny [laughs] like that you don’t remember it. Like, is that scary at all for you?’ [pause] No, I don’t think I would’ve said ‘Is that scary for you?’ cause I didn’t wanna, like, plant that in her mind that she should be worried, um, because she didn’t seem that way. (Participant 8, in conversation with a friend who did not remember having sex at a party)

You don’t wanna be the person who, like, forces someone to think something is more serious if they don’t seem to be receiving it like that. (Participant 7)

Participant’s care for the victim served as a barrier to honest or future discussions, fearing that initiating more conversation would distress the victim.

Lack of knowledge and confidence in one’s role

Participants frequently discussed their own role in responsive action after learning about an incident, namely citing a sense of personal inadequateness (n = 19) and feeling unsure about the best response (n = 12).

Personal inadequateness

Participants claimed that the nature of their relationship with the victim or perpetrator rendered them inadequate to talk about the event with them. Regardless of whether a participant had a distant relationship to the victim or to the perpetrator, there was a diffusion of responsibility: participants attributed their hesitancy to get involved by pointing to those closer to the victim or perpetrator.

Despite describing a concern for the victim, some participants believed that their relationship with the victim limited the appropriateness of further discussions, even if the victim disclosed the incident directly to the participant:

I think honestly I’m not that close with her [the victim], like it’s more of a group friendship…Like it felt inappropriate for me to try and, like, talk to her about it. (Participant 3)

I felt as though I wasn’t close enough friends with her [the victim] to actually be, like, have the serious conversation with it…I felt like some of her other friends should have done it, but I think in retrospect maybe I should have. (Participant 8)

Similarly, participants also cited their limited relationship with the perpetrator as a reason why they did not get involved; those who felt distant from the perpetrator claimed that it was not their place to confront the perpetrator about their actions:

He [the perpetrator] has a lot of, a lot of friends who I think are also in a better position to do that where I think it’ll be more effective. (Participant 26)

I know he [the perpetrator] has people around him that can confront him better and have more authority to do it because they’re better friends and they know him better. I just don’t know this person well enough. (Participant 29)

These participants thought that it was not their responsibility to act due to the tenuous assurance that others closer to the victim or perpetrator were reacting appropriately. Even if they believed that responsive action was appropriate, participants took no action because they saw someone other than themselves as the most effective agent.

Unsure what to do

When discussing their reactions after learning of misconduct, 12 participants recalled feeling unsure about a course of action:

I was surprised and not really sure how to acknowledge or move forward about it. (Participant 12)

It was awkward because 1) I didn’t necessarily know how to handle it and 2) it was cringe-worthy to see it unfolding. (Participant 24)

Obviously, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to ask, I just said I was sorry and I was there for her [the victim]. (Participant 36)

A few participants explicitly mentioned that a particular disclosure was their first time learning of a friend’s sexual misconduct, which contributed to their anxiety about not knowing what they should do:

Basically, my brain was like, ‘This is really important. This is a very important topic. What am I supposed to do with it? What do I say now?’ I think there were just a lot of questions in my head, being like, ‘What is the next thing to do? I have not been in this situation before’. (Participant 30)

I think this was actually one of the first times I really even heard of any kind of sexual assault happening to anyone, um, and I think I was overwhelmed and I was, like, just asking if she [the victim] was okay. (Participant 25)

Others took this uncertainty of action a step further by definitively declaring that nothing could be done:

People know that there’s just, like, that person’s been accused of rape who’s sitting across in the dining hall or something, and, like, what can you do with that knowledge? (Participant 21)

There probably wasn’t a lot I could do that I wasn’t already doing in terms of trying to be supportive and be there for her, um, especially because it wasn’t a recent encounter…it happened several months earlier. (Participant 12)

When reflecting on their reactions to a disclosure, participants emphasized their feelings of surprise, uncertainty, and stress. Even those who wanted to comfort the victim did not feel confident in their ability to do so.

Responsive action outside of formal channels

In 10 instances, participants encouraged action through formal channels, while in 26 incidents, participants took responsive action through informal channels. While all of these examples involve the participants taking responsive action, there exists a preference for informal action, partially due to criticism of formal resources (n = 7).

Preference for informal action

In 26 instances, participants who learned of an instance of misconduct took informal action, defined as any initiative or behavior change outside of formal channels. Some informal action involved concrete behavioral changes among a participant and their friends, such as developing strategies to mitigate future scenarios or ceasing social interactions with the perpetrator:

We had like—we still use this—we have a frog emoji that you would send if you didn’t want to be talking to the person that you were talking to or you just felt uncomfortable with them and then, like, someone would come and scoop you up. (Participant 7)

Alright, so if we see him, we, like, don’t talk to him, we avoid him. (Participant 1, discussing a victim’s perpetrator with a group of friends)

I think it was very, like, advice about what to do next time she [the victim] saw him [the perpetrator] because she wasn’t sure how she was going to react, and so I just told her to make sure if she was with a lot of people, um, and if you just happen to bump into him on the street, just say hi, and then just keep walking. (Participant 27)

However, the most common example of informal action undertaken by participants was the spreading of negative information about a perpetrator in the hopes of preventing future instances of sexual misconduct:

I have told that story to people at [the university], just, like, when someone’s, like, brought him [the perpetrator] up or someone’s like, ‘Oh, I just met this kid whatever last night at, like, a frat party, like, do you know him?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah’ and, you know, I’ll tell them this sketchy thing he did with my friend. (Participant 1)

I have, like, dropped a comment when people were talking about [the perpetrator], like, ‘He’s a fucking sleazeball’…I just want them to know that I don’t like him, which, I mean, I don’t know how useful that is, but, like, I hope I’m inspiring some kind of critical view of him, like ‘Well, if [Participant 24] thinks he’s slimy, I’ll take a second look at him’. (Participant 24)

One participant saw her contribution to a perpetrator’s poor reputation as a replacement for using formal resources:

It’s almost like I hope that the stigma instead deals with it without going through formal channels which I understand, like, isn’t an effective way cause you’re essentially just like hoping that someone will be shamed out of, like, not assaulting people. (Participant 5)

This participant cited her race as a motivating factor for the information she spread, acknowledging the higher victimization rate of women of color and explaining how women of color spread negative information about perpetrators for group protection:

There’s just, like, an idea of solidarity, in that we’re coming to this place with similar experiences and, like, have to navigate them in similar ways. So, like, even if it’s unspoken, I think that there’s, like, a certain implicit, like, watching out for each other that’s kind of written underneath a lot of that. (Participant 5)

Overall, participants take informal action both with and without the victim’s involvement. Some participants design practical strategies that can be immediately implemented to support the victim emotionally or instrumentally. Other participants leverage their own social capital by speaking poorly of the perpetrator and encouraging others to avoid contact. In both cases, participants changed their behavior from their newfound knowledge.

Negative perception of formal resources

Seven participants discussed their belief that using formal resources would cause further harm to the victim, undermining any motivation to recommend such resources to their friends. Some participants believed that reporting or seeking resources might burden the victim with additional stress:

I just assumed it would be, like, a really arduous process talking to the police and that she [the victim] might have to, like, go to trial or something, and that wouldn’t be the best use of her time and emotional energy right now. (Participant 20)

I know that the process is imperfect & people are sometimes re-traumatized going through the university’s resources. (Participant 2)

Others participants criticized the quality of the university’s policies and resources:

[The university] is not super well-equipped or doesn’t do much very well for helping women who have had an experience. (Participant 20)

In my point of view, the administration is trying to address the problem but there’s a lot more that needs to be done…and it’s also discouraging to see how the politics of the university get in the way of making sure that students are safe and protected. (Participant 15)

These participants considered using formal resources but decided against it, believing that formal resources could add stress or otherwise be ineffective in aiding the victim.

Discussion

This study explored the experiences and beliefs of college students who heard about someone else’s sexual misconduct and the barriers that inhibited them from taking responsive action. The four main themes covered participants’ perceptions of the situation (Belief that the Situation is Not Serious Enough), the victim (Desire to Avoid Harming the Victim), themselves (Lack of Knowledge and Confidence in One’s Role), and formal resources (Responsive Action Outside of Formal Channels).

The most common theme expressed by participants (Belief that the Situation is Not Serious Enough) arose when participants believed that what had occurred did not warrant further action, either because the misconduct incident was not serious enough (or did not occur at all), the perpetrator was not malicious enough, or the victim was not distraught enough. These reasons match the definition of rape myths, as put forth by the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (“IRMA”) scale (Payne et al., 1999), cited as the “most reliable and psychometrically demonstrated rape myth scale to date” (McMahon, 2010). Four of the six subscales within the general IRMA scale match the barriers faced by this study’s participants: “It wasn’t really rape,” “She lied,” “He didn’t mean to,” and “Rape is a trivial event.”

Strikingly, the belief that an incident is “not serious enough” is common among victims as well. The majority of sexual misconduct victims who did not report or seek formal resources cited a belief that their incident was not serious enough (70% by Walsh et al., 2010; 65% by Cantor et al., 2015; qualitative documentation by Ahrens, 2006). A study of women at four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) found that only a quarter of victims of incapacitated assault and half of victims of forced assault believed that what they experienced could be classified as rape (Krebs et al., 2010). When victims’ experiences align with a rape myth that they accept, such as “if women don’t fight back, it’s not rape,” they are less likely to see their experience as rape (Peterson & Muehlenhard, 2004). This doubt in the severity of a sexual misconduct incident from both victims and their peers indicates that it is a social norm, in the form of a pervasive rape myth, rather than an individual assessment of an incident’s unique characteristics.

Furthermore, some participants believed that an incident did not occur at all, believing a common misperception on the frequency of false accusations (DeMaria et al., 2018; McMahon, 2010). Lisak et al. (2010) reviewed all cases of sexual assault investigated by a single university police department over a 10 year period, alongside an extensive review of the relevant literature, and determined false accusation rates to be between 2% and 10%. Thus, both the belief in rape myths and disbelief in a victim’s experience are key barriers to correct with education.

Some participants were hesitant to take action out of fear of causing additional harm to the victim (Desire to Avoid Causing Harm to the Victim), which is consistent with research on how the disclosure of personal information leads to more intimate relationships (Ahrens & Aldana, 2012). Ironically, by avoiding future discussions with the victim, participants may have caused the harm that they feared. From the participant’s perspective, their inaction was borne out concern for the victim; whereas from the victim’s perspective, this silence from a confidant may be interpreted as apathy or unsupportive acknowledgement (Relyea & Ullman, 2015).

Overall, the unpreparedness felt by participants (Lack of Knowledge and Confidence in One’s Role) mirrors the lack of mandated educational programming addressed to community members on how to respond to a disclosure of assault. Bystander intervention trainings are growing in prevalence and popularity, notably due to the federal Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act of 2014, which requires all schools receiving federal student aid funding (Title IV) to enact preventative programming and safe bystander intervention options (Schroeder, 2013). However, no similar awareness campaign for the aftermath of an assault is required. While such responsive programming may not prevent an assault, it would inform community members and possible future victims on how to cope with an assault. The current focus of bystander education on preventative action fails universities’ students by leaving both victims and their peers unprepared to manage an assault’s aftermath.

Finally, participants were hesitant to involve formal resources because of their perception of the resources themselves. Prior research has found that while not all formal or informal support providers react the same way (Ahrens et al., 2009; Dworkin et al., 2018), formal support providers occasionally lead to worse outcomes for the victim than informal support providers (Ahrens et al., 2007, 2009; Krebs et al., 2010). Evidence suggests that victims of color experience more difficulty when seeking services from formal channels (Campbell et al., 2001) and less satisfaction with how a report was handled (Krebs et al., 2010).

However, other studies have provided evidence of the positive experiences that some formal resources offer. A 2015 survey of 150,000 students from 27 American colleges asked sexual misconduct victims to evaluate their experience with formal resources, such as the university’s Title IX department, a rape crisis center, or the police. Over 70% found the agency or department they consulted to be “very” or “extremely” useful and over 90% felt that it was “very good” or “excellent” at showing them respect (Cantor et al., 2015). While studies like these are promising, participants’ negative perception of formal resources seem grounded in the negative reactions that victims can receive.

Overall, college students who learned of an assault were affected by their newfound knowledge: they were shaken when an assault was discussed lightly, they evaluated the severity of the assault, they prioritized the victim’s wellbeing when considering actions to take, or they were surprised to hear of the assault in the first place. Yet these four major barriers—a belief that the situation is not serious enough, a desire to avoid causing harm to the victim, a lack of knowledge and confidence in one’s role, and a negative perception of formal channels—often prevented these reactions from translating into responsive action, leaving victims with less social support and continuing the underreporting of sexual misconduct.

Limitations

There are a few limitations to this study. All interview participants were in their final year of college at the same university. As many of the incidents occurred nearly 3 years prior, participants could have misremembered or forgotten parts of the event. Some participants expressed frustration at their inability to remember more details. Furthermore, some themes discovered could be limited to university that the participants attended. Since all recalled incidents were anonymized, multiple participants might have recalled the same encounter, which may have compromised data independence.

Finally, there may have been a desirability bias in the participant’s responses and a selection bias given the method of recruitment. Individuals who responded to the recruitment email may have been especially passionate about issues regarding sexual misconduct or may have had vivid, easy-to-recall incidents.

Recommendations for educational programming

Considering the findings of this study, I recommend three focuses for additional educational programming: addressing feelings of unpreparedness by members of the community, correcting misperceptions on common reactions to trauma, and addressing the prevalence of rape myths.

The main recommendation is for universities to educate their entire collegiate community on best practices for supporting victims and typical reactions to an assault. This programming would help the already significant proportion of college students that receive a disclosure of sexual misconduct (40% of women from Paul et al., 2013; 33% of women and 20% of men from Banyard et al., 2010). Just like traditional bystander intervention decentralizes the burden of misconduct prevention, training students on the ways to best help a friend who has experienced assault would decentralize the burden of response, allowing the community to provide better support throughout an assault’s aftermath. Without this expansion of bystander intervention training to include responsive action, students who are the recipient of a disclosure will continue to be unprepared to support both the victim and themselves.

Educational materials on typical reactions following an assault would help correct inaccurate impressions that disclosure recipients experience. Recall that some participants felt uncomfortable telling a victim how they perceived the situation when the victim was describing the incident jokingly. Perhaps if the community were aware that women commonly discuss unwanted sex with levity (Bay-Cheng & Eliseo-Arras, 2008), they may be less surprised when victims discuss a serious incident lightly. If the community were more aware of the commonness of victims believing that what they experienced was “not serious enough” to warrant further action, they may feel more empowered to tell the victim otherwise. If the community were more aware of the average delay between an assault and pursuing formal resources (Burgess et al., 1995), they may not question the victim’s truthfulness when such a delay occurs, as some of this study’s participants did.

Finally, more awareness on the common manifestations of rape myths would better inform the community of their own beliefs. Many responses and reactions from participants can be classified as rape myths per the IRMA scale: a belief that the incident was not serious enough (subscale “It wasn’t really rape” and “Rape is a trivial event”), excusing perpetrators who lacked intention (subscale “He didn’t mean to”), and questioning a victim’s truthfulness (subscale “She lied”—see DeMaria et al. (2018) for similar findings on rape myth prevalence). Likely many participants would have been surprised that their responses could be classified as examples of rape myths. More awareness that rape myths extend beyond a denial of an assault’s existence would help members of the community realize that they are unknowingly perpetuating these misperceptions; and by not viewing assaults as the serious offences that they are, they may hinder the likelihood that victims seek services and support, both informally and formally.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported financially by a Mellon Forum Undergraduate Research Grant from Pierson College at Yale University.

ORCID iD

Kira Tebbe

Open research statement

As part of IARR’s encouragement of open research practices, the author has provided the following information: This research was not pre-registered. The data used in the research are not available; however, the transcripts of the interviews are available and can be obtained by emailing: kira@tebbe.com. The materials used in the research are available. The materials can be obtained by emailing: kira@tebbe.com.

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