Responding to women’s experiences of sexual assault in institutional and care settings
ACSSA Wrap No. 10, 2011
Responding to women’s experiences of sexual assault in institutional and care settings
Haley Clark and Bianca Fileborn
Published by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, November 2011, 20 pp. [ISBN 978-1-921414-56-5 ISSN 1833-1483 (Print), ISSN 1834-0148 (Online)]
This Wrap outlines key issues in institutional and care settings with identifying and responding to women’s recent and past experiences of sexual assault.1 In this paper, we draw together the common or shared elements of various institutions identified in the literature. We consider the historical socio-political context of women’s institutionalisation. Then we consider the prevalence of sexual assault, both current and historical, within various institutional settings and explore some of the barriers to disclosing and responding to sexual assault within these settings. Finally, we discuss the relevance of cultural and structural issues in responding to and addressing sexual assault within institutional settings.
Defining institutional setting
For the purposes of this paper, “institutional setting” refers to the establishments and organisations that are used to enforce or promote a particular public purpose—such as healthcare, supervision or punishment. Residents are typically under the guardianship of the institutions, whether voluntary or involuntary. There are a range of institutional and care settings within Australia that this definition applies to. This paper specifically refers to:
- psychiatric inpatient units;
- juvenile justice centres and prisons;
- detention centres;
- aged care facilities; and
- disability residences.
These institutions face similar issues concerning their governance and responsibility to residents. For instance, all have in common that the people contained within these institutions are unable to fully exercise their liberty, or have had their autonomy controlled or curtailed in some way. Usually, this is by virtue of an order given by a public authority (such as a judge, in the case of prison) or with the authority’s acquiescence; and the women may not be permitted to leave at will by order of public authority, or may be unable to leave as a result of a mental or physical impairment. This attribute positions the responsibility of responding to sexual assault with the public authorities. As Crossmaker (1991) suggested “in exchange for freedom and privacy lost during institutionalisation, residents should be provided with reasonable protection from harm” (p. 201).
There are, of course, significant differences in the purpose, structure and legislation pertaining to these institutions, and residents of these respective institutions may experience varying levels of institutional power and control, and loss of individual liberty and autonomy.
Authors
At the time of writing Haley Clark was a Senior Research Officer with the ACSSA. Bianca Fileborn is a Research Officer with ACSSA.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank our two external reviewers for generously offering their time, expertise, and feedback.
We would also like to thank AIFS staff, particularly Elly Robinson, Daryl Higgins and Antonia Quadara, for their guidance and feedback throughout the production of this publication.
Footnote
1 We acknowledge that men in institutional settings may also be particularly vulnerable to sexual assault, that there may be some commonalities in experience and issues, and some learnings from this paper could apply to men. However, the focus of this paper is on women.