Accounts of non-resistance in rape verdicts: the psychological freeze-response-model and liminal hotspots

• In Event: Trauma, Justice, and Recovery in Domestic and sexual Violence Contexts

Abstract

The Criminal Justice System has repeatedly been criticized for not considering how sexual victimization may cause psychological trauma and how trauma, in turn, may shape responses to criminal victimization. It has also been argued that trauma may explain why many rape victims “freeze” or do not fight off the attacker when assaulted. In Norway, unlike in some other countries, the freeze response is acknowledged by the Criminal Justice System as a possible and legitimate response to sexual violence. In this presentation, I analyze Norwegian case law to investigate the use of the freeze-response-model in legal decisions regarding rape. In an examination of all rape verdicts in Norwegian appellate courts that include a reference to the freeze response, I investigate when and how this model becomes relevant in rape verdicts and unpack the ways in which it matters (or not) in the processing of the case. The purpose is to consider how a scientific biomedical model of fear performs in legal processes and to compare it to competing models that explain victims’ apparent passive response to rape. Competing models include sleep, intoxication and in-between-positions conceptualized as liminal hotspots. The primary aim of this presentation is to further conceptualize victims’ responses to rape.

Author

• Solveig Laugerud, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law (IKRS), Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway