Talking about Sexual Assault: Society's Response to Survivors

This second edition provides a comprehensive, social ecological review of women's rape and sexual assault disclosures and how support providers can better respond to them and challenge rape culture.

Women who have been raped and sexually assaulted are often retraumatized by negative social reactions from family and friends, healthcare professionals, institutions, and society at large.

Sarah Ullman educates supporters on more appropriate responses that empower survivors and help them heal. Drawing on interviews with survivors and support providers, she offers powerful, provocative insights to therapists, other frontline workers assisting survivors, researchers, and students.

She reviews transtheoretical research on why, how often, and to whom women disclose; the impact of social contexts on disclosures; and social reactions from informal support networks and professionals in a variety of institutional settings.

New to this edition is updated research addressing social media, social phenomena like the MeToo movement, and informal supporters' experiences with survivors. While most research still focuses on White, heterosexual, and cisgender women, emerging findings on LGBTQ+ individuals, cis males, people of color, and people with disabilities are reviewed where available.

Author: Sarah E. Ullman
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Published: 07/11/2023
Pages: 281
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.98h x 5.98w x 0.71d
ISBN13: 9781433836312
ISBN10: 1433836319
BISAC Categories:
- Psychology | Applied Psychology
- Social Science | Sexual Abuse & Harassment
- Psychology | Forensic Psychology

About the Author
Sarah E. Ullman, PhD, is Professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her research focuses on sexual victimization of women and rape's impact on mental and physical health. Dr. Ullman has conducted multiple longitudinal studies on sexual assault survivors and how social reactions from support sources affect their coping and recovery. She also interviewed survivors and service providers about their disclosure and help-seeking experiences and codeveloped an informal support network intervention for survivors and their social networks. She is conducting a large multimethod, dyadic study to better understand disclosure, social reactions, and their impacts.