Clíona Saidléar: Measuring the silence around sexual violence
Early childhood experience of not being heard or believed not only fails the child but can also lead to long silences and vulnerabilities into adulthood which can then be exploited further by perpetrators.
It’s in the silence about sexual violence that perpetrators exert their power, feeding a stigma that delays many survivors from speaking out, or being heard, for decades.
2023 has been a key year for breaking that silence. And we’ve been doing that with an unconventional tool: data.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has taken a huge step this year with the publication of its groundbreaking Sexual Violence Survey. The CSO interviewed 4,500 people randomly selected across the country last year, measuring the extent and nature of sexual violence in Ireland. The survey covered adult and childhood experiences as well as sexual harassment and how survivors seek support.
The results tell us that survivors are not set apart from society, they are among us, indeed they are us, precisely 52% of women, and 28% of men. Women reported three times the rate of sexual violence as an adult (39%) compared to men (12%). The CSO’s data also reveals that 65% of women aged 18-24 reported sexual violence in their lifetime.
The Sexual Violence Survey highlights the silences that lead to a lack of choice for survivors. Of the 4,500 anonymous respondents, 500 told the CSO that they had never disclosed their experiences before being interviewed. We can no longer deny how prevalent and serious sexual violence is.
The whole of society must shift our attitudes and move away from the silence in which sexual violence was seen as secret, a stigma, a weakness or even the fault of the survivor. Given how common it is as an experience, we need to ask ourselves why there has been so much silence on the topic.
Rape Crisis Network Ireland has built our expertise from 30 years of advocacy with survivors across Ireland. This week we released our latest rape crisis statistics, telling the story of the survivors who have found their way to a Rape Crisis Centre in Ireland. One of the findings is how long it has taken survivors to be heard, with those abused in early childhood waiting much longer than other survivors of sexual violence before disclosing what happened.
According to RCNI’s survivor statistics, only 1 in 4 of those under the age of 13 when subjected to sexual violence told someone within a year of the abuse. Most waited years before they told someone—44% waited longer than 10 years.
Or, to put it another way, we miss three-quarters of children experiencing sexual abuse, as their distress and trauma passes unnoticed. To prevent sexual violence at an early age, we urgently need to ask not why the child does not tell but why we are not more skilled at noticing.
The survivor bears the burden of silence and the lonely task of survival until a point when they feel safe to tell someone what happened. We refer to this in the sector as "disclosure".
We have long framed disclosure—survivors’ moment of agency—as an action by the survivor but disclosure is as much about the rest of us. How can our actions create a context to assure survivors that it is safe enough to make a disclosure?
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The data reveals not just how to measure patterns of disclosure for survivors, but also our preparedness to listen and to be on the side of survivors. The data tells us we need to improve significantly.
People who are adults now are carrying the trauma of sexual abuse as children for decades and we need to find ways for them to be supported earlier as a matter of urgency.
Early childhood experience of not being heard or believed not only fails the child but can also lead to long silences and vulnerabilities into adulthood which can then be exploited further by perpetrators.
The CSO looked at attitudes and beliefs around sexual violence among adults as well, with questions for the six out of 10 people who have been fortunate enough not to be targeted by a predator for sexual violence. These questions reveal a mixed picture regarding the perceived credibility of survivors of sexual violence and point to challenges for survivors in breaking their silence.
On the positive side, 87% of adults disagreed with the statement "If a person who has been raped is not visibly upset by the experience, it probably was not rape".
However, almost a third of men (31%) were uncertain with the statement "Women often make up or exaggerate reports of rape" compared with a quarter of women (25%).
People of both genders perceived embarrassment as an obstacle for men to break their silence: the majority of men (80%) and women (82%) agreed with the statement "Men may be too embarrassed to say they have been raped". Stigma works in different ways — by judging women who are perceived to make up or exaggerate their trauma, or by silencing male survivors of sexual violence.
Everyone counts when it comes to preventing sexual violence and ensuring we tackle the silences within which perpetrators can hide.
By listening to survivors and letting their voices be heard through surveys like the landmark Sexual Violence Survey, we draw a line whereby all kinds of sexual violence are counted in our official statistics.
This signals a serious intention to take responsibility for and address sexual violence. This commitment moves sexual violence from a simmering silence on the edge of society — but for the occasional breakthrough voices of feminist activists, researchers, and survivors — to become part of our official statistics alongside the likes of quarterly economic performance, accounts for agriculture, and inbound tourism.
It is a way of declaring its eradication an official task of the State.
The publication of the Sexual Violence Survey marks a new era for the prevention of sexual violence on the eve of the founding of the new domestic, sexual, and gender-based violence agency, Cuan.
In 10 years, the CSO will repeat the survey on sexual violence. Between now and then we believe we can and must all collectively transform these numbers by preventing sexual violence.
To do that we must take a fresh look at how silence is something all of us support but victims bear and how we can shift that equation and that burden. This is challenging work for which we need sustained commitment. The clock has been set.
- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.
- Clíona Saidléar is executive director of Rape Crisis Network Ireland
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