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By Sorana Bucseneanu
Warning: This article mentions sexual assault. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, there are resources available in Romania.
“You never screamed for help?”
“Why didn’t you scream?”
“You stayed in the very room where you say you were attacked?”
These are the kind of questions asked by lawyers in the rape case of E. Jean Carroll against the former U.S. President Donald J. Trump. The trial, which took place last spring, aimed to determine whether Mr. Trump was liable for causing physical harm to Ms. Carroll, who accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s. Though she fought back, Ms. Carroll’s reliability was questioned because she did not scream. In Romania, similar myths about rape have led to sexual abusers not being sentenced because the “victim did not put up a fight.” These cases reflect misconceptions about rape, namely that it can only be considered rape if the victim fights back. So, the deeply rooted beliefs and myths about rape have immense power in the courtroom, where victims can be blamed for freezing and not actively resisting against the aggressor. Perpetrators can also claim that the victim was passive and consent was assumed due to lack of resistance, which raises important questions about the necessity of bringing science into the courtroom and education about consent.
According to a report by Centrul Filia, 1 in 4 women in Romania has been physically or sexually abused by a current or former partner. This number is, however, likely to be much higher since many women do not report the abuse due to fear of repercussions, shame, and the prejudices associated with victims and aggressors. Of the women who do end up seeking medical assistance, 70% report being “frozen” during the experience, unable to move, cry out, or fight back.
Neuroscientific evidence counters the problematic idea that survivors are supposed to have screamed or fought back during an assault. For example, a recent review aims to debunk these dangerous myths and challenge the decision-making process in legal cases related to rape. To understand why a victim did not fight, we must consider how humans react when threatened: the response, both neural and behavioral, is influenced by the severity and proximity of the threat and the perceived ability to escape.
So, how does the brain respond to threats?
When we find ourselves in threatening situations, the amygdala, a region of the brain which is responsible for managing emotional responses, among other things, is the first to respond to this stimulus. It receives sensory inputs from ancient subcortical circuits and the association cortex, allowing cognitive factors to modulate threat processing and reduce fear. Following the processing of this emotion, the central nucleus of the amygdala projects to the ventrolateral subdivision of the periaqueductal gray (vlPAG), a crucial brain region in autonomic function, motivated behavior and behavioral responses to threatening stimuli, which can initiate immobility responses crucial for defensive behaviors.
Humans and other vertebrates can react to these threatening stimuli in various ways. On the one hand, they might have a “fight or flight” response when facing a mild threat. On the other hand, when confronted with more severe threats, like being physically restrained, the response can be tonic immobility, where individuals remain motionless in a fixed posture for an extended time or collapse immobility, which involves loss of muscle tone and inability to move. Researchers hypothesize that the brain’s communication pathway linking the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, and the brainstem motor nuclei, which coordinates responses to danger, becomes paralyzed somewhere along that process. This results in a blockage of neuronal circuits that allow for voluntary control over one’s body movements, including immobility during sexual assault.
In legal contexts, understanding involuntary action such as immobility during sexual assault raises questions about voluntariness and legal responsibility, with victims often facing challenges in providing coherent testimonies due to the nature of traumatic memories. Recognition of the trauma’s impact on memory and behavior is crucial to ensuring fair treatment of victims in legal proceedings and highlights the importance of considering scientific evidence in these scenarios. Understanding this brain process can lead to destigmatizing the experiences of survivors and it can counter misconceptions about responses to violence.
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