Revictimisation via Informal Disclosure: Understanding How Family, Friend, and Partner Responses Can Harm Victim-Survivors of Sexual Violence

Despite disclosure research often focusing on formal disclosures (e.g. to the police), evidence suggests that informal disclosure is more common. Prior research has examined the impact of informal disclosures of sexual violence (SV), though understanding is still limited, particularly in the United Kingdom context. This research aims to explore the impact of “negative” informal disclosure responses, from the perspective of the victim-survivor, ultimately arguing that responses are often harmful rather than negative. This was particularly salient for minoritised victim-survivors. This study provides a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 31 victim-survivors of SV (including child sexual abuse, rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse), exploring the deleterious impact of informal disclosure responses over life-course. A range of harmful responses were experienced, including feeling: victimisation was minimised, blamed, doubted, controlled, and infantilised, as well as disclosure respondents engaging in emotional outburst. Although rape myth acceptance is often used to explain such responses, this study demonstrates the importance of also considering disclosure myths, as well as how these myths intersect with discriminatory attitudes such as racism and ableism. Furthermore, whilst the concept of revictimisation is often discussed in relation to formal disclosure experiences, this study illustrates the potentially revictimising impact of informal disclosure experiences. The implications of these findings are discussed.