PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A PERSON WHO HAS SUFFERED FROM SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Abstract

The article considers the problem of victims of sexual violence today attracts the attention of criminologists, forensic doctors, psychologists and representatives of several other areas of social knowledge. In this regard, the thesis of Sakharov that the decisive role in the etiology of criminal behavior is played not by the social environment, but by the personality, its individual psychophysical qualities and features, is convincing. This applies not only to the perpetrator, but also to the “guilty” person in the moral and ethical aspect, to the behavior of the victim of violence. However, in criminology, rape does not lend itself to serious comprehensive research involving sociology and psychology. The main attention, as a rule, is aimed at studying the situation of violence, the identity of the rapist, the reasons that prompted him to commit a crime. All studies of victims of sexual violence come down to victimology, that is, to the question of how the victim’s behavior and psychological characteristics influenced the development and outcome of the criminal situation. Thus, in criminology research, the prevailing view is on the victim as a secondary participant in events, as an object.

Until recently, domestic studies of post-traumatic stress disorder focused on individuals who became victims of mass disasters (wars, earthquakes). However, an equally important and large-scale problem is the psychological consequences of a unique traumatic experience, such as rape.

Resolving the psychological issues of the victim’s behavior, its personality traits, requires comprehensive analysis with the emphasis on the level of mental adaptation, resistance to frustration, self-esteem and motivational components of the personality, as well as a thorough psychological analysis of the situation. This imposes additional requirements on the expert psychologist: knowledge of the procedural law, procedures for expert research, knowledge of the specific conditions of the preliminary investigation and trial.