Discounting Women: Doubting Domestic Violence Survivors' Credibility and Dismissing Their Experiences

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dc.contributor.authorEpstein, Deborah
dc.contributor.authorGoodman, Lisa
dc.date.accessioned2019-04-30T20:17:19Z
dc.date.available2019-04-30T20:17:19Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.description.abstractIn recent months, we’ve seen an unprecedented wave of testimonials about the serious harms women all too frequently endure. The #MeToo moment, the #WhyIStayed campaign, and the Larry Nassar sentencing hearings have raised public awareness not only about workplace harassment, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, but also about how routinely women survivors face a Gaslight-style gauntlet of doubt, disbelief, and outright dismissal of their stories. This pattern is particularly disturbing in the justice system, where women face a legal twilight zone: laws meant to protect them and deter further abuse often fail to achieve their purpose, because women telling stories of abuse by their male partners are simply not believed. To fully grasp the nature of this new moment in gendered power relations—and to cement the significant gains won by these public campaigns—we need to take a full, considered look at when, how, and why the justice system and other key social institutions discount women’s credibility. We use the lens of intimate partner violence to examine the ways in which women’s credibility is discounted in a range of legal and social service system settings. First, judges and others improperly discount as implausible women’s stories of abuse, based on a failure to understand both the symptoms arising from neurological and psychological trauma, and the practical constraints on survivors’ lives. Second, gatekeepers unjustly discount women’s personal trustworthiness, based on both inaccurate interpretations of survivors’ courtroom demeanor and negative cultural stereotypes about women and their motivations for seeking assistance. Moreover, even when a woman manages to overcome all the initial modes of institutional skepticism that minimize her account of abuse, she often finds that the systems designed to furnish her with help and protection dismiss the importance of her experiences. Instead, all too often, the arbiters of justice and social welfare adopt and enforce legal and social policies and practices with little regard for how they perpetuate patterns of abuse. Two distinct harms arise from this pervasive pattern of credibility discounting and experiential dismissal. First, the discrediting of survivors constitutes its own psychic injury—an institutional betrayal that echoes the psychological abuse women suffer at the hands of individual perpetrators. Second, the pronounced, nearly instinctive penchant for devaluing women’s testimony is so deeply embedded within survivors’ experience that it becomes a potent, independent obstacle to their efforts to obtain safety and justice. (Author Text)en_US
dc.identifier.citationEpstein, Deborah; Goodman, Lisa. (2019). Discounting Women: Doubting Domestic Violence Survivors' Credibility and Dismissing Their Experiences. University of Pennsylvania Law Review: 167(2), 399-461.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.pennlawreview.com/print/167-U-Pa-L-Rev-399.pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11990/1270
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Pennsylvaniaen_US
dc.subjectLegal Analysisen_US
dc.subjectCriminal Justiceen_US
dc.subjectGender-based Violenceen_US
dc.subjectGender-based Discriminationen_US
dc.subjectGender-based Crimeen_US
dc.subjectViolence Against Womenen_US
dc.subjectVictim Movementsen_US
dc.subject#MeTooen_US
dc.subjectIntimate Partner Violenceen_US
dc.subjectDomestic Violenceen_US
dc.subjectCourtsen_US
dc.subjectBelieving Victimsen_US
dc.subjectVictim Blamingen_US
dc.subjectPartner Abuseen_US
dc.subjectSpouse Abuseen_US
dc.subjectDating Violenceen_US
dc.subjectSexual Harassmenten_US
dc.subjectCredibilityen_US
dc.subjectTraumaen_US
dc.subjectInstitutional Violenceen_US
dc.subjectSex-based Discriminationen_US
dc.subjectPsychological Consequencesen_US
dc.subjectNeurological Traumaen_US
dc.subjectBarriers to Reportingen_US
dc.subjectBarriers to Serviceen_US
dc.subjectLegal Harmsen_US
dc.subjectJudgesen_US
dc.subjectAttorneyen_US
dc.titleDiscounting Women: Doubting Domestic Violence Survivors' Credibility and Dismissing Their Experiencesen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
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