Book Review: Missoula – Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer is an investigative journalist who likes to embed himself in a situation to delve into the intricacies of a situation or experience.  In Missoula, Mr. Krakauer goes to Missoula, Montana to investigate the many systems and personalities that become involved when a rape allegation is made on a college campus.  I have heard interviews with Mr. Krakauer and he has stated that Missoula is not atypical.  He did not pick Missoula because it was different but because it was so similar to other college towns across the nation.

Jon does not leave any stone unturned in telling the stories of rape allegations in this college town that treats its football players as celebrities and heroes, granting the players a sense of entitlement that extends to the women who attend the college.  Mr. Krakauer interviews victims and family members and has access to interviews with the alleged rapists.  He also delves into the criminal justice system and campus investigative process and delineates how the allegations are handled differently in each setting. He is also explicitly describes the judicial process and how defense attorneys and prosecutors are often so concerned with winning that the victims and perpetrators often become pawns in the process, leaving victims to experience more trauma during and after the plea and/or trial process.

Jon Krakauer researched the impact of trauma on victims and is able to incorporate the work of Judith Herman, a clinical professor at Harvard and author of Trauma and Recovery, an important work on interpersonal violence and the trauma that occurs.  David Lisak, an expert on serial rapists and college sexual assault, is an expert witness for one of the trials in Missoula and Mr. Krakauer pulls from his research and expert testimony in order to describe the intricacies of understanding sexual assault.

Jon Krakauer’s greatest message in this book is that the refusal to hold perpetrators accountable is their greatest weapon and the justice systems’ greatest failure. 

Empowerment and Success

The term “empowerment model” has long been the term used to describe how advocates work with domestic violence survivors.   It is the understanding that only the victim/survivor can be the expert on their life. Advocates provide information, support, resources and education so that victims can make the best choices possible to become safe and self-reliant.  We strongly believe that empowerment is not something we give to the survivor.  Instead, it is something that is intrinsic to the survivor and it is our task to help the person find and expand their personal power.

When a woman comes to a crisis center for assistance in changing her life, she is often unaware that she has any power at all in her life.  Through the use of power and control, the abuser has diminished her belief in herself and her capacity for growth.

If we truly believe that empowerment is something that exists within each person, what then is the role of the advocate?  In the same way that a sapling has the capacity within to become a full grown tree, a survivor contains the capacity to be a strong woman.  However, without proper nourishment and support, that sapling may struggle and be less protected from the elements.  The job of the advocate is to provide the support, resources and education to encourage the growth of the individual into a woman who has power and control over her life. 

Support takes different forms during the progression from being under the power and control of the abuser to being in control of one’s own life.  When we plant a seedling, we may provide ground stakes and support lines to help the tree stand tall until its root system has expanded deep into the soil and taken hold.  Later, we slowly loosen that support as the tree is ready to stand on its own.  Too often we worry about disempowering a woman and remove the support too early or we smother her for fear that she may make a decision that will harm her or her children. 

In many ways, our definition of success has changed over the years.  The definition of success has increasingly been defined by funders so that we are mandated to worry more about moving a person along quickly to find transitional or permanent housing, a job, etc., rather than focusing on Judith Herman’s (see Trauma and Recovery) first stage of recovery from trauma – safety and stabilization.  This is not to say that housing and employment are not valuable and necessary.  However, we tend to lose focus on the need to allow time for the person to feel safe and stable enough to be able to reduce her trauma responses and make informed rational decisions rather than emotional reactive decisions.

Because of the need to provide good outcomes to funders or other interested parties (or for other reasons), we may find ourselves looking at a person who is seeking shelter or other supports and asking “will this person be successful in our program?”  The question we should be asking is “do we have what this person needs to be successful and, if not, can we find the resources to provide it?”  Even if the resources the person may seem to need (i.e. mental health, substance abuse, housing, etc.) are not initially available, are we able to provide the support the person needs in order to feel safe and stable? Assumptions made at the start of a person’s contact with a program about her capacity for success can be self-fulfilling prophecies.  Which outcome would you rather assume?

It also becomes imperative that we take a look at our definition of success.  If success means a linear progression from abuse to safety to independence, we may be setting ourselves up for perceived failure.  Understanding that success may be more of a process of small successes and setbacks rather than a straight shot to a successful event can lessen the pressure we place on a trauma survivor and reduce our own burn out and compassion fatigue. 

When I was first working as a shelter director back in the mid 90’s there was a woman, Bonnie, in the program who had come to us seeking shelter and an opportunity to engage in substance abuse services.  She was 43 years old and had been drinking steadily since the age of 13 and had been victimized as a child and an adult.  She stayed in the shelter for three months and then left on her own.  At first I felt that not only had she failed at maintaining her sobriety and safety, but that we had failed her.  Fortunately, my mentor at that time reminded me that we had given Bonnie three months of safety, sobriety and community that she had never experienced before.  It was not the success I was hoping for, but it was a success none-the-less.  Many people would have looked at Bonnie’s history and judged her as being at risk of failing the program.  However, Bonnie left the program with more information than she had when she came in.  She also knew she could return at any time. 

Trauma survivors are also very tuned into our attitudes and expectations.  If a trauma survivors senses that we are unable to see them as individuals capable of success, they will meet those expectations or fight against them. It is important that we find ways to take care of ourselves and challenge our own assumptions about people so that we can reflect an attitude of support and an expectation of success that supports rather than questions a survivor’s abilities. 

Trauma and Relationship

Often, when I am consulting with advocates about working with a domestic violence or sexual assault survivor who has complex needs, an advocate will state that he/she is not trained or equipped to work with a survivor who has mental health issues. An advocate may feel that only a person who is trained in one of the alphabet interventions (EMDR, DBT, CBT, TF-CBT, etc.) has the skills necessary to provide what the survivor needs. Fortunately, the field of counseling/psychology is learning what grass roots advocates have known for years. It is the quality of the relationship between the survivor and the counselor/advocate that determines the person’s satisfaction with the intervention or contact.

Back in the 1950s and 60s Carl Rogers developed humanistic psychology and was considered to be at the forefront of understanding the need to develop therapeutic relationships. Here are the tenants of humanistic or client centered therapy as outlined in Rogers’ books Client Centered Therapy and On Becoming a Person:

The therapeutic relationship consists of a non-judgmental attitude, mutual respect, empathy, and unconditional positive regard.
The client has the answers.
The therapist’s job is to lead the client toward this self-knowledge.
The therapist’s opinion is unimportant.

Do these sound familiar? They should. They are the basics of empowerment based advocacy.

Carl Rogers’ work was well-respected until the mid 1990s when managed care companies began to require the use of evidence based interventions with measurable outcomes that could be a part of brief therapy (usually 6-8 sessions). Since it is difficult to measure attitudes and the value of a therapeutic relationship that develop over time, Rogers’ theories were set aside. Unfortunately, these new evidence based interventions did not necessarily meet the needs of clients and many dropped out of treatment.

Barry Duncan and Scott Miller, co-founders of the Institute for the Study of Therapeutic Change have authored and edited numerous professional articles and books. They have done research over 40 years to determine what really matters in the day to day work of a therapist and found the following:

The client's view of the relationship [with the therapist] is the 'trump card' in therapy outcome... Clients who rate the relationship highly are very likely to be successful in achieving their goals. Despite how chronic, intractable or 'impossible' a case may appear, if the client's view of the relationship is favorable, change is more likely to occur." From The Heart and Soul of Change: What Works in Therapy by Mark Hubble, Barry Duncan and Scott Miller.

In Judith Herman, M.D.’s book Trauma and Recovery, she outlines three stages of recovery from trauma – safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection. Advocates provide the safe place for all three stages. Advocates provide the means for a victim to obtain safety if she chooses and creates the safe relationship within the survivor can tell her story and reconnect and develop a trusting relationship. This does not need to be done through the use of evidence based interventions. It just takes being willing to connect and maintain a safe and trusting relationship.

What about someone with severe mental illness? In the community mental health system, the person who has the most contact with a person with a severe and persistent mental illness (the persons whom most advocates seem to feel unprepared to work with) is the client’s mental health case manager. In my experience as a case manager supervisor I found it was not what interventions that were used in working with a client, it was the relationship of trust and respect, non-judgment, and positive regard that predicted success for the person with the mental illness. Case managers are not necessarily trained therapists. Most have the same education and training as domestic violence advocates. They meet with persons with paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis in the clients’ homes and assist them in managing their daily lives. They may have some basic knowledge of an evidence based practice such as DBT (dialectical behavior therapy), but it is the quality of the relationship that is the basis for success as defined by the client.