RAPE AS AN ECONOMIC CRIME: FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES FOR SURVIVORS

Rebecca M. Loya, Ph.D. Institute on Assets & Social Policy, Brandeis University

beccaloya@brandeis.edu

University of New Hampshire

April 9, 2015

OVERVIEW • Introduction & background

• Economic effects of sexual assault: • Expenses

• Employment

• Education

• Disparate effects for low-income survivors

• Recovery: • Resources that help prevent the economic spiral

• Policy gaps & recommendations

• Questions & discussion 1

BACKGROUND • Intimate partner violence (IPV) has detrimental effects on

survivors’ employment, earnings, & housing (Adams et al., 2012; Swanberg et al., 2005)

• Relatively little research on economic dimension of Non-IPV sexual violence (SV) & isolated SV

2

Abusers’ repeated violent and controlling

tactics over time

Economic effects of IPV ↓ employment

↓ earnings Housing instability

Isolated sexual violence (e.g., acquaintance

rape) Economic effects?

ISOLATED SEXUAL VIOLENCE

• Rape or sexual assault that is not part of pattern of abuse by an intimate partner • SV committed by non-intimates (e.g., acquaintances or strangers) • SV by intimates that was not part of a pattern of abuse (e.g.,

single rape by otherwise nonviolent partner)

• Isolated sexual violence is common. 18.3% of U.S. women have experienced rape or attempted rape (NISVS, 2010) . Of these:

• Acquaintance: 40.8%

• Stranger: 13.8%

• Intimate partner: 51% % that is not pattern of abuse?

RELATED RESEARCH

3

Financial Costs “Rape tax” = $143,205 per rape

(in 2014 dollars; Miller et al., 1996; Post et al., 2002 )

Sexual Violence Decreased earnings

Young adult survivors earn $6,000 less/year (MacMillan, 2006)

Survivors have lower household income up to 20 years later (Loya, 2012)

Open Question: How does sexual violence affect survivors’ economic wellbeing?

SAMPLE

• 18 rape crisis service providers

• From 7 agencies in 2 NE cities

• Mean years of experience: 11

Provider Sample

Position/ Category n

Lawyer 5

Counselor 5

Advocate 3

Administrator 3

Counselor/ administrator 2

TOTAL 27

4

SAMPLE

• 18 rape crisis service providers

• From 7 agencies in 2 NE cities

• Mean years of experience: 11

• 9 adult, female survivors of isolated SV

• Mean age: 41

• Mean age at 1st assault: 18

• Mean years since most recent assault: 16.8

• Income range: <$15,000 - $105,000+

Survivor Sample

Race/ethnicity n

Black/African 1

Non-Hispanic white 5

Latina (any race) 3

Employment status n Employed 4

Homemaker 2

Unemployed 2

Disabled 1

5

EXPENSES ARISING FROM SV

Expense Providers (n=18)

Survivors (n=9)

Freq (N=27)

Medical care Counseling, medication, emergency room, MD visits

17 9 26

Moving expenses Deposit, first & last months’ rent, transport, fees 17 7 24

Legal expenses Civil legal services, fees, time spent on legal matters

15 1 16

Transportation Transportation to receive services, new costs due to fear

12 3 15

6

EMPLOYMENT CONSEQUENCES

Consequence Providers (n=18)

Survivors (n=9)

Freq (N=27)

Time off 15 7 22 Performance declines 13 4 17 Job loss 16 4 20 Long-term inability to work 9 4 13

7

SALLY’S STORY “I would work with some doctor for a week, and then I could take a few days off, and then I would work somewhere else, and then I could stop, and then I’d work a month somewhere . . . But I felt like I at least had control that I could take a few days off here and there if I needed it, but I knew exactly how much money I needed to earn to live.”

-- Sally, Age 50

8

SV IMPACTS EMPLOYMENT • Employment instability is common

“They lose their jobs more than they quit them. They do quit. Some people go into such a state of depression, they'll quit them. I'm going to say about 90% have employment difficulties. They bounce from job to job, they can't keep a job.” (Counselor)

9

SV IMPACTS EMPLOYMENT • Performance declines: Privacy-accommodation

tension “Particularly if they don’t know what’s going on because for whatever reasons, [the] student or the employee hasn’t wanted to come forward, they’re looked at very differently, and they’re not considered as competent anymore. Something’s going on with them. They’re not as responsible. So I do think that they lose out on a lot of opportunities.” (Administrator)

10

MODEL OF EMPLOYMENT CONSEQUENCES

Sexual Violence

Employment Impacts •Time off •↓ performance •Job loss •Inability to work

Economic Effects •Lost wages •↓ income •↓ earning power •Trajectory shifts

• Trauma response • Mental health • Social response

11

EDUCATIONAL CONSEQUENCES

Consequence Providers (n=18)

Survivors (n=5*)

Freq (N=23)

Performance declines 17 5 22 Time off 15 3 18 Drop out 9 2 11 * 5 survivors were students at the time of their first assault

12

JUANA’S STORY “There were a lot of days where I just didn’t want to go to school, didn’t want to do anything. I just didn’t want to be present. I would just lay in bed with the lights out. That was definitely a negative thing in my life… I didn’t want to be present. I didn’t want to go to classes. I just wanted to stay in bed. I didn’t want to eat.” “Toward the end, I started getting worried, simply because my grade point average was dropping…You had to be above a certain number to continue receiving it [the scholarship].”

-- Juana, Age 28 13

SV IMPACTS EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

• Grades decline in the wake of violence “I have not had a client yet whose grades did not, not just slightly diminish, but markedly diminish. Going from A’s and B’s to D’s and F’s. No doubt. It happens every time. I’ve had clients who want to get to school. They’re anxious to be at school, only realize when they get there that they’re having a difficult time concentrating, focusing. They’re triggering all day long, especially if the assault occurred on campus or the perpetrator remains in school...” (Lawyer)

14

SV IMPACTS EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

• Recovery costs students time & money “If you take two or three weeks off from a class here, I think it’s almost insurmountable to come back from it. I think you wind up having to drop the class... I think the fall is so great. I think that inevitably, I’ve had people sit in that chair that are like, "I haven't been to class in four days," and then that’s it, they just feel like they can’t catch up, because they have the regular work to do, plus now they have to try to catch up with four days of missed work and it’s just too much.” (Advocate)

15

MODEL OF EDUCATIONAL CONSEQUENCES

Sexual Violence

Educational Impacts •Time off •↓ grades •Drop out

Economic Effects •↑ tuition costs •↑ time •Lost scholarships •↓ opportunities •Trajectory shifts

• Trauma response • Mental health • Perpetrator on campus • Institutional/peer response

16

TRAJECTORY SHIFTS

Consequence Providers (n=18)

Survivors (n=9)

Freq (N=27)

Trajectory shift Survivor’s career, education, or earnings pathway shifts markedly from pre-assault due to assault

11 8 19

17

MAJOR TRAJECTORY • Employment or education consequences accumulate

to permanently remove survivors from their pre-assault occupational/earnings path – Usually precipitated by major economic event (job loss, drop out)

– “What typically will happen is okay, you miss 1 to 5days of work. There’s those lost wages, but now you get fired for missing those 1 to 5 days of work, so now you’re out your entire income. So that’s why we do public benefits work. I think that it really spirals. Like I’ve talked to clients, I mean literally who 20 years later after the assault, whose life looks, the trajectory of their life is so totally different than it was the 10 seconds before the rape happened.” (Lawyer)

18

MAJOR TRAJECTORY SHIFT: LEE

19

“I couldn't walk down the streets, because I'd hear the footsteps behind me. And that stayed with me for a couple of years. The certain cadence of footsteps would just trigger a panic, a quiet panic though…But I tried, and I just couldn't go into work. And it was too bad, because it was a great union job, I was making wonderful money. Union benefits, I was actually working on shows that were [in a major theatre], you know, and it was just slam the door shut. I couldn't do it.” “This [rape] was a big, huge redefining moment…But you know what, economically, it really did. It changed all the rules. It changed my life….”

-- Lee, age 54

MODERATE TRAJECTORY SHIFTS (DELAYS) • Changes to educational or employment path

from which survivors eventually recover to their prior level of economic wellbeing – “[My client] was going to apply for graduate school and after

the assault decided to take another year… She got a fairly low-paying job and paid her bills…and then did some healing and then went to graduate school and finished graduate school and now makes a decent amount of money . . . It was in fact a very psychologically healthy choice, but economically, over the span of her life, one of her thirty-whatever years of being able to be a highly paid professional was taken away from her.” (Counselor)

20

MODERATE TRAJECTORY SHIFT: SALLY It's the experience of feeling like it just destroyed my life. You know, I really thought I was going to be working temp forever, at the time. And I thought, "My God!" I was Most Likely to Succeed in high school and valedictorian, and when I went to [a private university] and did extremely well and really thought, “Well, I'll, you know…I'll go to graduate school, and maybe I'll get a PhD...” I had friends who were like 22 and 23, deciding to− probably too soon− to go to law school. And my best friend went to [a university] to get a Ph.D. in history one year out of school. So, people were all kind of moving on, and I thought, "My God, I'm a secretary in the medical area of [the city]. This is what my life's going to be." And it really felt like it had destroyed my life.

– Sally, Age 50 21

LOW-INCOME SURVIVORS ARE VULNERABLE TO MAJOR TRAJECTORY SHIFTS

22

Higher Income/ Salaried workers

Low-income/ Hourly

workers

Paid time off ✔

Health insurance ✔

Savings/budget for new expenses ✔

Financial assistance from family/friends ✔

Risk job loss with time off ✔

Risk homelessness with job loss ✔

23

“The clients that work in the food industry or housekeeping… where you’re not a salaried employee…they usually don’t have much in terms of savings, and they are in jobs where if they don’t show up, they don’t get paid. Maybe they can take two weeks off, but that means they’re not going to get paid those two weeks. So that pretty quickly affects someone’s ability to pay their rent and pay their utility bills and buy food and take care of their kids. And then that also affects them emotionally… I’ve seen a lot of clients in that position really sink into a depression, where even if they could go back to work, they weren't in a position to…And unfortunately, I think those are the clients that are always in danger of becoming homeless…because they didn’t have that much to begin with.” (Administrator)

LOW INCOME SURVIVORS ARE AT RISK FOR TRAJECTORY SHIFTS

LIL’ MISS’ STORY

“I got the general relief, got Social Security. Social Security, being on Disability, allowed me to get low-income housing in the handicapped disability buildings. That foundation allowed me to go back to school. So, all of this time, so basically from '92 until now, I’ve been on Disability, and that’s below the poverty line and I’ve been living on that.”

--Lil’ Miss, survivor, age 51

24

HOW TO PREVENT TRAJECTORY SHIFTS?

• Affordable & timely rape crisis services • Financial resources: Liquid assets • Financial assistance from family & friends • Public policies

25

AFFORDABLE & TIMELY SERVICES AID RECOVERY

• Services: Counseling, legal advocacy, case management

• “What we try to do is keep them on that original path as much as possible, because that original path is probably going to lead them closer to the success they had planned for themselves than trying to veer off and take an alternate course, which likely isn’t well thought out, is done in a place of trauma or depression or anxiety, a knee-jerk reaction, just trying to put food on the table.” (Lawyer)

• “People that don’t have the support or didn’t have the support are coming years later. Those are the people we may see on SSDI, that had, you know, 15 menial jobs and bounced from place to place to place.” (Counselor)

26

PERSONAL FINANCIAL RESOURCES AID RECOVERY • Liquid assets: Savings, stocks, bonds “It makes all the difference if they have it [savings] or if they don’t have it. If they have it, then they are still going to be dealing with all of those same issues, but they have that cushion there. So if they need to leave their job and take a few months, then maybe they can do that and get back up on their feet enough so that they can start a new job and feel comfortable doing that.

If they don’t have that cushion, then they need to force themselves to go to work when they’re not feeling capable of doing that. Or if they do lose their job or have to quit their job, then they’re definitely in danger of becoming homeless and incurring a lot of debt because they don’t have anywhere to turn and any way to protect themselves and give themselves the time that they need to get back on their feet.” (Administrator)

27

KIN FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE AIDS RECOVERY

• Financial help from family & friends: Help paying bills, providing housing

“It provides them with money, but I also think there is this way of people giving back to them. Somebody took stuff away and there is this real [effect] . . . but it’s [also] symbolic—seeing those people are there for you when you’re at your lowest point. So, I think it’s money, and it’s really helpful. And I think it’s also—it probably is [as] good as any intervention. It’s just like, ‘Okay, people care enough to provide me with support.’” (Counselor/administrator)

28

PUBLIC POLICIES

• Policies can facilitate economic recovery: – Access to affordable, confidential rape crisis

services – Financial assistance for survivors

29

MODEL OF ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES

Sexual Violence

Intermediate Consequences

Economic Impacts & Costs

Mental & physical health effects

Residential relocation

Decreased earning power

Medical & counseling bills

Lost wages

Moving expenses

Employment disruption, time off

Educational disruption

30

POLICY GAPS: EDUCATION • Title IX requires schools to protect survivors of

sexual assault • Despite Title IX policies:

– Survivors often asked to move residences or change classes

– Tuition is generally not refunded

31

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: EDUCATION • Enforce/apply Title IX

– Minimize the burden on the complainant Immediately address safety needs Do not unilaterally remove survivors from classes

or housing – Accommodate survivors’ needs, including allowing them

to “re-take a course or withdraw from a class without penalty”

Refund tuition to avoid financial penalty

Ali, 2011, “Dear Colleague Letter”

32

POLICY GAPS: MEDICAL COSTS

• Victim Compensation (VC): Covers expenses related to crime victimization

• Barriers to accessing VC • In some states/localities medical bills are sent to survivor,

who must apply for VC • Most states require police report to access full VC

benefits– leaving out majority of survivors by default • Poor survivors cannot afford to pay up front and await

reimbursement

33

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: MEDICAL COSTS

• Create federal guidelines that prohibit medical bills related to forensic sexual assault exam being sent to survivors

• Expand access to Victim Compensation • Accept forensic exam in lieu of police report for all

expenses • Accept affirmation from rape crisis counselors or mental

health providers in lieu of police report • Create emergency VC funds in all state

34

POLICY GAPS: EMPLOYMENT

• Unemployment Insurance: Most states cover IPV survivors, but 41 states do not cover non-IPV SV survivors

35

Legal Momentum (2004, 2011)

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: EMPLOYMENT

● Expand Unemployment Insurance to cover non-IPV sexual assault survivors in all states

36

POLICY GAPS: HOUSING • SV survivors face barriers to shelter & housing

o In 45 states, Victim Compensation does not cover housing/moving

o In most state public housing, survivors can be penalized for breaking a lease & can be evicted

o Non-IPV SV survivors are often turned away from shelter

o It is difficult for non-IPV SV survivors to get “priority” status for public housing

37 Legal Momentum (2010)

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS: HOUSING ● All state Victim Comp programs should cover moving &

housing expenses (as New Hampshire does)

● Create VAWA-style protections in state & private housing in all states

● Raise awareness of the safety needs of non-IPV survivors.

● Increase supply of shelter beds/subsidized housing

38

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS Policy Area Recommendations

Education • Enforce Title IX protections • Apply Title IX to reimburse tuition & fees

Medical costs • Federal guidelines on medical bills for evidence kit • Improve access to Victim Comp

Employment • Expand Unemployment Insurance to cover non-IPV sexual assault survivors in all states

Housing • Cover moving/housing expenses under Victim Comp in all states

• Create housing protections in state & private housing • Raise awareness of safety & housing needs of non-IPV

SV survivors • Increase supply of shelter beds

39

QUESTIONS?

40