A recent article focuses on the recent analysis of the Center for Prosecutor Integrity that critiques a trauma-informed report by End Violence Against Women International. Here are some juicy excerpts from the article by Lexi Lonas:
When End Violence Against Women International, known for its Start by Believing campaign, re-released its document on neurobiology of trauma and interviewing techniques, a group that promotes due process in criminal justice was ready to take it apart.
The Center for Prosecutor Integrity published a rebuttal written by two behavioral neuroscientists, Sujeeta Bhatt of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and Susan Brandon, formerly of Yale University’s psychology department.
“The impacts of trauma on memories and recall are widely variable,” the rebuttal reads: It is possible for trauma to cause vivid memories, no memories, distorted memories, or incorrect memories.
This counters the claim of trauma-informed advocates that people who are unable to recall events, or who have inconsistencies in their story, should be evidence that the incident occurred, according to the press release by the center.
“We do not assert that a victim should be treated as if he or she is lying,” but rather, the accuser and accused should be approached in “an unbiased manner,” the rebuttal says.
Bhatt and Brandon found that victims of sexual assault “may be traumatized in ways similar to victims of other kinds of potentially traumatic events,” like domestic abuse:
Examination of studies across these domains did not reveal any evidence to support the notion that victims of potentially traumatic events require interview methods that are different from those that have been shown to be most effective for accounts of events that are presumably not traumatic.
The best way to get an accurate account of the event from a person, Bhatt and Brandon write, “is to create a situation where the individual can best tell their own story, in their own words, and at their own pace.”...
When neurobiology is used to explain inconsistencies and make “victims look more plausible,” she said, it creates another risk of bias: that investigators will expect “victims to exhibit certain symptoms and behaviors.”