Search results

Some women who left situations of exploitation falling under the umbrella term of modern slavery in the United Kingdom (UK) are mothers whom I calls survivor mothers in this chapter. Some are determined agents driven to provide better lives for their children. In their journeys after exploitation, they may draw resilience from various resources such as children and survivor communities. The findings in this chapter are based on data collected as part of a broader research project focussing on women’s journeys after exiting exploitation in the UK. Through decolonial feminist methods using a narrative analysis of semi-structured interviews with survivor mothers, I have examined children and survivor communities as resources of resilience in tandem with the structural violence that harms survivor mothers’ capabilities of remodelling life after exploitation. At the same time, I recognise that vulnerability caused by structural violence can drive resistance. By way of resistance, some survivor mothers assert agency. Additionally, I criticise the reductive use of resilience as it often ignores complex structural factors. I conclude that it is impossible to employ resilience uncritically in life after exploitation.

Research has found that African-Americans and women have opportunities for advancement in the traditional corporate environment through resources embedded in their social networks. However, layoffs can affect the composition of their social networks, their positions in the networks, and rewards from those networks. I suggest that the racial, cultural, and gender differences between African-American and women layoff survivors and White and male layoff survivors will negatively affect their access to and benefits from social capital resources. Yet, strong tie relationships with White and male layoff survivors in key strategic positions can help African-American and women survivors maintain their existing job position because they can then borrow the social capital resources of the White and male survivors. Thus, while research has found that weak ties help individuals advance in their workplaces, strong tie relationships with majority groups may be more beneficial to minority groups in maintaining their position after a layoff.

As the means and harms of technology-facilitated violence have become more evident, some governments have taken steps to create or empower centralized bodies with statutory mandates as part of an effort to combat it. This chapter argues that these bodies have the potential to meaningfully further a survivor-centered approach to combatting technology-facilitated violence against women – one that places their experiences, rights, wishes, and needs at its core. It further argues that governments should consider integrating them into a broader holistic response to this conduct.

An overview is provided of the operations of New Zealand's Netsafe, the eSafety Commissioner in Australia, Nova Scotia's Cyberscan Unit, and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection in Manitoba. These types of centralized bodies have demonstrated an ability to advance survivor-centered approaches to technology-facilitated violence against women through direct involvement in resolving instances of violence, education, and research. However, these bodies are not a panacea. This chapter outlines critiques of their operations and the challenges they face in maximizing their effectiveness.

Notwithstanding these challenges and critiques, governments should consider creating such bodies or empowering existing bodies with a statutory mandate as one aspect of a broader response to combatting technology-facilitated violence against women. Some proposed best practices to maximize their effectiveness are identified.

The health industry is rapidly adopting digital services and face-to-face offerings are being replaced by e-services. One example is peer-to-peer survivor networks for cancer patients. This study investigates the virtual exchanges in survivor networks and whether these exchanges are valued for economic, symbolic, or expressive worth. The research seeks to address whether the alleviation of loneliness is possible.

The qualitative work in this study utilizes netnographic explorations and in-depth interviews with cancer survivors, average age 62, to investigate the social exchange continuum in peer-to-peer online patient survivor networks.

This study shows that technological innovations can aid survivorship when the exchanges are meaningful. Meaningful interactions within gift systems are valued for expressive worth and are established upon the notion of selfless gifts where the giver expects nothing in return. For networks to operate via expressiveness, informants must be open and vulnerable to others. Findings show that biographical narratives are useful tools for creating an expressive environment and givers become more giving after engaging in selfless acts. The intangibility and immaterial nature of virtual gifts creates a collective identity and fosters an aggregate extended self.

Implications emphasize the need among survivors of trauma to connect with others. Digital technologies allow connections on a global scale, so survivors can find others with similar needs. Peer-to-peer networks provide a way for survivors to meet, interact with, and extend their aggregate selves through other survivors, while experiencing a transcendent sense that they are part of something bigger than self alone.

Conflict-related sexual violence, primarily affecting women, has become synonymous with the notion that stigmatization and dominant male power relations lead to the suppression of female voices when speaking about their experiences. Yet theories around empowerment argue that the resilience and strength of survivors not only helps them to deal with the harm they have suffered, but also encourages them to become leaders and mobilize others within their communities who have suffered similar fates.

A platform must exist that can facilitate and promote the efforts of survivors who are actively engaged in bringing about change. One means to achieve such a goal is to provide those who have been victimized with a mechanism to connect, share experiences, and engage in advocacy in large groups. SEMA: The Global Network of Victims and Survivors to End Wartime Sexual Violence represents one such platform that supports women in making a change on a number of issues. This chapter will discuss the stigma faced by women and girls, the benefits of a global survivor network that thrives on leadership, and the impact such an initiative may have on reparations.

SEMA and its focus on reparations is both influenced by and influences survivor leaders, who entail a crucial part of decision-making. Through its survivor-led core, SEMA ensures that the voices that can bring about the most change are made central, and the strength of women is reinforced.

The process of knowledge production is usually assigned to scientists who use specific methods to extract knowledge from someone else's experience. Usually this includes collecting, aggregating and interpreting data from an uninvolved point of view; that is, from the outside. This procedure is supposed to guarantee objectivity and generalisation. Many child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors reject such an approach that turns them into objects again. This presents a problem for research because it limits the number and contribution of potential participants and can lead to bias. In self-help groups of CSA survivors, an enormous amount of experiential knowledge accumulates, and sometimes this is transferred into more than only individually valid knowledge. Based on this experience and aiming for more agency of CSA Survivors, a group of adult survivors and researchers developed a new approach to research. It focuses on the development of self-organised research, which enables survivors of sexualised violence to practice research without losing agency. They are indispensable and elementary parts in all phases of the process. This chapter shows one way of formalising this process so quality criteria can be developed and applied. Following the presented approach, evaluation of the presented methods is the appropriate next step because self-help groups give reason to estimate significant outcomes. These outcomes not only enable self-help groups of CSA survivors to incorporate new methods but also include the chance to empower adults, children or youth who have been victims of sexualised violence.

Purpose – To assess how well varied policy initiatives address rape survivors’ difficulties participating in criminal prosecution.

Method – The evaluation takes a victim-centered perspective, rejecting the assumption that retraumatization is a necessary or inevitable by-product of prosecution. It accepts decision-making powers granted to law enforcement and prosecution practitioners to “found,” charge, prosecute, and plead cases, but questions the means adopted to achieve immediate goals. The evaluation considers legislative, procedural, and extra-criminal proposals such as restorative justice (RJ) conferencing and prosecutorial behavior modification. The evaluation draws on empirical investigations of case attrition, law enforcement, and prosecutorial decision-making, interorganizational collaboration in case processing, RJ, and survivors’ experiences with criminal prosecution.

Findings – Many of rape survivors’ difficulties with criminal prosecution stem from legal actors’ lack of knowledge about survivors’ purposes for participation and strategies to maintain ownership of a conflict that has been appropriated by prosecution, the conflicts survivors’ preexisting social relations pose, how lack of information about and experience with courtroom roles and norms produces anxiety and defensive behavioral strategies, and how survivors interpret and experience inconsistent messages about their role in and power over prosecution. The criminal justice process can directly reduce the causes of retraumatization and achieve procedural justice in ways that have positive implications for better substantive outcomes.

Practical implications – Instituting practices accommodating users’ behavioral orientations should increase the perception that reporting and prosecuting are viable options. Following Taslitz (1999), improving the effectiveness of rape survivors’ communication will increase gender equity generally.

This paper aims to examine the use of coproduction to create a film “Do You See Me?”, to amplify the voices of a “hard to reach” group: older lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) victim-survivors of domestic abuse (DA).

Qualitative methods were used as part of the co-production, which included two practitioner focus groups and 14 narrative interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning persons or the community (LGBTQ+) victim-survivors.

Despite differences in gender, sexualities, roles and “lived experiences” across stakeholders, there was a shared aim to ensure victim-survivors had a sense of ownership in this endeavour. Consequently, a positive reciprocity existed that helped to foster effective communication, allow for capacity building and subsequent knowledge exchange. The collaboration produced a nuanced meta-narrative making visible the “lived experiences” of LGB victim-survivors’ perceptions of perpetrator behaviours.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is original in two ways, firstly, providing insights into the “lived experiences” of an invisible group; older LGBTQ+ victim-survivors, and secondly, in involving them in the co-production of a film. The paper aims to reveal how interdependencies that developed between stakeholders helped to disrupt understandings, develop new ways of knowing and build levels of trust. Group interactions helped to dismantle hierarchies, so those with experiential knowledge: the survivors, had greater control throughout the research process. The paper is significant in providing a critical reflection on the ethical, methodological and resource challenges involved in co-production. It also makes recommendations for researchers and funders about the value of using co-production as a method to engage with hard-to-reach groups.