‘Every single woman I know – and some men – has a story about sexual assault, whether a “smaller” violation or a devastating one.
‘But what also unites them all is the fact that the majority feel there is no safe space to tell their story without fear of judgment or retaliation.’
This is what motivated Andreea Groenendijk-Deveau to set up Outcry Witness, a website where victims of sexual assault can leave a record of what happened to them, without having to save it in their own diary or computer.
She told Metro the site offers an anonymous space where users can log in, be guided through writing an account of what happened to them, and then click out without it being associated with them elsewhere.
There’s no password reset button, because having notifications sent to your email address could be too risky.
So users will need to remember their user name and password, or lose access completely.
There is no push to report the incident to authorities, but if they ever do, the details remain on file.
Andreea told Metro that just the action of writing down what happened can help people to process and acknowledge what happened to them.
‘Even if they never disclose it to anyone, having a place where their story exists freely, without fear of judgment, offers a sense of catharsis, and that is very powerful,’ she said.
There are two main reasons why it could be helpful for a survivor to use the website, rather than a physical diary or their Google Docs.
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The first is anonymity. In a situation like an abusive relationship, a victim may not have privacy, as their abuser may insist on monitoring access to their personal documents. In this case, if they did have access to the website at one point, for example at work or in the library, they could keep the record and know it was there, with no lasting record on their own computer.
The second, is that the questionaire to fill in is designed to be similar to the questions the police would ask. So even if they will make a formal report, the key information will be preserved should they choose to do so at a later point.
The questions asked
Here are the questions people are asked to fill in after logging into the website. They can fill in as many or as little as they want.
- Where were you when the incident happened?
- When did the incident happen?
- Do you know who committed the attack?
- Who were you with before the incident?
- What happened during the attack? Write down as much detail as you can remember.
- Were there any witnesses to the attack?
- What did you do during the attack?
- Did anyone see you immediately after the attack? Where did you go?
- Did you tell anyone about it? If you did, who was that person/persons?
- Do you know if anyone has any relevant information?
- Is there any physical evidence, or other documentation regarding the incident?
- Do you have any other relevant information?
Each question comes with guidance on how to answer it, and ressurance that this is no ‘right’ way to respond to sexual assault.
For example, alongside the question about when the incident happened, Outcry Witness adds: ‘Consier putting down time, day, date, and year. If there are things you can’t remember, don’t worry. Trauma can have that effect. Just write things to the best of your recollection and that is enough.’
Another website in the US, a website called Callisto aims to do something similar in terms of offering a place to record sex assault, but this time with the aim of connecting victims, in the knowledge that most perpetrators have a pattern of offending.
Outcry Witness will not send testimonies anywhere else, and they cannot even be read by staff at the site, as they are encrypted.
Users are advised not to use identifying information, and to refer to their attackers with their initials only. It is a way for people to process their trauma, and also to prepare for if they ever do want to take it further.
‘In an ideal world, crimes would be reported immediately,’ Andeea said. ‘But we all know that the reality is very different for many survivors. Reporting is a deeply personal choice, and our role is not to push in any direction.’
Instead, the platform offers users the chance to work through questions in a lower stress scenario than an interview room, trying to remember the exact dates and times something occurred, for example. If they ever do decide to report, even months or years later, they can return to their report made closer to the time.
‘In the UK, there is no statute of limitations on serious sexual assault, and the accounts created never expire on the platform,’ Andreea said.
She hopes that working through the questions could also help survivors to feel empowered to speak about what happened to them.
‘We already have a few thousand accounts created – proof that when survivors are given the right space, they choose to use it,’ she said.
Describing sexual violence as ‘endemic’, she said that around 800,000 women raped of sexually assaulted each year in England and Wales, but only one in six who are raped report what happened to police.
Of those that do report, the statistics are not in their favour: last week we reported that only 2.97% of reported rapes resulted in a charge over the last five years.
Outcry Witness worked with Dr Lora Adair at Brunel University on a semi-structured interview study conducted with 30 survivors of sexual violence, looking at whether they would find an anonymous reporting platform helpful.
One participant in the study said having a platform like this could have been ‘huge for me at the time’ because ‘it’s such a lonely experience’: ‘I think there’s such an automatic tendency to just… gaslight yourself about a situation because it would be better if it wasn’t true.’
Another said that putting their experience into words helped them as it made them feel they had more of an understanding of what pursuing legal action would entail.
Commenting on the findings, Dr Adair said the site could ‘enable survivors to understand their own experiences better – many participants reflected that it can be challenging to label your experience as “violence”, “rape”, and/or “assault”.
‘Preparing your own narrative and sharing it, even just on an anonymous platform, likely assists with the self-understanding that is key to healing and resilience.’
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