Dr. Nicole Bedera

There were these safe havens on campus of certain people who the perpetrators would know would not help them.

Those people would help survivors in whatever capacity they could.

But none of those people worked in Title IX.

Which procedural steps most commonly re-traumatize survivors?

Part of why it's hard to answer the question of what's the most traumatic structural issue that's causing the most harm to survivors is that they all cause harm.

I don't know that any of them are more or less traumatic as much as some are more or less visible in the moment.

So a lot of the things that cause survivors trauma are inactions.

I gave the example earlier of filing a report and not realizing that your university won't do anything about a report.

That's a low grade trauma that's taking place every day.

Until the survivor realizes they're ignoring me.

And when they realize, oh, they're ignoring me, they might be sitting looking at their email.

They might be out talking to a friend.

And so it feels more diffuse.

But we don't see a huge amount of difference in terms of the amount of trauma for survivors that are going through these processes based off of how far they got or what did they choose in formal resolution versus an investigation.

We see that it's all traumatic.

But one of the things that makes cross-examination stand out and is so upsetting for survivors in the moment is you have a place to situate that trauma.

That it's such a predictable thing that would cause so much harm.

And unlike all of these other types of institutional betrayals, coming face to face with your perpetrator or being cross-examined in a hostile manner can hinder

hit the survivor all at once to say, I cannot believe I'm in this position.

I cannot believe that this is the way the system is set up.