Symposium—Beyond Prosecution: Sexual Assault Victim’s Rights in Theory and Practice Symposium
I begin this Article with a confession. In my thirty years of legal practice, I have never provided any civil legal services to a rape victim who was not also a victim of intimate partner violence. Although many of my clients have been sexually assaulted and physically abused, I have provided no services to the majority of these female rape victims. They are the women and girls who have been sexually assaulted by strangers or, more often, by acquaintances, friends, fellow students, and co-workers with whom they have never been in a substantial romantic relationship. These rape victims are my invisible clients.
Although I am old enough to have been involved in legal services and clinical law teaching during its early and (some would say) more activist years, I never questioned why victims of stranger-rape, or rape by casual acquaintances, were not among our clients. Nor did I consider including these victims when I developed my own civil legal services programs for survivors of domestic violence. Like many attorneys specializing in domestic violence, I defined my clientele using the phrase victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. In practice, I never sought to provide services to victims of nonintimate partner rape. . . .