Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

When Domestic Violence Victims Are Sexually Assaulted 185
after you have established rapport with your client and demonstrated that you are
not going to judge or second-guess her. You should pose factual, non-conclusory,
open-ended questions. Rather than asking if her abuser raped her, a question that
hinges on how she defines rape, you should ask if her abuser has ever hurt her
during sex, if she has ever had sex when she didn’t want to, if the abuser used
threats or force to get her to have sex, or if sex was part of one of the incidents
of abuse she has already described. You might show her the Power and Control
Wheel, 20 a device domestic violence advocates often use in interviewing clients,
and ask your questions following the spokes of the wheel so that the client can
see the sexual abuse in relation to the other kinds of abuse. The Power and
Control Wheel will also help her understand that sexual abuse is a common
manifestation of domestic violence and that she is not alone. You also should be
prepared to assist her in processing the experience of sexual abuse, not by
taking an active counseling role yourself, but by making a referral to a trained
social worker or a rape crisis center.
As part of your interview, you should ask whether your client’s abuser used
pornography and whether he made her perform acts depicted in pornographic
pictures or videos. The use of pornography in intimate partner rapes is fairly
common, and it is often associated with the most brutal and sadistic intimate
partner sexual violence. 21 You should find out whether her abuser took pictures
or videos of her in sexual poses or involved in sexual acts, since these may be
used against her. You should also ask if he made her have sex with other people
— friends or paying customers.
Sexual Abuse in Civil Litigation
Although you may want, or feel you need, to use information about sexual
abuse in the course of representing your client, your client may disagree with
you. To help her understand and perhaps endorse the litigation strategy you think
best, you should explain how and why the incidents of sexual abuse are important
to her case and assure her that you know that she was not to blame for wrongs
that were done to her. You cannot, however, promise that everyone will share
your views, and you should prepare her for challenges to her credibility. In the
end, the choice about using the sexual abuse in the litigation has to be hers.
If your client is willing to address acts of sexual violence in litigation, they
can become part of the narrative you tell to explain the injuries to your client,
her actions, and her need for protection. You should consider including facts of
the sexual abuse in a Family Court petition for an order of protection, even
though rape is not one of the enumerated crimes that constitute a family offense.