Victim voices

“Why don’t they fight? Why don’t they struggle? Why don’t they scream? It’s all to do with how our brain is set up.”

Zoe Lodrick is giving a talk to social workers, police officers and others who work with children and vulnerable people at Durham Constabulary’s Newby Wiske headquarters, for a training event organised by the police force.

Zoe is a psychotherapist whose knowledge of what happens in the minds of sexual offenders and the behaviour of their victims is very, very much in demand.

Over the past few years she has drafted in by police forces, criminal justice organisations, domestic abuse organisations and courts up and down the country who find themselves dealing with victims of sexual or domestic abuse.

Part of her help involves explaining how our brains are wired up to respond in a certain way when faced with danger.

When faced with an immediate threat, a primordial part of the brain takes over - the amygdala - which is responsible for our survival.

It is pre-programmed to respond with five “fear responses”; diffusing the situation by being friendly, or the “fight or flight” responses.

But lesser known is the fact the brain will also resort to “freeze” and then “flop”, where muscular tension falls away to protect the body from impact or being killed.

“When someone is faced with immediate physical danger, the fight or flight responses are the most likely to result in them being assaulted and injured. And so the amygdala moves on to the next response, which is “freeze”,” she explains to her audience.

“Once the amygdala detects a threat, it doesn’t consider, “is the way you react going to cause you shame in the future? Is the way you’re going to react going to cause you problems when you try and explain yourself to a police officer or a jury?”

“It’s not a problem for the amygdala. All it cares about is right here, right now in this second, so that hopefully you will live until the next second and then deal with all that.”

She says this is why serial sexual abusers are able to target the same victims again and again, something that has typified many recent high profile court cases that resulted in a conviction. It also explains why victims often feel burdened with guilt at their reaction.

“When I see a spider my amygdala will make me freeze. Afterwards it will consider that reaction; am I still physically sound? Yes. Am I still here? Yes. Then that is a successful reaction. That reaction becomes habitual.

“If someone is abused they are very, very likely to become a victim again.”

Reconciling the public persona of Rolf Harris – kind, charismatic and charming - with the sex offender who brought misery on his victims has made news of his crimes all the more shocking.

Stuart Hall and Jimmy Savile were also powerfully charismatic people who used charm and the fame it brought them to sexually exploit those unfortunate enough to come into contact with them. But highly evolved social skills are what typifies this kind of offender.

“Sexual offenders in the main are very, very socially skilled,” explains Zoe.

“If you walk around looking creepy and sleazy you don’t get to isolate people or commit sexual crime.

“There’s this myth that all sexual offenders are a little bit odd and a little bit creepy. It’s a problem. How on earth are people to recognise the very socially skilled, the very confident, competent person we meet is a sexual offender?”

Zoe has helped Durham Constabulary with Operation Seabrook, a major investigation into allegations of abuse at Medomsley Detention Centre near Consett. More than 500 people have reported being systematically abused physically, mentally and sexually while being detained there in the 1970s and 80s.

Detective Superintendent Paul Goundry, who is leading the inquiry, said helping victims understand their reaction to the horrific abuse was human survival in action, has helped many of them put their experience in context.

“When we started off with our original 130 victims - before further victims came forward - we started to get feedback from them.

“They were kicking themselves – they had been 17 to 18-years-old at the time and were now adult men with families of their own and couldn’t come to terms with why they didn’t fight back and stop it happening. That became a consistent theme.

“They never told anybody about it. They can’t get over the fact that they had never fought back, yet they wouldn’t fight back.

“It wasn’t an option for a vulnerable kid taken away from his family, put in a place where he knows no one and put in a position where the people in authority are abusing them physically and mentally. So Zoe has put that in some kind of context for them.”

Chief Constable of Durham Constabularly, Mike Barton said: “The vast majority of our cops are now trained in the reaction of the brain and how people react in domestic violence and sexual abuse.

“We’re still working with the criminal justice process and getting people to understand that just because a victim is compliant doesn’t mean to say that they’ve agreed to the assault or the abuse taking place.

“It’s still a myth out there that they’re busting.”

Speaking after her talk, Zoe said she was heartened by the number of victims of historic sexual abuse who were now coming forward nationally, but said the overwhelming majority of victims never come forward. Conviction rates remain worryingly low.

But have the recent high profile cases changed things for good for victims?

“Savile has changed the landscape but you do find these moments in history where victims are encouraged to come forward and are being believed,” she said.

“But these moments are relatively short compared with the many, many years and decades of victims being silenced that follow. I hope history is about to change, although I suspect it isn’t.”