Victim confidentiality on sexual assault response teams (SART)

The purpose of this study is to examine how professionals and paraprofessionals involved with a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) understand and navigate different professional statutory requirements for victim confidentiality. Telephone surveys are conducted with 78 professionals: medical (27.8%), criminal justice (44.3%), and victim advocacy (27.8%). The majority of participants (58.2%) disagree with the statement that maintaining victim confidentiality posed a challenge to coordination on SART, 10.1% were neutral, and 31.7% agreed with the statement. Significantly more victim advocates than criminal justice and medical professionals perceive that maintaining victim confidentiality posed a challenge to coordination on SART. Consensus on how best to conceptualize victim confidentiality within SART has not been attained. Findings show that not all criminal justice and medical professionals understood the statutory provision of privilege to communications between rape crisis victim advocates and victims. Implications for practice and research are discussed.