Tag Archives: #TonicImmobility

Changing Laws!

“The NY Times” on Tonic Immobility- Why do sex crime victims freeze?

On July 22, 2023, The NY Times published an in-depth article, What People Misunderstand about Rape, by Jen Percy, addressing tonic immobility. She had interviewed CAN’s CEO, Joyce Short, in her research, who had written a post on this issue in 2014, and included a brief statement regarding her individual case. Ms. Percy’s insight laid bare the flagrant and direct conflict between the science of the victim’s response versus how our penal laws treat victims.

Joyce’s “freeze” reaction in her personal case was aligned with so many victims who were terrorized; fearing bodily injury or even death during the attack.

Penal laws are blind to the automatic and subconscious responses a victim’s brain will make in order to preserve their life. Their freezing and fawning reactions are treated by investigators as “acquiescing,” a reasoned, non-automatic response. While acquiescing is a conscious decision, freezing and fawning result from surges of the neuropeptides and hormones that terror triggers in the brain. But even acquiescing, agreeing under duress, does not constitute consent.

Consent is a form of agreement that must be freely given, not violently forced or coerced, knowledgeable and informed, not deceived or defrauded, and must not result from exploiting incapacity.  

Involuntary, reflexive reactions to inescapable danger produce self-blame in victims who question their own inability to fight back or why they stopped resisting.

Both freezing and fawning directly result from the brain snapping into a protective mode by amping up the hormones and neuropeptides that control bodily and brain functions immediately when the amygdala senses an extreme threat.

  • In tonic immobility, the brain causes motor inhibition, a state of paralysis.
  • “Fawning” is the brain’s way of “going along to get along” when facing death or intense terror.

While Joyce stated that she did not feel paralyzed, she knew that resisting was putting her life at great risk. Her attacker pushed his forearm into her neck cutting off her airway, causing her freeze response.

Many states and jurisdictions have penal laws that base “consent” on the words or actions of the victim at the time they were terrorized. This “Yes means Yes” concept is misguided, blaming victims for their reactions which could be automatic, involuntary responses, assent, or acquiescence…. none of which are consent.

Archaic victim blaming has been embedded in penal laws for generations and determines how juries decide whether or not the complainant consented. Instead of focusing on causation – what did the accused do to secure the victim’s compliance – their rulings are based on what victims say and do under terrorizing conditions.

How can we change this grotesque injustice?

Ms. Percy’s article goes a long way to explain the phenomenon of freezing, but society needs to take the next step……..

By correctly defining consent in our laws as “freely given, knowledgeable and informed agreement, by a person with the capacity to reason.” #FGKIA, we turn our human right of consent into a powerful civil right backed by law. This definition will protect against rape, all sex crimes, and disrupt victim-blaming and shaming. 

Another trending trope, “Enthusiastic Yes,” strips people of their First Amendment right of free speech, right in the privacy of their bedrooms.

CAN not only fights for legislative changes, but also addresses the harm caused by misinformed “consent educators” who sell “consent” education materials and profit from books, speeches, and trainings that promote “Yes Means Yes,’’ “No Means No,” and “Enthusiastic Yes.”

Malicious influence by the offender, not the reactions of their victims, should determine whether or not consent took place. We need our laws to get this right.  

Watch the TEDx Talk. When YES Means NO, the Truth about Consent, to get the facts

Join CAN’s mission to change our laws by tapping “Become a ‘Consent Crusader.’”

Read Your Consent – The Key to Conquering Sexual Assault, Revised Edition to save you, your children, and generations to come from sex crimes

© Copyright, 2023, USA, Consent Awareness Network. All rights reserved, Do not duplicate.

Changing Laws!

Fight, Flight, or “Freeze” Tonic Immobility

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A victim’s reaction to trauma

sad woman-2

You awake to a very large, strong man covering your mouth with one hand, making it difficult to breathe, let alone scream. In the other hand, he’s clenching a knife millimeters from your face. Terror seizes your entire body and you react…. but how?

Fight or flight is the response society expects in violent attacks. Your amygdala springs into action engaging with your hypothalamus and pituitary, instantly flooding you with hormones to protect your sustainability:

  • Adrenalin arouses you to your circumstance.
  • Cortisol provides you with uncommon energy.
  • Opioids act like morphine to temporarily blind you to your pain.
  • Oxytocin attempts to stabilize your emotions.

Totally apart from your conscious control, you may be like millions of sexual assault survivors who freeze, some in a form of temporary paralysis called tonic immobility, and others in an effort to “go along to get along” known as fawning. It is estimated that as many as 50% of rape victims will respond by freezing.

The impacts of neurology on seeking justice

Our current laws labor under the misconception that victims will either fight with all their might to fend off brutality, or do everything in their power to free themselves. Absent evidence of doing either or both, police assume that the victim’s crime report is a lie. Approximately 86% of rapes, even those supported by a rape kit, do not make their way from the intake officer to the Prosecutor for this reason. Yet data reported by the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women indicates only 2-8% of rape accusations are false.

A natural phenomenon

frog

Tonic Immobility, also known as thanatosis, is an automatic response to rape as well as other life threatening trauma by humans. And we’re not the only animals that experience this phenomenon.Opossum

The most widely
known is the
opossum, which is why “playing dead” is also referred to as “playing opossum.” Mammals are wired with the option to look and appear dead to their attacker for protection.

Additional neurological impacts on the victim’s post-rape “affect”

Because of their involuntary, reflexive reactions to inescapable danger, victims experience self blame and question their own inability to fight back or why they stopped resisting. Their personal sense of shame can  inhibit their reporting the offense.

During rape, the cocktail of trauma-stimulated hormones blocks the ability of the brain’s hippocampus to organize and store thought. Many rape victims, who are interrogated shortly after their trauma, have yet to recover cognition. Investigator who do not understand this condition suspect that the victim is inventing the story as they speak, when they are actually attempting to puzzle together disparate pieces of the events that their brain’s hormonal overload blocked from encoding.

Their “affect” or appearance, may not seem as emotionally charged as one would expect after a heinous assault. They could remain under the influence of those same opioids that deterred their reaction and dulled their senses during the crime.

Undermining self esteem

Victims who freeze struggle with an innate sense of guilt. Their response defied their own personal expectation that if something frightening took place, they would fight to the death or flee. We go through life taking comfort in the concept that we’ll be able to protect ourselves in life or death decisions, and doing nothing seems shameful, even though it very well may have saved our lives. Our brains are wired to react before our reasoning ability kicks in.

Penal laws on sex crimes have yet to grasp the impact of tonic immobility and fawning. Victims are seen as compliant rather than resistant. Our laws focus on the behavior of the victim to determine whether consent took place instead of determining whether the accused used malicious influence to dominate them. Jurors are tasked with determining consent by what the victim said or did, regardless that they were terrorized into compliant behavior.

Watch this TEDx Talk for the key to combating sexual assault!

Authors note:

Inspiration for this post came from information I received from a woman who comments under the name “Semi” on US Weekly. Unless otherwise linked, the source for the data and statistics is The Neurobiology of Sexual Assault, written and presented by Dr. Rebecca Campbell, Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University. I wholeheartedly encourage everyone to watch her scholarly presentation.