Talk:Post-assault treatment of sexual assault victims

What this article is about

Hello,

This article deals with how society treats victims of sexual assault. After an assault, the victim may be subjected to invasive medical tests, slut-shaming, cyberbullying and inappropriate questions during cross-examination in a criminal trial. The article also describes want protections exist for victims such as rape shield laws and publication bans.

Another way to describe this article is: What does a victim of sexual assault need to know regarding what may happen to her after an assault. I believe it it helpful to aggregate the information from various Wikipedia articles into a single article.

(The article does not deal with the psychological trauma of the victim.) WSDavitt (talk) 18:39, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Question: Is there a better title for the article?

A possible alternative title is: "Scrutiny and post-assault mistreatment of sexual assault victims"

Is there a better word than "treatment" The word "treatment" might suggest 'medical treatment' which is not the focus of the article.

Is using the term "post-assault" in the title redundant?

Thank you. WSDavitt (talk) 18:39, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

NPOV

The POV starts at the very lede:

After a sexual assault, victims are subjected to scrutiny and, in some cases, mistreatment. Victims undergo medical examinations and are interviewed by police. During the criminal trial, victims suffer a loss of privacy and their credibility may be challenged. Sexual assault victims may also become the target of slut-shaming, abuse, sexual slurs and cyberbullying. During criminal proceedings, publication bans and rape shield laws operate to protect victims from excessive public scrutiny.

• "Subjected to scrutiny" presumably means "interviewed"
• Any source supporting the claimed mistreatment is lacking. Even if that's just "in some cases" (WP:WEASEL) such statements need a reliable source.
• All assault victims (sexual or otherwise) should get themselves checked out medically, but especially victims of rape (STD's)
• Victims "suffer a loss of privacy" during court proceedings. Probably so, but we can hardly expect the court to do without their testimony. It is the job of the defendants counsel to to challenge their credibility.
• " Sexual assault victims may also become the target of slut-shaming, abuse, sexual slurs and cyberbullying." WP:WEASEL, once more and utterly unsourced. Statements like that need a source.

That's just the lede of the article and the rest isn't much better. Unless this improves dramatically, I will propose to nuke the article. Regards, Kleuske (talk) 19:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I concur with this assessment and proposal. Since it has been 2 months, I think it will be non controversial if User:Kleuske would like to nuke the article. Grognard Extraordinaire Chess (talk) Ping when replying 04:48, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

The discussion regarding this article concluded in November 2016 and the decision was to "keep". See yellow box above. The proposal to "nuke" has been rejected. WSDavitt (talk) 05:02, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

That's the deletion discussion. The points above are still unanswered and WP:NPOV isn't a laughing matter. Though I can't "nuke" anything, I can apply a broom and sweep up. Kleuske (talk) 13:04, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I was brought here via a message on my talk (since I closed the AfD, it's completely valid). WSDavitt has asked me to ask you guys to not "nuke" the article, since I closed the AfD as keep. With that in mind, I'm going to say the exact opposite and say that if this article is not improved to the point of the option no longer becoming valid, then I would support a proposal for nuking this article. WP:NPOV is a very serious concern, and if the article isn't improved to meet such standards, then I feel deleting this and starting this article from scratch may be the next option. JudgeRM (talk to me) 17:33, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

JudgeRM and others, AfD is not cleanup. If the article has problems, WP:FIXIT and WP:Preserve tell us what to do. We don't go around nuking every article or even most articles that have POV issues. Furthermore, the WP:NPOV policy is about following what the sources state with due weight. Follow what the literature states with due weight, and there should not be a WP:NPOV problem. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:27, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Subheadings

I reduced the many subheadings in this article because they made the article look significantly bigger than it is and challenging to navigate through, as too many subheadings always do. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:48, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Poor sourcing, focus on selected anecdotal evidence rather than scientific research.

This article -- perhaps in intentional violation of WP:NPOV -- appears, from its list of references, to be based more on sensationalized individual cases, rather than scientific research based on a broad-based, scientifically representative sample of randomly-selected incidents.

Though its specific anecdotal stories are often selected from otherwise-reputable media, which would normally fit the WP:RS standard (e.g.: New York Times, Chicago Tribune, etc.), those remain non-scientific sources -- as opposed to academic and professional journals (which, themselves, often have a feminist bias -- particularly in social work and psychology -- but are at least obliged to provide some semblance of scientific evidence for their broader conclusions).

This IS an important subject, so such an article as this is needed on Wikipedia -- but it's very counterproductive, even dishonest, to produce articles on such important issues that are so unreliable.

~ Penlite (talk) 05:26, 24 October 2024 (UTC)