1.10 Bystander Intervention

Bystanders are people who see potentially dangerous situations or sexual violence happening.

Bystanders have an opportunity to get involved and, in many cases, to prevent sexual violence.

Social norms that we have learned from our culture tell us that that when we see sexual violence happening around us, we should not get involved because the incident does not directly concern us.

Perhaps we want to help but are afraid. We might think that if we do help, something bad might happen, and we prefer to do nothing rather than to do the wrong thing. We might think that despite what we’re seeing, we don’t know the situation or what’s going on. We may be afraid that the perpetrator will become violent towards us.

We may say to ourselves, ‘This looks bad. This shouldn’t be happening. This is wrong’, but it can be scary to step in and try to prevent a situation from getting worse.

The more people there are who witness a situation, the less likely they are to get involved because each person thinks that it’s someone else’s responsibility.

This is called the bystander effect, and it has been researched extensively.

If you have ever taken a first-aid course, this is why the trainers tell you to point at someone and say, ‘Call the ambulance’, and to tell other people specifically how they can help you. If we don’t do that, others will stand there and assume that someone else will help so that they don’t have to do anything.

Often, bystanders deny the physical intuition that tells us that something is wrong and that it will get worse if we don’t do something. Our body has natural instincts to sense danger for a reason, and we need to pay attention to it, not only because we’re in danger but also to keep others safe.

False beliefs about sexual violence are another reason people don’t get involved. The perpetrator or others may use these false beliefs to excuse their behavior. Although false beliefs about sexual assault attempt to blame the survivor for the crime, it’s always the perpetrator who is responsible for sexual violence.

It’s very unlikely that we will ever be faced with an opportunity to stop a rape in progress; this is not where we want to focus our attempts to intervene.

We want to focus on the other end of the spectrum, on the occasions of verbal comments, unwanted contact and other high-frequency events.

These are situations where, for most of us, it’s very easy to intervene because these situations happen often with people we know.

By intervening in these contexts, we are helping to set social norms that say that sexual violence is not acceptable within our group.