Survivors of sexual violence in selected academic institutions in Zimbabwe: narratives of resilience and recovery.

Abstract

The study explores how female student survivors of sexual violence trauma construct their journeys of resilience and recovery. The study adopted the critical paradigm and a narrative approach to examine the narratives of resilience and recovery from sexual violence trauma by female students in selected tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe. The landscape of sexual violence underpins the background and rationale for this study. This study aimed to explore the narratives of the experiences of sexual violence and how these female student sexual violence survivors navigated their journeys of resilience and recovery. Narrative interviews and poetry were used to generate data. Snowball sampling was used to select eleven female students from six tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe, who had survived sexual violence trauma. The theoretical framework drew on Relational Cultural Theory, underpinned by the concepts of connections and disconnections, mutuality, and growth-fostering relationships, and the four theses of Feminist Standpoint Theory: situated knowledge, epistemic advantage, strong objectivity and power relations. A key finding that emerged was that participants’ narratives revealed conflicting discourses of fate versus agency. The study also highlighted complexities of oppression, resistance, and empowerment. In addition, the study found that sexual violence was influenced by sustaining ecologies and spatial environment. Findings shed light on the notion of the ‘Open cheque’ syndrome which symbolised the harm that a culture of sexual entitlement poses to heterosexual relationships. Another finding was that survivors of sexual violence depended on networks of friends and trust as support systems. The study found that survivors experienced diverse forms of social capital in their journeys of resilience and recovery. The significant role of agency in the resilience and recovery of sexual violence was also highlighted in this study. Findings of this study revealed that recovery of sexual violence is a complex, non-linear journey or process. This study contributes new knowledge to the fields of counselling and social justice, and to the fields of resilience and recovery of sexual violence. Society benefits from this study in various ways that include raising awareness for survivors to break the silence, thus, leading to advocacy for understanding their experiences non-judgementally. The study also informs policy and practice hence promoting social change and justice while improving the mental health and well-being of the survivors. The study recommends that future research on sexual violence should concentrate on a homogenous variable, for instance, survivors of rape or child sexual abuse, or incest instead of studying sexual violence broadly. Further research could explore how familial relationships are valued in this ethnic group in order to find ways of changing some practices that are harmful to the female child in such cultural groups.