Book review: The Use of Victim Impact Statements in Sentencing for Sexual Offences: Stories of Strength
| Author | Robyn Holder |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02697580221082311 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book reviews 257
Rhiannon Davies and Lorana Bartels
The Use of Victim Impact Statements in Sentencing for Sexual Offences: Stories
of Strength
Routledge: Abingdon; New York, 2021; 206 pp.: ISBN 987-0-367-52419-7 (hardback).
Reviewed by: Robyn Holder, Griffith University, Australia
DOI: 10.1177/02697580221082311
Remember when the introduction of victim impact statements (VIS) was going to destroy criminal
justice as we know it? Rhiannon Davies and Lorana Bartels have written a sober assessment of the
debates. Their excellent book examines the use and usefulness of VIS from an Australian perspec-
tive with a particular focus on sexual assault matters. Australia is a good country in which to con-
duct a comparative review of how VIS are working as each of the Australian states and territories
enacts its own crimes legislation and manages its own criminal justice system. These are all com-
mon law jurisdictions with a broadly similar socio-economic makeup but with just enough diver-
sity in political responses to crime victims for the critical analysis Davies and Bartels make.
The authors use socio-legal methods for their research, combining legislative analysis, content
analysis of sentencing remarks and interviews with victim survivors and justice professionals. The
data are drawn from four jurisdictions – Victoria, South Australia (SA), Tasmania, and the
Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Davies and Bartels approach their analysis with a victim-
focused and a therapeutic jurisprudence lens. First, the authors aim to understand ‘the nature and
consequences of sexual victimisation’ and because they assert VIS were introduced to ‘alleviate
[...] retraumatisation’ (p. 13). Second, they argue that therapeutic jurisprudence is a ‘richer’ way to
consider its law reform agenda (p. 14). They offer recommendations for change from these
perspectives.
The book opens with Emily Doe and brief information about the ‘Stanford rape case’ she sur-
vived. Her searing VIS went viral. The author later shed the ‘Emily Doe’ moniker by writing a
memoir under her own name, Chanel Miller (Know My Name, 2019). By making her VIS a public
statement and speaking more publicly since, Miller joined a growing network of women who not
only refuse to shoulder blame and shame, but who also claim spaces to speak of their demands for
justice. It is a bold and interesting move from Davies and Bartels to link present highly constrained
and individualised approaches to VIS with public voices such as that from Miller. Although they
do not bring in #metoo and #letherspeak, the implication is of survivors’ voices bursting from
institutional strait jackets.
The point is emphasised with each of the six main chapters ending with a snapshot of one of the
six victim/survivor respondents interviewed by Davies and Bartels. August, Laura, Phillipa,
Jessica, Rachel, and Eve each gave voice to the impact of sexual victimisation on them and to their
experiences of the criminal justice process. Each of them submitted a VIS and four chose to read it
themselves in court. None of the six women interviewed gave strong positive evaluations of their
involvement in the criminal justice process. Their assessments varied from most negative ‘horrific’
(Eve) to feeling ‘a nuisance’ (Jessica) and most positive in seeing professionals ‘really cared’
(Laura). These evaluations of criminal justice by victims have been reiterated again and again in
research as Davies and Bartels acknowledge in their introduction. Decades of research into vic-
tims’ justice needs have been synthesised as five key elements: participation, voice, validation,
vindication, and offender accountability (Daly, 2014). With this background, VIS emerged as ‘a
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