Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26 (2002), 120–130. Blackwell Publishing. Printed in the USA. Copyright C  2002 Division 35, American Psychological Association. 0361-6843/02 EMOTIONAL REACTIONS OF RAPE VICTIM ADVOCATES: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY OF ANGER AND FEAR Sharon M. Wasco and Rebecca Campbell University of Illinois at Chicago This research explores the emotional reactions of a rarely studied group of women who work closely with survivors of sexual violence: rape victim advocates. Women who assist rape victims in obtaining medical, criminal justice, and mental health services were interviewed about their experiences, and qualitative analysis was used to delineate the situational context of the advocates’ emotional reactions. Results indicate that respondents experienced anger and fear in response to both individual (e.g., a perpetrator’s menacing glare) and environmental (e.g., community denial of a problem) cues. Additionally, some experienced rape victim advocates perceived their emotional reactions to be an important part of their work with rape victims. These findings suggest that intense emotional reactions, previously conceptualized within a vicarious trauma framework, may at times serve as resources for women working with rape survivors. A recent study estimates that 302,100 women are forcibly raped each year in the United States (Tjaden & Thoennes, 1998). Decades of prevalence literature suggest that at least one of five women in this country will be raped during her lifetime (Koss, 1993). Research suggests that such perva- siveness of rape in our culture will impact many women, ei- ther directly or indirectly. For example, a voluminous victi- mology literature documents the negative aftermath of rape on survivors’ psychological, physical, and sexual well-being (e,g., Golding, 1996; Neville & Heppner, 1999; Resick, 1993). Further, research has begun to detail the secondary and vicarious effects of sexual violence on rape victims’ sig- nificant others (Barkus, 1997; Davis, Taylor & Bench, 1995; Remer & Ferguson, 1995) and formal and informal support Sharon M. Wasco and Rebecca Campbell, Department of Psy- chology, University of Illinois at Chicago. This work was completed as part of a Master’s thesis by the first author under the supervision of the second author. The authors thank Marcia Clark for help with data analyses. In addition, we thank Robin L. Miller, James G. Kelly, Courtney Ahrens and three anonymous reviewers, whose comments greatly improved this manuscript. Parts of this research were supported by a grant to Rebecca Campbell and William S. Davidson, II from the Michigan Department of Community Health/Centers for Disease Control from the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994, Education and Prevention Grants to Reduce Vio- lence Against Women. Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Sharon M. Wasco, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison, Chicago, IL 60607-7137. E-mail: swasco@uic.edu providers (Pearlman & MacIan, 1995; Schauben & Frazier, 1995) who are often women. This paper continues the latter line of inquiry by exam- ining the subjective experiences of rape victim advocates: women who help rape victims to obtain community services. First, relevant literature was reviewed to summarize docu- mented experiences of women who work closely with rape survivors and to guide the assumptions of the current study. Then, narrative data were collected from expert informants about their reactions to assisting rape survivors to obtain le- gal, medical, and mental health services. Using an ecological perspective, these data were analyzed to identify situational factors associated with rape victim advocates’ emotions. Working With Rape Survivors Psychologists often adopt trauma theory as a framework for understanding women’s experiences with violence (see Wasco, 2001, for a review of these approaches). For example, posttraumatic stress has been widely used as an indicator of the psychological harm of rape (Goodman, Koss, & Russo, 1993). Similarly, vicarious traumatization (McCann & Pearlman, 1990) has been used to conceptual- ize the lasting impact of working closely with rape survivors. Vicarious trauma is defined as a transformation that occurs within a therapist after bearing witness to clients’ trauma experiences, which manifests psychologically via disrupted cognitive schema and intrusive imagery (Pearlman & MacIan, 1995). Vicarious trauma provides a theoretical framework for understanding the intrapsychic effects of in- direct exposure to rape on caregivers. 120