Bodies in Evidence: Race, Gender, and Science in Sexual Assault Adjudication

Bodies in Evidence is a book that examines how the process of sexual assault adjudication reinforces inequality and becomes a public spectacle of violence. It draws on observations of over 680 court appearances in Milwaukee County's felony sexual assault courts and interviews with judges, attorneys, forensic scientists, jurors, sexual assault nurse examiners, and victim advocates to show how forensic science helps to propagate public misunderstandings of sexual violence by bestowing an aura of authority to race and gender stereotypes and inequalities.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 09 November 2021
Publisher: New York University Press

Winner of the 2021-2022 AES Senior Book Prize, awarded by the American Ethnological Society, Honorable Mention of the Association for Feminist Anthropology's Senior Book Prize, Uncovers how the process of sexual assault adjudication reinforces inequality and becomes a public spectacle of violence.

For victims of sexual assault cases, trials rarely result in justice. Instead, the courts drag defendants, victims, and their friends and family through a confusing and protracted public spectacle. Along the way, forensic scientists, sexual assault nurse examiners, and police officers provide their insight and expertise, shaping the story that emerges for the judge and jury. These expert narratives intersect with the stories of victims, witnesses, and their communities to reproduce our cultural understandings of sexual violence, but too often this process results in reinscribing racial, gendered, and class inequalities.

Bodies in Evidence draws on observations of over 680 court appearances in Milwaukee County's felony sexual assault courts, as well as interviews with judges, attorneys, forensic scientists, jurors, sexual assault nurse examiners, and victim advocates. It shows how forensic science helps to propagate public misunderstandings of sexual violence by bestowing an aura of authority to race and gender stereotypes and inequalities. Expert testimony reinforces the idea that sexual assault is physically and emotionally recognizable and always leaves material evidence. The courts' reliance on the presence of forensic evidence infuses these very familiar stereotypes and myths about sexual assault with new scientific authority.

Powerful, unflinching, and at times heartbreaking, Bodies in Evidence reveals the human cost of sexual assault adjudication, and the social cost we all bear.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479809639