16 Days Activism Against GBV Series| The Unseen Infrastructure of Care: Vicarious Trauma and the Systemic Failure in Sexual Violence Response

Sexual violence response systems rely on a workforce of caregivers who bear witness to trauma daily. Yet, the vicarious trauma eroding these responders’ wellbeing is dangerously overlooked. Drawing on her personal frontline experience, Emaediong Akpan argues that caring for survivors is impossible without caring for those who serve them. 

Bearing Witness in a Broken System

Drawing on my professional experience in sexual violence response, I have encountered two parallel realities. The first is the survivor’s journey marked by courage, fragmented by institutional demands, and too often complicated secondary victimization—the trauma inflicted by the very systems meant to provide justice. The second, less visible reality is that of the responders: the advocates, nurses, law enforcement officers, and counselors who absorb these narratives daily.

Across different roles, a common experience is a deep sense of professional and personal isolation. Many legal professionals, for instance, describe a deep conflict between the rigid demands of procedure and the human impulse to offer comfort, leaving them feeling like instruments of a process rather than agents of care. This profound alienation is not a personal failing; it is a structural byproduct of work that demands profound empathy while offering inadequate structural support.

During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, our discourse rightly centers survivor voices and systemic accountability. However, I argue that this discourse remains critically incomplete if it does not also address the vicarious trauma permeating the response workforce. This is not about shifting focus from survivors, but about recognizing a fundamental truth: a system that consumes its caregivers is a system destined to fail those it seeks to serve. Neglecting the responder’s wellbeing is a direct, measurable detriment to survivor care, addressing it becomes a non-negotiable pillar of gender justice.

Beyond Burnout, Toward Transformation

To understand the true nature of this crisis, we must move beyond everyday words like “stress” or “burnout.” The core psychological hazard for trauma workers is vicarious trauma (VT). Grounded in seminal work by McCann and Pearlman, VT is understood as a cumulative and transformative process. It is not simply about feeling tired or sad. Rather, it is the profound, often permanent, change in a helper’s own inner world, their beliefs, memories, and sense of self, that results from repeatedly and empathetically engaging with the traumatic material of those they serve.

The key mechanism is the disruption of what psychologists call cognitive schemas. These are our most basic psychological frameworks, our deep-seated beliefs about safety, trust, esteem, intimacy, and control. Vicarious trauma forces these frameworks to change. Repeated exposure to traumatic stories creates a confrontation that our existing worldview can’t absorb. To cope, the mind is forced to rebuild its understanding of reality, leading to a profound shift: the helper’s worldview itself can become more pessimistic, fearful, and fragile.

This is what makes VT different. It’s not the same as compassion fatigue (which is the wearing down of your empathy) or burnout (which is general exhaustion from work stress). While those conditions are about depletion, VT is about alteration. It does not just tire you out; it can fundamentally and lastingly change how you see the world and your place in it.

Crucially, and central to my professional observation, is that personal trauma history is not a prerequisite. While a personal history can intensify effects, VT is an occupational hazard for all trauma workers. The empathetic bond and, critically, shared demographic or social identities (gender, race, class) can serve as a powerful conduit for this trauma, a point underscored by research with female counselors working specifically with sexual violence survivors.

The Perfect Storm: How Sexual Violence Work Fuels Vicarious Trauma

The nature of sexual violence response doesn’t just risk vicarious trauma, it actively creates the ideal conditions for it to take root and thrive. It is defined by a double exposure that sets it apart.

First, there is the chronic, cumulative exposure to traumatic material. Survivors are often caught in a relentless “testimonial spiral,” required to narrate their assault repeatedly, to police, medical examiners, prosecutors, and multiple counselors. Each time they narrate their experiences even though procedurally necessary, it is psychologically costly, forcing the responder to bear witness to graphic, intimate details of violence not once, but over and over again.

Second, and just as negatively impactful, is the exposure to systemic and procedural betrayal. We are not just witnesses to the original trauma. We become firsthand observers of how institutions can fail survivors: through skeptical questioning informed by rape myths, invasive forensic exams with little psychosocial support, and the devastating attrition of cases through plea bargains or dismissal. This generates more than empathy; it creates moral injury, the profound distress that comes from witnessing actions that violate our core sense of justice and ethics. The helper is thus traumatized by both the client’s story and the system’s failure.

This ‘perfect storm’ is intensified by the composition of the workforce. The victim services sector is predominantly female, reflecting the broader gendered landscape of care work. Furthermore, it includes a significant number of survivors who enter the field through a validated ‘survivor-to-survivor’ model of advocacy,a testament to the movement’s grassroots origins that value lived experience as expertise. While this brings profound empathy and insight, scholars note it also layers personal vulnerability onto professional exposure, a combination that is too rarely met with the robust structural safeguards it demands.

The Architecture of Neglect: Systemic Drivers of Vicarious Trauma

It is important to note that VT is not an accidental outcome; it is manufactured by systemic failures across multiple levels.

a. The Political Economy of Care Work

Victim services are notoriously underfunded, relying on precarious grants and charitable funding. This translates into low salaries, high caseloads, and chronic understaffing, conditions directly correlated with VT severity. Workers, often women, are asked to perform emotionally extreme labour with economic precarity, a classic example of the gendered devaluation of care.

b. Institutional Illiteracy

Many criminal justice and healthcare institutions lack trauma-informed organizational practices. Supervision is often administrative, not clinical or reflective. There are rarely protocols for routine psychological debriefing, caseload management to prevent saturation, or mandated “cool-down” periods between intense cases. New, younger advocates, those most vulnerable to secondary traumatic stress, are frequently thrown into the deep end without adequate mentorship (as highlighted in my own training materials).

c. Cultural Stigma and the “Strong Helper”

Especially within masculinized domains like law enforcement, a culture of stoicism prevails. Help-seeking is stigmatized as weakness, with legitimate fears about confidentiality breaches and career repercussions. Studies indicate that a majority of first responders are reluctant to seek support due to perceived professional risks. The culture of stoicism, particularly in criminal justice roles, stigmatizes help-seeking. People fear being seen as weak or unfit, forcing distress underground and often leading to maladaptive coping mechanisms like substance use.

d. Professional Isolation and Erasure

Those in roles like victim advocacy, often situated uneasily between community and court, can experience “trauma hierarchy,” where their exposure is minimized compared to “first responders.” This lack of validation exacerbates feelings of isolation and invisibility, stripping away a protective sense of shared purpose.

e. The Inevitable Consequence: Compromised Survivor Care

My argument is that the systemic production of VT is not merely an occupational health issue. It actively degrades the quality and ethics of survivor services.

1. Attrition of Expertise: Vicarious trauma is a primary driver of high turnover. When a skilled, trauma-informed advocate burns out and leaves, survivors lose continuity, a relationship of trust is severed, and institutional memory evaporates. This constant churn keeps organizations in a state of novice crisis, unable to develop deep expertise.

2. The Erosion of Empathetic Capacity: Compassion fatigue, a precursor or companion to VT, manifests as detachment, cynicism, and emotional numbing. A responder struggling with these symptoms cannot provide the authentic, patient, and validating presence that trauma recovery requires. Interactions become transactional, potentially replicating the impersonal harm of secondary victimization.

3. Impaired Judgment and Ethical Risk: VT’s cognitive disruptions, hypervigilance, pervasive pessimism, disrupted boundaries, can lead to clinical errors, inappropriate self-disclosure, or burnout-driven shortcuts in care. Pearlman & Saakvitne (1995) warn that unaddressed VT can lead to boundary violations, where the helper’s own unmet needs distort the therapeutic relationship.

4. The Silencing of Advocacy: A responder drowning in unprocessed trauma loses the energy for systemic advocacy. The fight to change oppressive policies, challenge rape myths in court, or secure better resources requires a reserve of righteous anger and hope. VT depletes that reserve, creating a workforce that is too exhausted to challenge the very systems that harm both them and their clients.

In summary, a workforce without proper support becomes a fragile system designed to carry immense weight but lacks the reinforcement to do so safely or indefinitely. Because it cannot sustainably hold the weight of survivor trauma, and it will inevitably fracture, with survivors bearing the consequences of the collapse.

Toward a New Paradigm: From Individual Self-Care to Structural Accountability

The common prescription of “self-care” places the burden of resilience on the individual, obscuring the systemic origins of the harm. We must demand a shift toward “system-care” and structural accountability.

1. Mandate and Fund Psychological Infrastructure: This must be a budget line, not a perk. Agencies need embedded, confidential mental health services specializing in trauma-exposed professions. Funding bodies must tie grants to the existence of realistic caseload limits, competitive salaries, and wellness protocols.

• Implement Trauma-Informed Supervision: Replace purely administrative oversight with reflective, clinically-informed supervision that normalizes discussion of VT, provides strategies for cognitive integration, and safeguards boundaries. Models like that proposed by Harrison & Westwood (2009) have shown efficacy in reducing VT.

• Dismantle Stigma Through Leadership: Institutional leaders must model vulnerability and help-seeking. Peer support programs, with rigorous confidentiality safeguards, can create culturally-competent spaces for processing within the workforce itself.

• Integrate Resilience into Training: Education for responders must begin before first contact with survivors. Training should include psychoeducation on VT, grounding techniques, boundary-setting skills, and clear pathways to support, framing resilience as a core professional competency.

• Center Equity in Solutions: Interventions must recognize the gendered, racialized, and classed dimensions of the work. Support must be culturally competent and address the unique stressors faced by advocates of colour working within systems they may rightly distrust.

Conclusion: My Call for an Unbreakable Chain of Justice

As we concluded the 16 Days of Activism , we must commit to a more holistic vision of justice. The fight against gender-based violence is fought on multiple fronts: in the courtroom, the hospital, the therapist’s office, and the advocate’s office desk. These fronts are connected by people. If the people on the front lines of care are being psychologically depleted by the very structure of that care, we have designed a self-defeating system.

Caring for survivors and ensuring the wellbeing of those who care for them are inseparable goals.They represent two halves of a single ethical imperative. We cannot build a survivor-centered response on the broken well-being of the workforce. Investing in the resilience of responders, through funding, institutional change, and cultural shift, is not a diversion from survivor justice. It is the most pragmatic investment we can make in its sustainability and quality.

The witness who is heard, the advocate who can stay present, the nurse who maintains compassion, the officer who conducts a trauma-informed interview, these are not just individuals doing a job. They are the living, breathing infrastructure of a just response. It is time we built that infrastructure to last.

This blog is dedicated to the women of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, whose tireless advocacy I have witnessed firsthand while working alongside them. Their courage is the quiet engine of justice.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts solely reflects the views of the author of the post in question.

 

About the author:

Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner and an alumna of the International Institute of Social Studies. With extensive experience in the development sector, Emaediong Akpan’s work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. She is also interested in exploring the intersections of law, technology, and feminist policy interventions to promote safer digital environments. Read her blogs here: 1, 2, 3, 4.

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