A safe space for everyone? Relationship between the making of judgment errors and Secondary Victimization in interviews with victims of sexual assault in Peru

The main objective of this research is to study the effect of judgment errors on Secondary Victimization, Willingness to provide information, Rapport, and Trust in the police in victims of sexual violence when filing a report, as well as seeking to understand the role that apologizing had on the same variables. For this purpose, we took into consideration three experimental conditions: control group, judgment error without apology, and judgment error with apology. The participants (N = 90) were randomly divided into one of those three groups and were asked to imagine being a victim of sexual assault. Next, they had to pretend to file a report with a police officer and fill out a survey. Twelve participants were interviewed to study the relationship between the constructs. The results indicated that making judgment errors negatively affected the Willingness to provide information, Rapport, and Trust in the police, whereas participants reported more Secondary Victimization. Concerning the response strategy, an apology diminishes the effect of the error on Rapport, trust, and Secondary Victimization, except for Willingness to provide information. Finally, the results suggest that words, in the form of an error and an apology, affect the dynamic between a victim and the police.