Thesis Topic: Restorative Justice in Ordinary Rape Cases

Alexane Guérin, a PhD student in political theory at Sciences Po's School of Research  and the Center for International Research (CERI) was recently awarded a grant by the City of Paris to conduct field work on gender issues. She tells us more about her research on restorative justice in rape cases.

Three years ago, you began a PhD thesis in political theory at Sciences Po. Why did you turn to research?

Research offers a unique temporality: its long term perspective makes it possible to explore a topic in all its complexity, but it is also guided by a sense of urgency, especially when working on injustice and gender-based violence. In my case, my research work is driven by a desire for political and feminist transformations: I started my thesis right after the international #MeToo movement started. This movement spotlighted millions of testimonies from victims of sexual violence, but also the need to fully take on questions of justice to answer them. I therefore engaged my thesis work in political theory, precisely because this discipline allows me, as a researcher, to start from the diagnosis of injustice, to provide an adequate intelligibility grid, and to suggest normative possibilities.

Political science made me discover feminist theories when I was doing a Master's at Sciences Po. This was decisive in my choice to pursue a doctoral thesis. The feminist theories corpus puts research in a perspective of emancipation: theories are nurtured through feminist movements, which, in turn, nurtures them, like a praxis. For me, research makes it possible to connect experiential and theoretical knowledge. It makes it possible to show and render intelligible phenomena that are constantly invisible or depoliticized.

Could you tell us more about your doctoral research?

In my thesis work I look at the restorative justice paradigm to meet with the epistemic expectations of victims of ordinary rape. I put forward the notion of “ordinary rape” as a new qualification of gender violence in order to make visible non-consensual sexual relations that take place in the intimacy, perpetrated by a loved one, be it a friend, a date, an ex-boyfriend, in an everyday situation. This conceptualisation comes in the wake of the concept of “date rape”, coined by American feminists in the 1980s. However, because of these criteria (everyday life, proximity, potential intimacy), ordinary rape scripts constitute a blind spot in the dominant social imagination that produces the figure of the “ideal victim”, saturated with stereotypes. Victims thus face a set of epistemic injustices, that is to say situations in which their ability to know, transmit and receive knowledge about what they have experienced and suffered is questioned. Whether it is when they seek to label the violence, to testify to their loved ones, or to denounce, they suffer various epistemic harms (testimonial injustices, hermeneutical injustices, silencing, gaslighting, etc.).

These types of epistemic injustices are also found during criminal proceedings. Their anticipation contributes to deterring victims from filing a complaint. In my thesis, I argue that the restorative justice paradigm offers the possibility of resolving to right these epistemic wrongs. Indeed, restorative justice places the agency of the people affected by violence at the core of its process. These people participate voluntarily and focus on the consequences and harm that the deed has had on victims’ lives. This model does not aim to replace the penal system, nor to systematically supplement it. But it can operate independently, since it offers another sense of justice. It offers victims the possibility of being recognised as such, without their credibility being attacked.

How did you use this research grant?

The City of Paris grant allowed me to carry out the field survey which is core to my research. I was able to go to Quebec for six months between January and June 2022 and observe the practices of two restorative justice organisations which operate very differently (in terms of methods, principles, structure, linkage with the provincial Quebec criminal system, type of victimisation, etc.). In the Restorative Justice Services Center (Centre de Services de Justice Réparatrice - CSJR), I was able to undergo training and ake part in a transformative justice pilot project entitled “sexual violence as collective trauma”. I then interned at EquiJustice for 3 months: there, I observed clinical meetings, team meetings, training sessions, and mediations. I conducted numerous semi-structured interviews with the mediators in charge of restorative justice meetings, but also with criminal lawyers and victims of ordinary rape.

This stay in Montréal was also the occasion of a university exchange with the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM): I took two seminars in feminist studies, and discussed with researchers from the Institute for Research and Feminist Studies. This field survey and this academic exchange were definitely decisive and crucial steps in my thesis work!

What are your plans for the future?

There is nothing precisely defined yet. My priority is to defend the PhD thesis, most certainly in the fall or winter of 2023. After the thesis, I would like to discuss or even work with victim support associations, feminist associations, lawyers, judges or social workers interested in restorative justice, so that this form of justice is better known and established in France.

Alexane Guérin's thesis, produced under the co-supervision of Astrid von Busekist and Magali Bessone, is provisionally entitled "Giving justice to victims of ordinary rape: the perspectives of restorative justice".

More

• Sciences Po’s Gender Studies Programme PRESAGE
• The Sciences Po School of Research
• The Sciences Po International Research Center (CERI)
• City of Paris Gender Studies Research Grants (FR)