Breaking Barriers to Justice
Reframing Credibility and Recovery in Trauma-Based Claims By Whitney Betts The Call You Almost Don't Take
Counterintuitive Victim Behavior — and Why It Isn't What You Think
The intake call goes something like this: a potential client describes an experience of sexual assault or harassment. The facts are serious. The harm is real. But then come the details that give you pause. She didn’t report right away. She kept working alongside the person who assaulted her. She texted him afterward — even warmly. As a prior defense attorney, I understand how the “other” side will frame this. How they would present these facts to a jury. You may decline the case based on initial “bad” facts that we will discuss more below. But the problem isn’t the facts, it is the framework. Good case assessment doesn't start with the story the client tells on the first call. It starts with building a complete picture before you draw any conclusions — understanding the full universe of what happened, who the potential defendants are, what the regulatory and institutional record looks like, and what the client hasn't yet been able to say. In our practice, no complaint gets drafted until that picture is substantially complete. First, you need to know what to look for.
In cases involving sexual assault, harassment, grooming, and institutional abuse, there is a cluster of behaviors that consistently derail claims before they are ever filed. Defense teams plan around them. Insurers rely on them. And plaintiff attorneys, if they are not careful, use them as intake screening criteria without realizing they have just applied the same flawed credibility standard that has disadvantaged survivors in courts for decades. The shorthand is counterintuitive victim behavior, or CVB. It describes the ways survivors act after trauma in ways that do not match what people — including lawyers — expect. In practice, it shows up as delayed reporting, sometimes by months or years after the incident. Sometimes you will see continued contact with the perpetrator, including warm or seemingly affectionate communication. Recantation, shifting details, minimizing severity of what happened, or denying wrongdoing is common. Some victims remain in the job, facility, or in the abusive relationship. In some cases, you may see apparent compliance. Each of these behaviors has a specific face in real cases, and it is worth naming them concretely: The client who texted her assailant warmly the morning after — sometimes saying she had a great time, asking about plans — because the fawn response — the instinct to appease and placate a threat rather than fight or flee — does
Whitney Betts is the Co-Founder and President of Betts Law Group PC in San Diego where she represents survivors of sexual assault, workplace harassment, discrimination, and institutional abuse. Her practice focuses on institutional liability, credibility strategy, and early coverage analysis in trauma-based claims.
whitney@bettslawgroup.com
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Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM July/August 2026
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