Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses bureaucratically legitimized truth-telling practices (e.g. screening procedures) that in South Africa have emerged as a result of a generalized mistrust towards the authenticity and truthfulness of women claiming to be victims of domestic violence.

Paper long abstract:

In South Africa, the high prevalence of domestic violence - particularly affecting women - poses a major challenge for service providers offering support and counselling for victims. Following the Domestic Violence Act (1998), victims of domestic violence have the right to receive counselling and to be accommodated at a women's shelter including free counselling and skills trainings. The paper argues that the overall high levels of violence, poverty and unemployment in combination with a lack of sufficient social security structurally have produced a culture of generalized mistrust towards the truthfulness and authenticity of women claiming to be victims of domestic violence. Trying to get access to a shelter is seen as a popular coping strategy by service providers which in effect causes suspicion towards women's stories of abuse. Drawing on ethnographic material collected in urban women's shelters and institutions offering (para-) legal aid, it will be shown how this culture of mistrust generates bureaucratically legitimated truth-telling practices, e.g. a standardized screening procedure. Framed as institutional requirements and attributed to external structural causes, these truth-telling practices consequently allow counselors to accumulate detailed information about clients without openly questioning the client's truthfulness. The paper argues that suspicion - as an attitude of mistrust (see Kobelinsky 2015) - constitutes a tacit driving force of initial counselling sessions. As it will be shown, in cases in which counselors feel they have accumulated enough evidence (e.g. incoherent stories, lack of details, common narratives) tacit mistrust leaves the non-confrontational sphere of interaction and presents itself in the form of accusations.