Credibility of Pain: A Case to Navigate Academic and Judicial Structural Impediments through Testimony and Believing

Abstract Book of the 7th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality

Year: 2026

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Credibility of Pain: A Case to Navigate Academic and Judicial Structural Impediments through Testimony and Believing

Dr Yuko Yoshida

ABSTRACT:

This research exposes a study of a sexual violence victim that occurred at a Japanese national university to a female contract research fellow, and the victim’s fight in a civil suit against the university and perpetrator. It describes how little creditability the victims’ firsthand testimony had when the eyewitnesses including the perpetrator denied her statement. In contrast, the victim gradually regained credibility from her secondhand witnesses who believed in her agony. The author will present the victim’s reports, audio recordings, moving and still images that corroborate the ways structural exclusion were put in place by the university. To further understand the victim’s psychological trajectory of restoring her credibility, the author will adopt two philosophers Susan J. Brison and Kelly Oliver’s theories of retelling and response ethics, while contemplating the victim’s approach to stand her ground, to speak out, and to seek acknowledgement to remake her dignity by retelling her stories. Another perspective relates to how the lawyers have facilitated to embody the victim’s presence in the site of social memory against the systematized marginalization by the university. This paper illuminates the transformative processes of each legal procedure that the victim has woven through texts, oral testimony, and images which embody the victim’s transitional witnessing performed in the public domain.

Keywords: Sexual Violence; Retelling; Response Ethics; Civil Suit; Believing