Forgiveness Therapy to Improve Subjective Well-being of Woman

Victims of Sexual Harassment

Yeny Duriana Wijaya and Mariyana Widiyastuti

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Esa Unggul, Kebon Jeruk, Jakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: Forgiveness, Subjective, Well-being, Women, Sexual Harassment.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of forgiveness therapy to improve the subjective

well-being of women victims of sexual harassment. Many effects caused by sexual harassment include

decreased self-esteem, decreased self-confidence, depression, anxiety, fear of rape and revenge toward people

who have committed abuse. This condition causes a person's subjective well being to be low, which tends to

feel dissatisfied with his life, does not feel happy and often feels negative emotions such as anxiety and anger.

Therefore, efforts are needed so that victims of sexual harassment can improve their subjective well-being.

One way that can be done is to give interventions with forgiveness therapy. Forgiveness will be able to reduce

negative emotions, which are characterized by the reduced desire to take revenge or avoid the offender. To

forgive means to be able to accept the bitter reality that has ever happened and to make peace with it.

Quantitative data analysis using the nonparametric Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test. The results of the data

analysis show that p = 0.013, this value indicates that the probability is below 0.05. It can be concluded that

forgiveness therapy can improve the subjective well-being of women victims of sexual harassment.

1 INTRODUCTION

Cases of sexual harassment are increasing from year

to year, especially in big cities. In Jakarta, sexual

harassment cases always increase from year to year is

the addition of an increase of almost 100% (Ruqoyah,

2016). Sexual harassment is any form of behavior that

connotes or leads to sexual matters taken unilaterally

and not intended by the person who becomes the

target it’s causing a negative reaction such as shame,

anger, hate, hurt, and so the individual who are

victims of abuse (BKKBN, 2012).

Many negative effects felt by victims of sexual

harassment, such as felt decreased self-esteem,

decreased self-confidence, depression, anxiety, fear

of rape and increased fear of other criminal acts

(BKKBN, 2012). In Indonesia, most victims of sexual

harassment are women, while the perpetrators are

men (Sapmaz, et al, 2016). Victims of sexual

harassment are usually afraid to reveal the conditions

that are happening to them. They tend to keep it to

themselves because they feel that if known by others

will cause fear of being rejected by the social

environment.

Many factors cause the victim of sexual

harassment to remain unwilling to reveal all the cases

that they have done, including confusion (not

knowing how to describe themselves about what

happened), shame, the attitude of blaming the victim

by others, and positioning the victim to feel "guilty"

such as attribution of dress, lifestyle and the

assumption that the victim is not a "good" woman,

especially if the investigation is carried out against

the incident of abuse, guilt for what happened, can not

accept the idea that they are a victim, or a feeling that

they should be able to stop the harassment, denial (not

wanting to believe that has really happened),

minimizing or defense mechanism (telling yourself

that "it's not a big problem," "I'm just too sensitive,"

or "I are shy "). The victim behaves this way because

others said that they should, afraid (of the

perpetrator's revenge), afraid of the offender facing

problems when what they want is merely the behavior

is stopped or feels responsible for the consequences

of the perpetrator's behavior, adaptation to this

treatment because it probably has happened

repeatedly, so the victim felt either that there was

nothing they could do, or they were thinking that this

was a life lesson like "I will indeed experience this"

and "must be able to overcome it" silently, numbness

(when the victim wants to emotionally break

themselves with the experience, they might also avoid

Wijaya, Y. and Widiyastuti, M.

Forgiveness Therapy to Improve Subjective Well-being of Woman Victims of Sexual Harassment.

DOI: 10.5220/0009592802570260

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Health (ICOH 2019), pages 257-260

ISBN: 978-989-758-454-1

257

the person or place that reminds them of the very

painful time), triggered (the memory that arises when

talking about it again puts too much weight or

anxiety/feeling sick).

Victims of sexual harassment will tend to have

feelings of depression, filled with distress, anxiety,

depression, and experience unpleasant feelings. This

condition shows that victims of sexual harassment

tend to have low subjective well-being (Samman,

2007). Subjective well-being is a person's evaluation

of life including those concerning life satisfaction,

pleasant feelings and low unpleasant feelings (Datu,

2014).

Seeing this condition, it is necessary to

immediately take care to help so that victims of sexual

harassment can uplift again. They must be able to

continue their lives better. And able to learn from

cases that have been experienced to improve their

behavior in the future. They must be able to be

optimistic, not continually suffer. They must be able

to leave their past and be able to overcome the events

that caused the trauma. According to Logan &

Weston (2009), sexual harassment can cause Post

Traumatic Stress Disorder for victims.

The low subjective well-being of victims of

sexual abuse can be increased by forgiving past cases

to cause positive emotions. Forgiveness is a way to

accept and release negative emotions such aa anger,

depression, guilt due to injustice, facilitating healing,

self- improvement and improving interpersonal

relationships with various problem situations

(Waldron, et al, 2009). Forgiveness is not only an

interpersonal process but also intrapersonal.

Subsequent forgiveness will directly affect physical

health and enduranceby reducing hostility, increasing

the immune system in cells and neuro-endocrine,

releasing antibodies, and influencing processes in the

central nervous system (Kjell. et al, 2016).

Seeing this exposure, the researchers aimed to

find out the effectiveness of forgiveness interventions

to improve the subjective well- being of women who

became victims of sexual abuse. In line with these

objectives, the hypothesis proposed is that

forgiveness therapy that can improve the subjective

well- being of women who became victims of sexual

abuse.

2 RESEARCH METHOD

2.1 Research Participants

2.1.1 Subject

Criteria for research subjects are:

Women who are victims of sexual harassment,

with physical abuse (who have intercourse)

Minimum education of junior high school or

equivalent

Age between 19-40 years

Domicile in Jakarta

2.2 Research Design

The research method is Quasi-experimental with the

design of The Dependent Pretest and Posttest

Samples (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002).

NR O1 X O2

Information:

O1: Measurement before giving intervention (Pre-

test)

O2: Measurement after the intervention (Post-test) X:

Intervention (forgiveness therapy)

NR: None Randomized

1. Intervention Manipulation:

An intervention module that will be made by the

researcher is making a forgiveness therapy

intervention module for victims of sexual harassment

that are adapted and modified from (Rahmandani,

2010).

2. Tools and Materials:

 Some tools that will be used in this research

include:

 Informed consent, which is the subject's consent

sheet as a participant in the study.

 Observation sheet.

 Observation sheets are used to make observations

in the training process, see changes that occur in

groups, observations of trainers and co-trainers.

 Subjective Welfare Scale and Forgiveness Scale

(HFS).

2.3 Research Procedure

2.3.1 Test the Validity and Reliability of

Research Measuring Instruments

The Subjective Welfare Scale is based on the scaling

(Wadron, 2010)

ICOH 2019 - 1st International Conference on Health

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Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS) measuring

instrument (Suleeman & Sabili, 2016).

2.3.2 Test the Module

2.3.3 Conducting Research by Giving

Pre-test and after the Intervention is

given a Post-test

3 DISCUSSION

3.1 Stage 1: Initial Research

Assessment

This initial assessment is done on 4 August 2018, at

08.00-12.00 at Esa Unggul University Campus.

At this stage, the assessment is the process of

choosing a subject in accordance with predetermined

criteria.

In the assessment process is done several stages:

 Briefed the participants about the research process

 Provide informed consent for participants who are

willing to become study participants.

 Explore participants' problems related to

psychological problems faced after becoming

victims of sexual harassment.

Furthermore, on August 5, forgiveness was done

before forgiveness therapy. It is hoped that

participants can understand and accept their pasts

related to the problem or case being faced.

3.2 Stage 2: Implementation of the

Research Code

The research was conducted on 1st and 2nd

September 2018, at Esa Unggul University, Jakarta

Barat. The research was done by giving forgiveness

therapy intervention to the victims of sexual abuse.

 Pre-test, each participant was asked to fill in the

forgiveness therapy scale.

 There were 5 participants present and all were

willing to participate in the intervention process.

In this session, participants were divided into two

groups, each group led by a therapist is a

psychologist from Fatmawati Hospital Jakarta.

From the results of the participant's pre-test and post-

test, data analysis was performed to see how the

participants' levels of gratitude changed. In this data

analysis test which can be further analyzed as many

as 5 participants. The first data analysis was

performed to see changes in subjective welfare scores

after the intervention. The results show that the value

of t = 0.013, p <0.05 These results indicate that there

were significant changes in the group before and after

the intervention.

Table 1: Data of subjective welfare scores,between pre and

post the intervention.

No. Name Pre Post

1 w 103 128

2 d 110 115

3 e 104 112

4 ni 87 104

5 z 106 109

6 o 99 107

The second data analysis was conducted to see

forgiveness score changes between before and after

therapeutic intervention forgiveness. The results

show that the results of data analysis show that the

probability t = 0.014 p <0.05. These results indicate

that there were significant changes in the group

before and after the intervention. The results can be

seen in the following table:

Table 2: Data of forgiveness score between pre and post

therapeutic intervention.

No. Name Pre Post

1 w 80 111

2 d 82 88

3 e 73 83

4 ni 95 99

5 z 68 85

6 o 83 86

4 DISCUSSION

Test analysis using a different test that is Wilcoxon

Signed Ranks Test showed that there are significant

differences between the pre-test and post-test, with

the significance of p <0.05. These results indicate that

there was a change in the group before and after

forgiveness therapy. The average score of the General

Well Being scale before training was 101.5 and after

training, 112.5 showed that there was a gratitude

score for women who were victims of sexual

harassment.

The results of this study indicate that forgiveness

therapy is effective in increasing the psychological

Forgiveness Therapy to Improve Subjective Well-being of Woman Victims of Sexual Harassment

259

well-being of women victims of sexual abuse. With

forgiveness can be an indicator of psychological

welfare in humans (Sapmaz, et.al, 2016). Forgiveness

is important not just to fulfill religious teachings or

moral teachings. Forgiveness becomes important

especially for the victims themselves because if they

do not forgive, they will forever be a victim and suffer

the consequences of this painful cases, they will lose

their sense of peace and can turn into a bitter and full

of internal conflict (Arif, 2016 ).

Research results matching that of (Toussaint &

Friedman, 2009), shows that forgiveness brings great

influence to the individual's subjective well-being.

Forgiveness has a very good effect on health. The

stress levels of people who are able to forgive are

lower and their hostility will also be reduced.

Meanwhile, if it does not forgive it will disrupt the

functioning of our body's hormones, and inhibit the

body's response to deal with bacteria, infections and

various other types of health problems (Arif, 2016).

5 CONCLUSION

The results of this study indicate that forgiving

therapeutic intervention can improve the well- being

of women victims of sexual abuse. This is evidenced

by an increase in forgiveness and welfare scores for

participants.

The limitation in this study is the relatively small

number of subjects so that less can be generalized to

all cases.

For further research, it is recommended to add

more subjects so that the results will be generalized

in various cases.

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