Imageries of Self: Guilty Plea Statements in Sexual Violence Cases at the ICTY

• Author: Anette Bringedal Houge
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1057567720982656
• Published date: 01 June 2023
• Date: 01 June 2023
• Subject Matter: Original Articles

Original Article

Imageries of Self: Guilty Plea

Statements in Sexual Violence

Cases at the ICTY

Anette Bringedal Houge

1

Abstract

Focusing on the guilty plea statements in sex crimes cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for

the former Yugoslavia, this article investigates the ways that defendants re-present themselves, their

agencies, and their offenses in response to the legal framework within which they talk. While their

acts are at the core of international criminal justice (ICJ), defendants are more often spectators than

participants when their guilt is negotiated and judged. They have for the most part also been absent

in research on ICJ. As defendants’ voices are rarely heard during proceedings, their guilty plea

statements produce rare access to war criminal’s staging of self and individual agency. At interna-

tional criminal tribunals, defendants have wide audiences beyond the courtroom, and when they do

speak, their stories potentially influence not only the court proceedings but also wider cultural and

societal narratives about wartime agency and sexual violence. After identifying a guilty plea script,

this article draws attention to a consistent and intriguing silencing of sexual crimes in the past and to

how the defendants’ imageries of present and future selves align with the ICJ effect narratives about

the individually disciplining and rehabilitative character of criminal justice and its general deterrent

effects.

Keywords

conflict-related sexual violence, international criminal justice, guilty pleas, scripted guilt, narrative

expressivism, ICTY

Although defendants are the focal points of international criminal justice (ICJ) proceedings, their

voices are largely missing, both in trials and in ICJ research.

1

Paralleling research on ICJ, perpe-

trators have traditionally been sidelined in research on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV).

Here, perpetrators have received scant attention despite wide efforts to understand the causes and

consequences of their offenses. Presser (2009) suggests a lack of interest in defendants and offenders

is based on an assumption that their perspectives serve only self-interest and, consequently, that their

1

Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo, Norway

Corresponding Author:

Anette Bringedal Houge, Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1130 Blindern,

0318 Oslo, Norway.

Email: a.b.houge@medisin.uio.no

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stories can add nothing to our understanding of their violence. In this article, however, I argue that

defendants’ stories matter because of the instrumental purposes they serve rather than in terms of the

truth level they entail. Whether their stories help or challenge the prospects of justice and reconci-

liation, international criminal tribunals provide a platform for defendants to address multiple con-

stituencies (Houge, 2019).

Merging the overlapping defendant/perpetrator gaps in research on ICJ and CRSV, this article

zooms in on guilty plea statements made by defendants who were convicted for their direct partic-

ipation in sexual violence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The tribunal has been particularly acknowledged for its prioritization and prosecution of sexual

violence offenses, consistently pushed for by feminist advocacy from within and outside the insti-

tution. The ICTY ended its mandate in December 2017. By then, the chambers had sentenced 32

individuals for sex crimes, five of which pleaded guilty to having directly committed the sexual

offenses (see ICTY, n.d.-a, n.d.-b, n.d.-c). Building on the ICTY records from these cases, this article

addresses and analyses ICJ as a narrative space for sex crimes defendants to re-present themselves

and their acts for a global audience.

Facing not only the court but also family members, peers, victims, and domestic audiences—

indeed, world public opinion—defendants’ testimonies and statements amount to especially impor-

tant stories in and of their lives, about who they are and have been, and about why they are now

facing criminal charges. Particular to sex crime cases, defendants charged with their direct involve-

ment in the offense must answer to “a public discourse about sexual offenders that is essentialist in

nature ...and that [suggests their] aberrant or evil behaviour is an intrinsic part of [their] selfhood”

(Victor & Waldram, 2015, p. 97; see also Kruse, 2020). The international legal discourse about

perpetrators of sexual violence coalesces their character, who they are, with the characterization of

their offenses. So, how do defendants re-present and construct themselves within the limits and

prospects of this institution? Do they manage to explain (away) their involvement in conflict-related

(sexual) violence?

Through its focus on sex crimes cases in particular, this article addresses an important, remaining

gap in research on CRSV by providing access to and a framework for understanding established

perpetrators’ stories about themselves. Focusing beyond guilty/innocent and true/false dichotomies,

the analysis approaches the defe ndants’ statements and the intriguing silences he rein as social

performances, producing particular imageries of self through re-presenting harm and agency in the

past, capabilities in the present, and ambitions for the future. This article shows how defendants

navigate between societal expectations, individual needs, and legal demands, as their statements

affirm the individually disciplining and rehabilitative character of criminal justice and its general

deterrent effects.

First, however, I situate this article at the intersection of research on ICJ and CRSV, and the

analysis within a narrative expressivist framework well suited to address the constraints and oppor-

tunities for sex crimes offenders’ storytelling within international criminal court settings.

CRSV and ICJ

Since the early 1990s, scholars have investigated CRSV from various perspectives, most of which

have had victims’ experiences and perspectives as their starting point (see, e.g., Henry, 2010).

Indeed, victims are the epistemic point of reference in this field. To many of these studies, the

records of the ad hoc criminal tribunals in general, and the ICTY in particular, have played a key

role. Established in 1993 by UN Security Council Resolution 827, the ICTY has been central and

groundbreaking in its investigations, prosecutions, and convictions pertaining to sex crimes, pro-

ducing case law and best practic es for the International Criminal Court and beyon d—but also

180 International Criminal Justice Review 33(2)