Limited research has assessed juror decision making in cases of female perpetrated sexual assault and the role played by factors such as the victim’s gender, physiological arousal, and participant’s gender in the decision making process. Participants (n = 215) were presented with one of four trial vignettes that varied the perpetrator and victim’s gender and victim’s physiological arousal. The impact of these variables was examined on guilty verdicts rendered, credibility, and blameworthiness of the victim and accused. Results demonstrate that the male victim was blamed more than the female victim. Further, male participants viewed the male victim to be less credible than the female victim. Lastly, male participants viewed the accused to be more credible when the victim was depicted as a male with signs of physiological arousal. The results reveal the disadvantages a male victim of female perpetrated sexual assault may face if he pursues his sexual assault at trial. Keywords: sexual assault, rape myths, juror bias, gender, physiological arousal

This mock juror study (N = 437) serves as a first examination of mock jurors' perceived prototypicality of a sexual assault case, complainant, and defendant in various conditions, to ascertain if mock jurors' sexual assault prototypes are one of the mechanisms behind their caserelated decisions. To this end, the present study offers an initial examination of the impact of the form of alleged sexual assault (forced oral sex onto the complainant vs. forced vaginal intercourse) and complainant and defendant gender (i.e., male complainant-female defendant vs. female complainant-male defendant) on mock jurors' sexual assault prototypes and, in turn, their assessments and decisions. The results of a path analysis demonstrate a cautious optimism that the form of sexual assault does not play a significant role in mock jurors' decisions. However, the complainant's gender (tied to defendant's gender) does. Mock jurors perceived the male complainant-female defendant condition as less prototypical of a sexual assault case, complainant, and defendant than the female complainant-male defendant condition, resulting in negative evaluations of the male complainant and favourable evaluations of the female defendant, which lowered mock jurors' probability of rendering a guilty verdict. Simultaneously, the present study suggests that for fixed levels of prototypicality, the female complainant received heightened negative evaluations from mock jurors, and the male defendant received more favourable evaluations from mock jurors, which lowered mock jurors' probability of rendering a guilty verdict. Collectively, these results provide evidence to suggests that prototypicality is one of the mechanisms behind mock juror decisions in sexual assault cases. My results reveal a potential bias in our legal system that should be furthered researched and mitigated to ensure fairer decisions for the 37,855 sexual assault trials held in Canada each year (Statistics Canada, 2019).Cotter, 2014). For example, in 1992, 57% of reported sexual assault cases were filtered out of the criminal justice system (Statistics Canada's Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR), 1994). In one case, a judge proposed that one of the reasons for this was that these reforms did not address the broad and unclear definition of consent (R. v. Ewanchuk, 1999). As such, Canadian sexual assault laws were once again reformed in 2017, resulting in our current laws (R.S., c. C-34, s. 265).Current Sexual Assault Laws. The Government of Canada initiated Bill-C-51 on June 6, 2017, to make the definition of consent more transparent, revise previous sexual assault legislation, help ensure fairer trials, and reduce victim-blaming (Casavant et al., 2018). Major changes brought forth by this bill include (1) one cannot consent while heavily intoxicated,(2) one's sexual history cannot be used to challenge their credibility, (3) sexual assault allegations do not require evidence of forceful victim resistance, and (4) one's sexual orientation cannot be mentioned in court (S.276). To this end,...