What is Victim Blaming?

Victim blaming is a devaluing act that occurs when the victim(s) of a crime or an accident is
held responsible — in whole or in part — for the crimes that have been committed against

them.1 This blame can appear in the form of negative social responses from legal, medical,

and mental health professionals2, as well as from the media and immediate family members
and other acquaintances.

Problems regarding the category of victim are not only its static quality but also what seems
like its extremity—the severity of the images and associations the category conjures. This
extremity works on two levels. First, the extremity associated with the category of “victim”
may collide with the way in which many women may cope with traumatic experiences of
sexual intrusion, which might involve either minimizing the experience or blaming
themselves to some extent, if not entirely, for what occurred. Paradoxically perhaps, these
coping strategies, which might seem counter-intuitive, can actually enhance a victimized
woman’s sense of agency and attenuate her sense of vulnerability. Put differently, if a woman
feels that she could have had some control over the situation, but perhaps was simply
mistaken in her approach to handling it, this response can actually enhance a sense of efficacy
and agency and mitigate the sense of powerlessness and obliteration associated with the
violation or intrusion: “Next time, I’d know what to do differently so I wouldn’t be raped.”

Second, the dominant construction of the category of “victim” appears to indicate that sexual
intrusion and violence is an unusual and dramatic event—a rare deviation from the common
experience of most women. The extremity of what must occur in order to qualify, for many,
as a “real rape,” means that many of the more ordinary, everyday threatening, intrusive, and
coercive experiences of unwanted sexual attention and contact become normalized and thus

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invisible. Consequently, women subject to this attention and contact are not “real victims.”
These women have simply experienced the “normal” stuff of everyday life that can occur
between men and women.

Bad” victims—those women whose lives, backgrounds, and characteristics depart from the
narrow confines of “ideal victims” in sexual assault cases—are the women whose accounts
are subject to the most scrutiny, whose credibility is most attacked, and who are seen to be
less deserving of the law’s protection. This, in turn, is inextricably tied with the pervasiveness
of victim-blaming, the idea that women are, and should be, responsible for navigating their
own safety, for managing men’s sexual attention and aggression, and also for accurately
asses- sing and avoiding risk. Such forms of victim-blaming have most recently been
associated with the neo-liberal strategy of “responsibilization,” which is itself a project of
privatization that deviates away from recognizing public responsibility for social problems
such as violence against women and, instead, endorses a radically decontextualized, de-

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gendered focus on “problematic” individuals.

Dominant legal images of ideal victims reveal myriad ways in which some women are almost
automatically disqualified from the category of credible sexual assault victims. Women who
work as prostitutes are an obvious example, as are women in intimate relationships with the
men who sexually assault them. In both of these cases, the underlying rationale for the
disqualification of women’s reports of sexual assault is the same—that is, the (mistaken)
assumption of “continuous” or “implied” consent given by women in these situations.

Ironically, women in the category of “wives” and women in the category of “prostitutes”—
typically seen to be at opposite poles of so-called “respectability”—are often both assumed to
be continuously consenting to sex. As a result of this assumed continuous consent, their
claims to sexual assault are usually legally nullified.

“Ideal” or “real” victims of sexual assault, then, are not women who are assumed to be highly
sexualized, such as prostitutes or so-called “promiscuous” women, are not women who are
intoxicated or use drugs, are not women engaged in so-called “high risk” lifestyles, but,
ironically, nor are they women who are “wives” of their attackers. All of these attributes or
circumstances too often serve to disqualify women’s accounts of sexual assault. As a number
of feminist scholars and commentators have recognized, this disqualification is tied, in its
most current manifestations, to the entrenchment of an increasingly de-contextualized and de-
gendered judicial and legal response to sexual assault, one that emphasizes women’s personal
“responsibility” for risk management.

On this analytic front, Lise Gotell has effectively exposed the ways in which, following the
shift to an affirmative consent standard, judicial discourse in sexual assault cases tends to
regard credible victims as those who are seen to be both “responsible” and “risk” averse in
relation to protecting their own sexual safety. She writes:
Within a universe of rape management constituted in and through dis- courses of risk, the
performance of diligent and cautious femininity grants some women access to good
citizenship, while women who fail to follow the rules of safekeeping can be denied

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recognition.

Complainants who are seen to live “risky” lives, therefore, are seen to have failed to exercise
precautionary measures to avoid sexual assault and have, by definition, undermined the
legitimacy of their claims to victimhood, along with their entitlement to criminal justice
intervention. In Gotell’s words, “[t]he sharp descent into the space of risk is a feature in cases

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involving aboriginal women, women with addictions, and homeless women.” Not
coincidentally, these are often the most vulnerable and marginalized women. This is, in
effect, a new articulation of a very old theme: blaming the sexual assault victim for what has
been done to her.

The idea that women are responsible for protecting themselves against sexual assault is often
expressed as a form of victim blaming. In the Jane Doe litigation, counsel for the police
pursued a vigorous line of questioning suggesting that as an adult “urban female” the woman
who is Jane Doe should have known better than to leave a window on her upper floor
apartment unsecured during a heat wave, as if it was this “failure” of precautions that made
her responsible for her rape by an armed intruder. In recent civil litigation in the United
States, a woman who was raped at gunpoint in a hotel parking garage in front of her terrified
young children was blamed by counsel for the defendant hotel chain (Marriott hotels) for
being negligent in taking care of her own safety and failing to take “due care” to prevent her

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own rape. This legal tactic drew much publicity and public ire, forcing the defendant to
retreat from this argument, but the fact that it could have been made in the first place speaks
to the power and currency of victim-blaming ideas about how women should be responsible
for preventing men’s sexual violence.

Not only do the particular individual and contextual factors in a woman’s life influence her
reactions to sexual assault, but the social context of victim blaming and stigma can also be
influential in the way in which women construct narratives about their experiences. As one
author writes, “[a]s persons socialized within the same culture that provides offenders with
their vocabularies and accounts, victims, too, may use similar language in an attempt to affix
meaning to their victimization experiences.”121 More specifically, the general social
rationales that tend to minimize sexual violence or deny its significance and exonerate
perpetrators negatively affect a victim’s ability to make sense of her own experiences. Not
surprisingly, women sometimes internalize self-blame for their experiences of sexual
violation and thereby minimize offender responsibility.

In a sophisticated analysis of the narratives women construct in order to make sense of their
own sexual assault experiences, Karen Weiss documents the ways in which dominant cultural
rape myths shape women’s own accounts of sexual vio- lence committed against them. In her
words, [a]n exploration of victims’ accounts found within NCVS [National Crime
Victimization Survey] narratives illustrates that the vocabularies used to excuse or justify
sexual victimization reflect several common rape myths and gender stereotypes, including the
following: male sexual aggression is natural, inevitable, or not the offender’s fault when
intoxicated; sexual force without “violence” or perpetrated by dates and

behavior or by failing to resist effectively. The study’s findings suggest that many of the
same rape myths and gender-based ideologies used by accused rapists to disclaim culpability
and accepted by many in the general public actually provide the rationales that victims
themselves use to deny offender responsibility and minimize the severity of unwanted sexual

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situations.

Data from the Canadian General Social Survey indicates that the most common reason that
women elect not to report an experience of sexual assault to the police is their sense that what

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happened is not serious enough to matter or to be taken seriously. Clearly then, there is a
connection between the social and legal contexts in which victim-blaming attitudes are alive
and well and the internalization of some of these attitudes by women who have been sexually
assaulted. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood that sexual assault survivors will report to the
police or want to “cooperate” with the criminal justice system, which consequently limits the
efficacy of legal response to, and remedies for, criminal sexual violations.

The social and legal implications are obviously significant and suggest that a great deal more
work needs to be done to disrupt rape myths and the gendered stereotypes that legitimate and
perpetuate sexual violation. As Weiss elaborates,
it is critical that anti-rape educators focus even more of their efforts on dis- pelling the
pervasive ideologies that appear not only in offender language and public perception but also
in victims’ own definitions of their unwanted sexual situations. Until such vocabularies are
eradicated from the cultural language surrounding sexual victimization, the public and even
victims themselves may continue to view certain incidents of unwanted sexual contact and
coercion as “boys being boys,” a normal part of gender relationships, and worse, as women

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“asking for it.”

Given their currency in society at large, the fact that these discriminatory myths and
stereotypes still have some currency in the criminal justice system is hardly surpris- ing.
Their eradication is a major part of the work still to be done if adequate, just, and effective
legal responses to sexual assault are to develop.

The Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime 1

Kinds of allegations against women.

The most obvious manifestations of victim blaming appear in sexual assault cases. Adult
female victims of sexual assault are often blamed for being provocative, seductive,
suggestive, teasing, or “asking for it”.

Men in this myth are seen as helplessly lusty, sexually frustrated beings, responding to
sexually provocative women

Attribution Error:

According to Kelly and Heider, there are two categories of attribution: internal and external.
Individuals make internal attributions when they recognize that a person’s personal
characteristics are the cause of their actions or situation. External attributions, however, have
individuals identify the environment and circumstances as the cause for a person’s

behaviour.2

1
https://crcvc.ca/docs/victim_blaming.pdf

2
Heider, F. (1958) The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley. & Kelley, H.H. (1972). Casual
schemata and the attribution process. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
Attribution error occurs when individuals overemphasize personal characteristics and devalue
environmental characteristics when judging others, resulting in victim blaming. People who
make this error view the individual victim as partially responsible for what happened to them
and ignore situational causes. So-called “internal failings” take precedent over situational
contributors in judgement of the subject. On the contrary, these people may have the
propensity to attribute their own failures to environmental attributes, and their own successes

to personal attributes.3

Invulnerability Theory:

Literature on Invulnerability Theory claims that those who subscribe to the theory blame

victims as a means to protect their own feelings of invulnerability. 4 The Invulnerability

Theory is based on subscribers blaming the victim in order to feel safe themselves. Even
friends and family members of crime victims may blame the victim in order to reassure
themselves

A common statement would be:

“She was raped because she walked home alone in the dark. I would never do that, so I won’t
be raped.5”

The theory states that victims are a reminder of our own vulnerability. Individuals do not
want to consider the possibility of losing control over their life or body; by deciding that a
victim brought on the attack themselves, they create a false sense of security. This reassures

3
Johnson, L. M., Mullick, R., & Mulford, C.L. (2002). General Versus Specific Victim Blaming. The Journal of
Social Psychology, 142(2), 249-63.

4
Andrew, B., Brewin, C. R., & Rose, S. (2003). Gender, social support, and PTSD in victims of violent crime.
Journal of Traumatic Stress, (4), 16, p.421-427.

5
“Blaming the Victim.” (1998). Retrieved March 3, 2008, from http://www.feminist.comresources/ourbodies/
viol_blame.html.
people that as long as they do not act as the victim did at the time of their attack, they will be

invulnerable.6

Effects of Victim Blaming

Victim blaming can have many negative and devastating effects on the innocent victims, who
have been deemed at fault even though they bear no responsibility for the crime which has
been committed against them.

One effect of victim blaming is the subsequent effect it has on the reporting
of further crime. Victims who receive negative responses and blame tend to experience

greater distress and are less likely to report future abuse. 7 Victims who have been blamed

prefer to avoid secondary victimization in the future, so they do not report further crime.8

Victim Blaming, along with effecting a victim’s decision to report crime, can also impact on

a confidante’s willingness to support a victim’s decision, a witnesses’ willingness to testify,

authorities’ commitment in pursuing cases and prosecuting offenders, a jury’s decision to

6
“Victim Blame.” (2007). Retrieved March 3, 2008 from http://www.ibiblio.org/rcip//vb.html

7
Coates, L., Richardson, C., & Wade, A. (2006, May). Reshaping Responses to Victims of Violent Crime.
Presented at Cowichan Bay, B.C., Canada.

8
George, W.H., & Martinez, L.J. (2002). Victim Blaming in Rape: Effects of Victims and Perpetrator Race,
Type of Rape, and Participant Racism. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26(2), 110-119.
convict, a prosecutor’s decision to recommend incarceration and a judge’s decision to impose

incarceration.9

VICTIMS.

In her popular book The Battered Woman, Walker (1979) uses Seligman’s (1975) theory of
‘learned helplessness’ to explain why women do not leave their battering relationship. This
popular approach implies that women in battering relationships, like the experimental dogs,
have absolutely no choice, no say, and no control over the initiating of, and staying in these
abusive relationships. In reality these two situations cannot be compared so easily. There is
no doubt that most battered women do not perceive that they have any viable and safe options
such as shelters, rape counseling, or legal services geared specifically to abused women. This
perception stems from their often, realistic fear for their own and their children’s lives, grim
economic realities, and the social, police, and legal systems’ high tolerance of wife beating
(Gelles & Straus, 1988; Walker, 1979)

The family has always been considered one of the most important institutions in many
cultures, ideally providing its members with their fundamental needs for safety, food,
affection, intimacy, and socialization. In fact, conflict is inevitable in families and violence is
all too often pervasive. In their daring analysis of family violence and abuse, Gelles and
Straus (1988) assert: “You are more likely to be physically assaulted, beaten, and killed in
your own home at the hands of a loved one that in any place else, or by anyone else in our
society” and conclude that, “Violence in the home is not the exception we fear; it is all too
often the rule we live by” (pp. 18-19).

Data on Victim Blaming

General Statistics:10

9
George, W.H., & Martinez, L.J. (2002). Victim Blaming in Rape: Effects of Victims and Perpetrator Race,
Type of Rape, and Participant Racism. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26(2), 110-119.

10
https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/halt/how-to-avoid-victim-blaming/
  More than 20% of female undergraduates report experiencing sexual assault and
misconduct while in school (AAU Campus Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual
Misconduct, 2015)

 90% of campus sexual assaults are committed by individuals known to the victim.
(Bonnie S. Fisher, Francis T. Cullen, Michael G. Turner, “The Sexual Victimization
of College Women,” National Institute of Justice, 2000)

 Only 12% of student survivors report the assault to the police. This number drops to
7% if they experienced incapacitated sexual assault. (Dean G. Kilpatrick, Heidi S.
Resnick, Kenneth J. Ruggiero, Lauren M. Conoscenti, Jenna McCauley, “Drug-
facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study,” 2007)

 Only 2-10% of rapes are false reports – roughly the same for other crimes. This
number also includes “unfounded” reports, where law enforcement declines to move
forward with a case for whatever reason. (David Lisak, Lori Gardinier, Sarah C.
Nicksa, Ashley M. Cote, “False Allegations of Sexual Assault: An Analysis of Ten
Years of Reported Cases,” 2010)

 For every 100 rapes, approximately two rapists will ever serve a day in
prison. (Department of Justice, Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties: 2009)

 34% of student survivors experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

compared with 9% of non-survivors. (“Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible
Rape: A National Study,” 2007)

 33% of student survivors experience depression compared with 11% of non-survivors.

(“Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study,” 2007)

 40% of student survivors report drug or alcohol abuse, often used to self-medicate
compared with 17% of non-survivors. (“Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible
Rape: A National Study,” 2007)
Remember: Some problematic behaviors on the part of the victim (poor academic
performance, alcohol or drug abuse, etc.) may be the direct result of the sexual assault. Do
not blame them for these behaviors or allow that to color how you treat them and their story.

Challenging Common Rape Myths:

1. She asked for it. – No one asks to be raped. This is victim-blaming pure and simple.
2. It wasn’t really rape. – Apparently people still feel the need to differentiate between
“legitimate rape” and presumably “illegitimate rape.” This misguided sentiment has a
silencing effect on survivors, many of whom will say they chose not to report because
they didn’t think it was serious enough or that they would be believed.

3. He didn’t mean to. – There aren’t “blurred lines” when it comes to consent. Studies
suggest that most campus rapes are committed by repeat offenders.

4. She wanted it. – This is a variation of #1.

5. She lied. – Again, best research puts false reporting rates somewhere between 2-5%.
That means 95-98% of rape reports are true.

6. Rape is a trivial event. – Rape and other forms of gender-based violence can have an
immense impact on an individual. You may see the effects reflected in academic
performance, substance use, depression, and more.

7. Rape is a deviant event. – As much as we’d like it not to be, sexual violence is
prevalent on college campuses. The shaming and silencing of victims leads to a
feeling of impunity for perpetrators, who often commit multiple assaults during their
time on campus. This is rape culture in America today.