Acquaintance Rape Victims: To Blame or Not to Blame?

Scully and Marolla uses Scott and Lyman’s typology accounts to analyze the rapists’ motives and actions. When the rapists were interviewed, they were put into two categories: admitters and deniers. Admitters confessed that their sexual act was forced on their victims; while deniers admitted to the act, but still not defining their act as rape. When these rapists confessed, Marolla and Scully concluded that admitters used numerous excuses and deniers used justifications. It has been reported that thirty-four percent of deniers has said their victims were initially unwilling. A great deal of the findings were key to their research. Some of them included that both admitters and deniers were under stress at the time of their rape. Through the deniers’ justifications, they have found that these men committed their wrongdoings because their value system did not give them a reason not to do so. Also their denials came from rape stereotypes that still denied the existence of a victim. Justifications were a common typology that was shared throughout both parties: admitters and

The stereotype of who a typical sexual assault victim is, is also detrimental to abide by as male victims of sexual assault will often fear being blamed and feel emasculated as a result of their victimisation. The continuation of stereotypic types of victims when considering a certain crime can often distort the seriousness of sexual

According to the journal article “Acquaintance Rape Scripts of Women and Men: Similarities and differences”, men and women both have a different set of experiences and thought process to draw upon in their conceptualization of rape (Carroll & Clark, 2008). When attempting to understand perception one must be able to apply a “script” to a situation. In this case, a rape script would be identified as “a list of information about the nature and parameters of the sequences of events that are expected within a rape and conduct of the perpetrator and victim”, (Carroll & Clark, 2008). Learning to understand the characteristics of a script can provide individuals with insight into the perception of others and the judgements they make. Rape scrips in particular can provide intel on one’s perception of sexual intent, the types of precautionary and resistance behaviors exhibited, and the labeling behaviors of unwanted

A fair share of qualitative and quantitative research was conducted in an attempt to adequately address the specific questions that were being asked. All of the research we reviewed used primary data and chose not to utilize secondary data to conduct their experiments, however, several of the studies references secondary data sources when speaking of historical backgrounds of rape and in their discussions. The methods our group has chosen to pay particular interest to are those that were used to gather data from participants at college campuses, as this is the population we wish to further explore. Due to women of college age being at an increased risk for sexual violence, several of the studies we found pursued out this population as well. A study conducted at James Madison University gathered their findings from a participant pool at their university using the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, the Modern and Old-Fashion Sexism Scale, and rape scenarios and questions in which they evaluating participants identification with either the victim or the assailant (12p.242) This study was not alone in using the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale as measure. In fact, of the research reviewed seven other studies utilized the scale in addition to the research done at

Furthermore, female murder fatalities may be alleged as engaging in less disreputable or contributing conduct associated with their own victimization compared with male victims (Baumer, Messner, and Felson 290; Farrell and Swigert 352; Sundby 347). Similarly, sexual assault is an aggravating factor both statutorily and de facto as a contemporaneous felony for a felony-murder charge in most jurisdictions (Snell). Stauffer et al find that juries are more likely to impose death sentences in homicides involving rape. Although rare Pierce and Radelet forty-two report that less than two percent of first-degree murder convictions in their 10-year Illinois sample included a contemporaneous sexual assault, perceptions about the particular heinousness

In addition, rape myths originate from a wide range of cultural stereotypes, for instance gender roles, the acceptance of interpersonal violence and the misunderstanding on the nature of sexual assault (Burt, 1980: p. 217). Rape myth is the major reason for victim-blaming and stigmatisation, and having an increase of responsibility on blaming the victim and minimising the rape. Likewise, the main concern in sexual assaults is wondering whether if both parties had consented in engaging sexual activities or if both parties had the capacity to do so. Thus, the stereotype that sexually assaulted individuals who have no physical trauma will be unwilling to report to the police or to seek medical care. Still, the acceptance of rape myths can lead

New knowledge that I acquired during this chapter involves the perspective of victim-precipitated rape. The following perspective is that of assuming the survivor is actually the blame for their rape. In an effort to clarify the meaning of this perspective, the writer included examples such as; a survivor whom was raped because of the provocative clothing she was wearing. Some seem to think she was asking for it. Or young man who flirts with his female professor assumes he wants to engage in sexual relations results in being raped at a tutoring session at the professors home.

Every 2 minutes an American, mostly female, is sexually assaulted, this means on average there are 288,820 victims of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States (www.rainn.org). Throughout this paper I will argue why men need to always have consent before having sex with a female. I will argue this by talking about the consequences you will receive without getting consent. I believe men should always have consent because if they do not they could be charged years for rape and be put in jail or even prison. Critics may say that most girls falsely accuse men of rape or that most of the girls are just asking for it. Even if this was true people should still want to further investigate the situation, because most of the time the victim is being honest when accusing somebody. The critics are mistaken because statistically not that many girls falsely accuse men of sexual assault. According to National Review

Few other crimes receive as much attention as sex offenses. This concern and interest is understandable, as sex crimes have a large impact on both victims and society. After a sexual assault, victims may experience a wide range of emotions, such as sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt, or self–blame and they may go on to experience a variety of psychological, social, relationship, and physical difficulties. Certainly, these issues can interrupt and alter a person’s life. Yet many of these offenders get away with their crimes because some people put the blame on the victim, which is not the case. The victim is never in the fault, the victim is not overreacting, it was the offender who committed the crime with their own judgment.

According to the just worth hypothesis, human beings have a natural tendency to believe that the world is a just place, “where people get what they deserve” (Andre). People want to believe that she was asking for it or she was lying about it. People need to reassure themselves that the world is not a terrifying place. However, victim blaming blinds individuals from the reality that it is those “she-had-it-coming” beliefs that have road blocked any advanced in ending this distorted view of rape in society. In fact, since 1996 the rate of sexual assaults has drastically increased (Lee) and only 2% of the reports were given falsely

As stated above, one reason males being raped by females is not commonly known is because victims blame themselves. Male victims of rape, like female victims, are likely to be blamed by others for their own rape (Anderson, 2004). When victims blame themselves multiple questions run through their mind to where in the end they blame themselves for the action occurring and not want to tell anyone due to fear of embarrassment. Due to stereotypes, multiple studies have shown that male victims of rape are being blame for their assault. Male victims tend to be blamed more than female victims on behavior blame measures, due to societal stereotypes that a man should be able to defend for themselves (Davies and Rogers, 2006). However, women are not expected to be able to defend for themselves. While male victims are held responsible for the rape on account of their behavior during the attack, female victims are attributed more blame on account of their internal characteristics (Doherty and Anderson, 2004). Stating that males are blamed for not being masculine enough to fight off their attacker and females are blamed for putting themselves in that situation when they should have been safer. The fact that males can be victims of rape challenges may beliefs about men’s masculinity. Males that identify as homosexual are judged to be more at fault than males that identify as heterosexual (Davis and Rogers, 2006). Homosexual males are seen as violating gender role

The study is a descriptive cross-sectional survey implemented to assess students' attitudes toward rape and empathy toward survivors of rape. A pilot study using 30 college students with a two-week interval was used to establish reliability of the ATR and RES. Subject's birth day, month, and first three digits of their phone numbers were used as identifiers for the retest portion of the pilot study. A two-tailed t test was performed comparing test scores across the 2-week interval. Statistical analysis found a 1.0 correlation for demographic data, .91 alpha reliability coefficient for the ATR, and a .80 alpha reliability coefficient for the RES.

A wide body of research finds that sixty to eighty percent of all rapes and sexual assaults are committed by someone the woman knows, including husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends, and only twenty to thirty-five percent by strangers (Barkan, 2012). This is a very fitting statistic that shows the medias portrayal of alleyway rapists is not always the case. The public image of rape is the stranger attacking a woman in a dark alleyway. While these rapes do occur, most rapes actually happen between people who know each other. (Ravelli, 2010)

This paper examines the date rape phenomenon and the controversy surrounding it. After considering the definition and estimated prevalence of date rape, the analysis looks at the causes and mitigating factors involved in date rape. Included is an examination of some of the factors (e.g., gender, personal belief systems) involved in the attribution of responsibility for date rape.

A study done by Maddux and Yuki (2006) investigated the attribution theory and concluded that people assign responsibility based on a combination of psychological, personal and situational factors that stem from one’s culture and their background. Regardless of the sex of a person, they are psychologically male or female, and tend to conform to the gender roles accordingly. This conformity affects the way that they view situations, thus their overall decisions and how they assess who is responsible for a crime. In today’s society rape myths are influenced by modern sexism; the way that women are viewed, the way that men are viewed, and the types of modern sexism that exist.