Causal Attribution Theories Of Victim Blaming

There is presently much controversy regarding acquaintance rape victims and their level of culpability. Benevolent sexists promote the belief that these individuals can actually be blamed for their experiences because they adopted behaviors that were sexually immoral and that influenced the perpetrators to go through with their plans. Barbara Masser, Kate Lee, and Blake M. McKimmie's article "Bad Woman, Bad Victim? Disentangling the Effects of Victim Stereotypicality, Gender Stereotypicality and Benevolent Sexism on Acquaintance Rape Victim Blame" attempts to provide more information in regard to how particular factors might influence acquaintance rape victims.

Victim-blaming in a word is exactly what it sounds like, it is when the victim of a crime is either held partially or entirely responsible for the wrongdoing that has befallen them. Victim-blaming can have numerous negative effects the most obvious being that other victims are less likely to come forward in fear of being labeled at fault and generally degraded. In the article ‘Being Silenced: The Impact of Negative Social Reactions on the Disclosure of Rape’ it is revealed that rape survivors often stopped talking about the assault after experiencing negative reactions such as being blamed for the assault, receiving insensitive reactions from family friends, and professionals, receiving a lack of support after disclosing the crime, and inappropriate

“Most sexual assaults go unreported and more that one half of assaults are committed by someone known to the survivor. One third of women will experiences some form of sexual violence during their lifetime. Sexual assault victims may experience long-term mental and physical health problems throughout their lives.” (Luce, H. 2010).

Victims of sexual assault suffer from a wide variety of mental and emotional issues throughout their lives as a result of the experience. Results can range from depression, anger, feelings of loneliness, and difficulty when trying to formulate relationships of trust (Hyde 45). Victims experience a wide variety of psychological issues as a result of sexual crimes, which they will have to carry with them throughout their entire lives. Also, “Psychological problems can start later in life with changes in behavior- vague fears, feeling unprotected and helpless, nightmares, bedwetting, sleeping problems, fear to loss parents approval/love, need to please others, poor self esteem, anger, depression, withdrawal from activities, daydreaming, difficulty concentrating, behavior problems” (Hyde 47).

Within society, there is an engrained belief of what makes a person a legitimate victim and often their status as a ‘victim’ is questioned. This is especially true if the victim does not fit the typical stereotype of who is considered to be a legitimate victim. This is most widely illustrated in cases involving male victims of sexual assault.

When examining the victim’s actions, the differences between a ‘positivist perspective’ and ‘feminist perspective’ become evident. A ‘positivist perspective’ implies "identifying the factors that contribute to the non-random victimization pattern, focusing on the interpersonal violent crimes, and endeavouring to identify the victims who are prone to contribute to their own victimization" (Kostić, M. 2010 p69). This shows the victim as being the kind of person that they are; this can also include lifestyle factors such as victims who brazenly display their wealth. ‘Positivist Perspective’ examines which social and psychological characteristics of victims make them different from and more vulnerable than, non-victims. An example of positivist victimology is Marvin Wolfgang's (1958) study of 588 homicides in Philadelphia. Wolfgang found that 26% involved victim precipitation – the victim triggered the events leading to the murder (Spalek, B. 2006 p34).

Sexual assault is something that can affect people emotionally, physically, psychosocially, psychologically, and even spiritually. As often as it occurs in society, the effects that sexual assault can have on an individual are all relatively similar. Sexual assault is any sort of sexually-based action in which one or more participants have not given consent. Often times, people refer to sexual assault as simply rape, however there are other dimensions to sexual assault which can include unwanted kissing, groping, or touching of any form. Emotionally, victims are conflicted about whether it is their own fault or if it the fault of the attacker. In many instances, the victim will blame themselves for what has happened to them. Physically, there is nearly always damage in the affected areas (vagina, anus, penis, breasts, etcetera) that can lead to painful tissue damage. There is also the risk of pregnancy or STD’s that the victim must be aware of. Psychosocially, the victim becomes distant with everyone they were once close to. Their level of trust declines dramatically, causing relationships with spouses, family, and close friends to crumble. Since the victims tend to push their loved ones away, often without giving any sort of reason, they can sometimes face isolation and a lack of support from those whom would usually offer council. The psychological effects are tremendous as well. Victims of sexual assault will often have severe anxiety, post-traumatic stress

When it comes to victimization there are many different theories and types of victims. Mendelsohn explains his theory through “situational victimization factors.” (Robert, 2013). Basically this boils down to the victim being at the wrong place, around other offenders, or in a high crime area. Hentig prefers to describe victims with “personal factors associated with victimization.” (Robert, 2013). Hentig believes things such as, a person’s social standing, childhood, or mental/emotional state determine their likely hood becoming a victim. Lastly we have Sellin and Wolfgang theory that situations determine someone becoming a victim.

Feiring, Simon, and Cleland (2009) concluded that stigmatization rather than abuse severity is a predictive of sexual dysfunction for this population. Stigmatization refers to “shame and a self-blaming attributional style” (p.128). Shame involves a wish to hide the damaged self certain others. Being exposed for survivors would be experienced as a social taboo. Self-blame refers to a perception that some parts of self were responsible for the abuse. Perpetuating of self-blame occurs through the secret survivors keep in a response to threats from their abuser and/or social and legal expectations. These challenging emotional experiences occur following the violation and last for years. Severity of abuse is associated with an increased stigmatization. Abuse specific stigmatization influences survivors’ perception and experience of non-abusive relationships and consensual sex. Stigmatization disrupts development of a healthy self-concept as a sexual being as well as intimate relationship with others (Feiring, Simon, & Cleland, 2009).

In Bill Moyers interview with Margaret Atwood, she states “When societies come under stress these kinds of things happen. People start looking around for essentially human sacrifices” (?). A scapegoat is a person or a group of people who are punished for the mistakes of others. In the history of our society, scapegoats have been both necessary and important. The reason for this is because it unites people and can be seen as a temporary solution to problems that a society may be facing. Is it easier to get rid of individuals or groups of people than it is to solve the underlying problem? History shows that it is common for scapegoating to be used especially under stressful situations. Psychologically uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, envy, guilt, and fear are projected onto another person or group. This is the human ego at work.

The researcher’s topic is, why would rape be the victim’s fault. This researcher believes rape is never the victim’s fault, no matter what the situation may be. They believe individuals are blind to the existing issues that are involved with rape. Rape may only be considered physical, but there are existing mental issues that come from the tragedy of being raped. Many women are attacked “verbally and through social media” with information stating that the circumstance was “her fault” (Nathman, 2013). After seeing and hearing these thoughts from the public the victim soon believes if they had not been in the situation they were in they would have not been raped. Though this is not the case and rape will happen no matter the place or the circumstance. The posts and verbal shouts put a toll on a womans mental well-being and how they recover from the incident. It is well known that many victims of rape soon become depressed and antisocial after they are rapped because they do not get the help they deserve (Nathman, 2013).

A Victim is described as a person who is killed, harmed or injured due to a crime, accident, or some other action or event. A victim is also described as someone who has been tricked or duped. These definitions perfectly describe a victim of rape. A victim is not only harmed from a rape crime, but is also tricked into thinking that justice will occur. This is not the case. Fifty percent of people feel as if rape is the victims fault and never the rapist fault. Why is society so willing to blame the victim of an unlawful sexual act that violates the victim mentally and physically, instead of dealing with this social issue?

Those who are closest to the victims should help the victim on their path of recovery. Although, the supports from those closest to the victims may play a positive role in the recovery process; however, some people may feel to withdraw or partly blame the victim for getting raped or sexually assaulted (Vito, Maahs and Holmes, 2006: p. 281).

To illustrate contemporary victim blaming, a high profile case such as Ray and Janay Rice are an example of victim blaming in modern society. After the video of Ray Rice having punched out his fiancé many wondered after why she stayed and stood by him let alone still marry him. People formed low opinions of her for having stayed and did not stop to think of the psychological aspects of intimate partner violence they saw the assault and instantly seemed to believe that she should easily be able to leave and when she did not leave people became outraged that she could think to stay. Many opinioned that he had absolutely no right to punch her yet there were several who defended Ray Rice saying that she also held some blame in the altercation

I choose this topic because sexual assault is one of the most offensive crimes committed in our society. Not only is it a threat to the community, but it has a physically and psychologically effect on the victim in many ways. For the last couple of decades, sexual assault, rape, and child molestation has become the focal point of public concerns today. According to a 1993 National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, about 500,000 rapes or sexual assaults occur each year (Statistics, March 2010). The Department of Justice states that, “rape crimes have risen nearly three times as fast as the total crime rate”, although other studies have shown statistics that are in