victim blaming

(verb)

when the victim of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment is held entirely or partially responsible for the transgressions committed against him or her (regardless of whether the victim actually had any responsibility for the incident)

Related Terms

Examples of victim blaming in the following topics:

  • Rape

    • Often, victims blame themselves for rape.
    • Although self-blame might seem like an unusual, intensely individual response to rape, it is rooted in social conceptions of rape and victimhood.
    • In the case of rape, victim blaming generally refers to the belief that certain behaviors on the part of the victim, like flirting or wearing provocative clothing, encourage assault.
    • Legal systems may perpetuate victim blaming.
    • Leaders of the feminist movement started some of the first rape crisis centers, which not only provided basic services to victims, but also advanced the idea of rape as a criminal act with a victim who was not to be blamed.

  • Family Violence

    • All forms of domestic abuse have one purpose: to gain and maintain control over the victim.
    • Abusers use many tactics to exert power over their spouse or partner: dominance, humiliation, isolation, threats, intimidation, denial, and blame.
    • Physical abuse can also include behaviors such as denying the victim of medical care when needed, depriving the victim of sleep or other functions necessary to live, or forcing the victim to engage in drug/alcohol use against his/her will.
    • Emotional abuse can include humiliating the victim privately or publicly, controlling what the victim can and cannot do, withholding information from the victim, deliberately doing something to make the victim feel diminished or embarrassed, isolating the victim from friends and family, implicitly blackmailing the victim by harming others when the victim expresses independence or happiness, or denying the victim access to money or other basic resources and necessities.
    • Economic abuse may involve preventing a spouse from resource acquisition, limiting the amount of resources to use by the victim, or by exploiting economic resources of the victim.

  • Homelessness

    • Popular perception often blames the victim, suggesting these individuals are at fault for becoming homeless.

  • Sexual Violence

    • Most victims of sexual violence do not report it because they are ashamed, afraid of being blamed, concerned about not being believed, or are simply afraid to relive the event by reporting it.
    • Most countries and many NGOs are undertaking efforts to try to increase the reporting of sexual violence as it so obviously has serious physical and psychological impacts on its victims.

  • Child Abuse

    • Effects of child sexual abuse include guilt and self-blame, flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, and fear of things associated with the abuse.
    • Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care.
    • Neglect may include the failure to provide sufficient supervision, nourishment, or medical care, or the failure to fulfill other needs for which the victim is helpless to provide for himself or herself.

  • Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

    • The trauma overwhelms the victim's ability to cope psychologically, and memories of the event trigger anxiety and physical stress responses, including the release of cortisol.
    • In addition, the person must experience intrusions (persistent re-experiencing of the event through flashbacks, distressing dreams, etc.); avoidance (of stimuli associated with the trauma, talking about the trauma, etc.); negative alterations in cognitions and mood (such as decreased capacity to feel certain feelings or distorted self-blame); and alterations in arousal and reactivity (such as difficulty sleeping, problems with anger or concentration, reckless behavior, or heightened startle response).
    • PTSD can occur in individuals with no predisposing conditions; however persons considered at-risk include combat military personnel, rape survivors, victims of natural disasters, concentration camp survivors, and victims of violent crime such as domestic or sexual abuse.
    • EMDR and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TFCBT) were recommended as first-line treatments for trauma victims in a 2007 review.
    • Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) seeks to change the way a trauma victim feels and acts by changing the patterns of thinking and/or behavior responsible for negative emotions.

  • Current Research

    • Folk devils allow us to channel our blame and fear, offering a clear course of action to remedy what many believe to be a growing problem.
    • The fact that these violent offenders are white and middle class threatens the "innocence and safety of suburban America," which means it requires a folk devil culprit, absolving white, middle-class America of the blame.
    • The US Federal government has raised concerns about this issue and various reports have found that colleges and universities are not addressing sexual violence as they should.For instance, many universities fail to investigate allegations of sexual assaults, they fail to encourage victims to report sexual assaults, they fail to provide adequate sexual assault training, and there are inadequate resources for the survivors of sexual assault.
    • In fact, in-depth analyses of sexual violence on college campuses generally reveals that sexual assault has become a normal aspect of college experience, culture, and structure for many American women, that on average 1 in 5 college women will be sexually victimized in some way during their college careers, and that common forms of college leisure activity, such as Greek, Party, and Drinking cultures and habits on campuses, often facilitate the normalization of college sexual assault.

  • Hurricane Katrina

    • Charitable organizations such as the American Red Cross, America's Second Harvest (now known as Feeding America), the Southern Baptist Convention, the Salvation Army, and Oxfam provided help to the victims of the storm.
    • Critics argued that FEMA was to blame and that its director, Michael D.
    • There was also widespread anger that race, class, and other factors might have contributed to delays in government response, as the majority of people in New Orleans who had been unable to evacuate and were victims of the greatest brunt of the storm were poor and working class African Americans.
    • FEMA and the Bush administration received widespread blame for the extent of the hurricane's damage and the government's slow and inadequate response.

  • The Politics of Slavery

    • Moral suasion resonated with many women, who condemned the sexual violence against slave women and the victimization of southern white women by adulterous husbands.
    • Many white Virginians blamed Garrison for stirring up slaves and instigating slave rebellions such as the one led by Nat Turner.

  • Outcomes and the Type I and the Type II Errors

    • Suppose the null hypothesis, Ho, is: The victim of an automobile accident is alive when he arrives at the emergency room of a hospital.
    • Type I error: The emergency crew thinks that the victim is dead when, in fact, the victim is alive.
    • Type II error: The emergency crew does not know if the victim is alive when, in fact, the victim is dead.
    • α = probability that the emergency crew thinks the victim is dead when, in fact, he is really alive = P(Type I error). β = probability that the emergency crew does not know if the victim is alive when, in fact, the victim is dead = P(Type II error).
    • (If the emergency crew thinks the victim is dead, they will not treat him. )