Blaming the victim

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Blaming the victim describes the attempt to escape responsibility by placing the blame for the crime at the hands of the victim. Classically this is the rapist claiming his victim was "asking for it" by, for example, wearing a short skirt.

Denying the victim is similar, but has a slight difference in that the perpetrator attempts to assert that he or she is the real victim. Denying the victim is generally less of a one-on-one scenario, and more topical. "The real victims of the supposed 'mistreatment of women' are the children who have to grow up on homes where their mother wants to work instead of care for them". Denying the victims, in this sense, is often an attempt at historical revisionism, to make those charged with the crimes, look more or even totally innocent in the light of modern society. Denial of the victim can also take the form of minimizing the number of victims or the severity of the offense. For example, the Catholic Church played this game, when trying to claim the systematic child abuse by some priests were simply isolated events both individually and by priests at large. They also pushed the issue that the boys should not be described as children, but young men to minimize the sense of how horrific these rapes were.

Both blaming the victim and denying the victim are specific instances of neutralization.

Examples

  • Representatives of the Papacy have lashed out at The New York Times for its investigative journalism of the cover-up of pedophile priests. Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa even compared the anger directed at the Vatican in the pedophilia scandal to "the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." News Report


See also

References

  • Stanley Cohen. 2001. States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pp. 96-97.
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