Why does the victim sometimes get blamed for the crime?

Question

An example would be.. it irriatates and hurts me when a woman is blamed for the rape. Also, when someone is robbed/mugged for being in the wrong area.

Answer 1

he is part of the crime scene. For example in the book To KIll A Mockingbird. Mayella Ewell was supposed to be raped but the first accusation that is was her fault.

Answer 2

I was raped. Not stachetory or date, rape. No, the real thing. But I was a cheerleader, and he was the popular guy at school, so therefore I was blamed. Who would believe that a cheerleader didn't want to have sex with the most popular guy at school, right? Well, I'm a lesbian. I have a six year old daughter now from it, I was 14 then. It really pisses me off that many girls who have consentual sex lie and say they were raped when they get caught. Or even better: 15 and 16 yr old girls that sneak out, lie to thier parents, and meet much older guys in the middle of the night somewhere to go to a "party". Um, common sense? What would a mid-20's guy want with a drunk teen? Not to have tea or talk about church, that's what! And they call it rape. It may very well be rape, I'm not saying it is right at all. But when you defy your parents, sneak and lie, and go to parties where you have no way home and no one knows where you are, you get drunk around older guys that talk dirty to you, you're asking for it in the worst way. those kind of girls make the genuine victims like myself, who were careful and never in trouble, look like liars. no wonder no one believed me.

Answer 3

It irritates me as well, but the root cause of the crime has to be determined in order to properly assess the severity of the conviction and the proper punishment. Rape is never acceptable, but there are certainly instances when a woman has pushed too far and a man has snapped. Afterall, rape is a crime of anger, not sexually motivated.

As for muggings occuring in a 'bad' area....there is no justification for robbing someone, but you do need to look at the victim's stupidity for being in that situation in the first place. Again...not their fault...but they put themselves in harm's way. That should not get the perpetrator off the hook, but it may go a long way in his sentencing...

Answer 4

I suspect the source of this sort of comment about victims is the tendency of most people to want to deny anything bad could happen to them. When a person sees a news story about a crime or tragedy, their mind starts working out ways they could have prevented the incident if they were in the place of the victim. It is simple survival instinct to imagine avoidance of a terrible crime or to imagine a way to escape the horror the victim suffered. On the surface, it may look like a lack of sympathy, but it is actually a kind of empathy.

On some level, such thinking helps people by causing them to find ways of preventing or avoiding dangers. Who would buy insurance if we never witnessed the loss of a home by fire or flood? Who would lock their doors if there was no threat of robbery? We learn by example.

Answer 5

rape is a power issue. Think about it, the rapist has an erection while his victim is screaming for the life of her mother's daughter. she is powerless over the most intimate part of her life and he is the focus of all her attention. It is an act of violence and power. Even Clinton has to agree that power is the greatest aphrodisiac. You ask why the victim is blamed... BECAUSE IT IS THE LAWYERS JOB TO CAST A SHADOW OF DOUBT. We all know- from Simpson's case- that is all they need. If they can blame and shame the victim, cast doubt on the offender, he gets a lesser sentence or none at all. Even nuns get raped, and blamed for presenting too puritanical.

Answer 6

In many case it is used as a defense. If you can shift some or all of the blame of the criminal onto the victim it acts as an extenuating circumstance, the crime wasn't so bad so the sentence will be less severe.

Also, it fits in with the tendency in society to not accept responsibility for your actions.

Answer 7

When there is a crime and a victim.There has to be enough of evidence to support the victim that the crime was committed by the person accused.If there is not enough evidence then the victim will be questioned as if they were the one sought after.
You have to remember everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

Answer 8

If you want the true socio-psychological explanation, here goes.

It stems from 2 known phenomena. They are "belief in a just world" and defensive attributions.

Belief in a just world means that most people believe that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Therefore, if rape (a bad thing) happens to someone, they must be "bad" or at the very least in a bad place, wearing bad clothes, etc. You get the picture.

Defensive attribution is the tendency to say that other people are somehow different from yourself in order to "protect" yourself (psychically) from believing that something bad could happen to you. Therefore, if something bad happened to someone else, they must be somehow different from you (i.e., bad, dressing wrong, in the wrong place, which you would NEVER do).

Answer 9

Sometimes common sense should prevail, if you are in a seedy area, don't go out at night, or travel in well lit areas, as far as rape, there is no excuse for that, a rapist needs to be hung by his balls and beaten relentlessly. But there are the rare cases that women cry rape just to get someone in trouble and that bothers me as well.

Answer 10

It works both ways, for example... if a devoted father killed the man who molested his young daughter.

In our legal system juries may be less likely to convict if the believe the victim "deserved it".