Discussion: The Problem of Victim-Blaming

Victimology as a discipline focuses on the aspect of the victim’s influence on the crime’s commission in the form of responsibility, precipitation, and provocation. Thus, victimologists try to detect situations in which, without the participation of the victim, the crime would not have occurred. On the one hand, the victim can manipulate their position by blackmail, seeking privileges within the framework of the lawsuit. On the other hand, the context that surrounds not the crime itself but even the victim’s personal life may be used to justify the crime committed against them (Van Djik, 1997). The situation of placing blame on a non-criminal victim is unfair because it blurs the space between the legal and the criminal.

Victimologists tend to find those cases where provocation directly causes a criminal decision since it is much more common for the victim to be accused of provocation, although their behavior is much more reckless than provocative. An example of such an unfair victim-blaming student rape case at Stanford. Brock Turner penetrated an unconscious girl who was found after a student booze in the back of a university campus dump. Turner’s father’s statement supported the conviction of his son’s innocence since the fact that the girl was drunk served as an excuse for Turner. Basically, he is justifying the crime by implying that its victim does not meet the unfairly high standards of morality set for her.

The written response of the raped girl is important in her mention that sexual assault is fundamentally different from the wrong decision in a state of alcohol intoxication, having an element of exploitation of unconsciousness (Baker, 2016). The girl did not commit any crime, but it should be noted that victims with “criminal” behavior should receive equal treatment with dignity as a full victim since such a person suffers the same. The charge of victimization is relevant only in the context of the victim’s real participation in misrepresenting the true context of the situation, which is a crime in itself. Thus, if there is a victim in the crime, the blame cannot be shifted to them since this is always a way of justifying the crime and psychologically harms potential future victims.

References

Baker, K. J. M. (2016). Here’s the powerful letter the Stanford victim read to her attacker. BuzzFeed News. Web.

Van Dijk, J. J. M. (1997, August 25-29). Introducing victimology. Caring for crime victims: Selected proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Victimology, Amsterdam. Criminal Justice Press.