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Abstract
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AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT:
In recent years, interest and concern about forcible rape has increased. Feminists and other journalists have argued that although rape has traumatic consequences for the victim, she is often blamed for the offense by police, hospital personnel, and even well meaning family and friends. This study examines the extent to which victims are viewed as blameworthy by a sample of police and nurses. Comparisons are made between the blame accorded a rape victim and that blame allocated to a victim of a non-sexual assault; beating. Using a self-administered questionnaire, 680 respondents (368 police and 312 nurses) provided information concerning their backgrounds, work experience, attitudes towards rules, sex roles and the control of life events. Included in the questionnaire were descriptions (vignettes) of a rape and a beating in which five characteristics of the crime were systematically manipulated. The impact of the victim's marital status, her dress, the amount of victim resistance, the relationship of the victim to her assailant, and the consequences of the assault for the victim on attributions of blame to hypothetical rape and beating victims were investigated. Initial analysis of the data revealed no statistically significant differences in the levels of blame assigned to rape victims as compared with beating victims. The total amount of blame attributed to victims of either crime was quite small relative to that accorded to their assailants, fifteen percent and seventy percent respectively. Separate analysis of police and nurse blaming patterns revealed several occupational differences. Non-white police officers tended to blame victims of both crimes somewhat more and their assailants less than their white colleagues. Divorced victims were viewed as more blameworthy than were married victims by both police and nurses. Assailants were allocated less blame by nurses when the rape victim was described as having not struggled with her assailant, as being a casual acquaintance of the assailant and when the respondent thought the likelihood of her own victimization to be remote. Findings tend to support a psychological explanation of victim blaming as evidenced by the strength of our attitudinal variables on police and nurses' perceptions of victims. The holding of particular world views regarding rules and order, sex role attitudes and one's locus of control tend to be of greater consequence for the attribution of responsibility than are the characteristics of the victim, assailant and the circumstances of the crime. (Abstract Adapted from Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, 1977. Copyright © 1977 by Cheryl Sedlacek Alexander; University Microfilms International)
Female Victim
Rape Victim
Victim Blaming
Sexual Assault Victim
Violence Against Women
Victim Responsibility
06-06 |