This is exactly what I told Crime Watch Daily, “It’s not okay to blame victims, or to bully victims, they have had enough pain already.  Morgan always conducted her life here on earth with grace, compassion, understanding and love…and in honor of her, we will never allow these type of people to distract us from our goal, which is, #Justice For Morgan.”

Victim-blaming can be seen as an outright attack on the victims or co-victims of a crime, or anytime someone decides to question what a victim could have done differently to prevent that crime, even if that accuser doesn’t completely grasp what he/she is doing with their actions, that person is participating, to some degree, in the culture of victim-blaming.  This has been happening, not only to me and my family, but to Morgan’s good friends as well, for years now.  Sometimes it has been as minor as “questioning” why we did or did not do something, and sometimes it is an outright attack of everyone that is in support of getting justice for Morgan.

Please know that everyone who knew and loved Morgan, has at one time or another, blamed themselves…they have all verbalized to me that there must have been something they could have done to help stop her stalking, or save her that night, before she lost her life.  As her parents, Steve and I have agonized and asked the Universe, just like other parents who have lost their child to an unexpected violent death, why are we still alive, and she is gone?…we would rather be the ones gone, we would have given our lives in exchange for her life…but we were not given that choice.  and it hurts more than words can express.

Here is another interesting reason some people may become victim blamers:  “I think the biggest factor that promotes victim-blaming is something called the just world hypothesis,” says Sherry Hamby, a professor of psychology at the University of the South and founding editor of the APA’s Psychology of Violencejournal. “It’s this idea that people deserve what happens to them. There’s just a really strong need to believe that we all deserve our outcomes and consequences.”  These type of people want to hold the victim and/or co-victims responsible for the consequences of the crime.

There are many reasons people engage in victim-blaming…but the reason really doesn’t matter, the fact is, victim-blaming and bullying is WRONG!