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I recently read this submission, by someone over the Internet, and thought she summed it up rather eloquently – so please read this, as I have not approved some comments that have tried to make it on to “MY”<\/strong> blog, because there are still some people in this world that hold onto the belief that we should always blame the victim…which in my mind is so very wrong!<\/p>\n Written by Jenn:<\/strong> We discussed the concept of blaming the victim in my Social Psychology course. In class we learned about why this occurs. When we hear of something horrible that has happened to someone else (i.e. murder, rape, assault, etc.) this scares us. Our minds react to tell ourselves that this person made some poor choice that led to this horrible event. So, we blame the victim for using poor judgment instead of placing the blame on the offender.<\/p>\n Sometimes it is harder to admit that horrible things can happen to anyone regardless of who they are or what choices they\u2019ve made. It makes us feel safe and in control to blame the victim. We think if the victim would have done something different they wouldn\u2019t have been attacked, assaulted, kidnapped, raped, murdered, etc. Therefore if we make the right choices then we won\u2019t be\u00a0attacked, assaulted, kidnapped, raped, murdered, etc.<\/p>\n We must face that we live in a world where horrible things happen to good or bad people, to\u00a0intelligent\u00a0or naive people, to prepared or unprepared people. Our choices don\u2019t always matter. Sometimes we even make poor choices but nothing bad happens. We walk down an unsafe alley and are not attacked. So when we hear of someone who walked down an unsafe alley and were attacked we cannot blame that person for being attacked. The offender\/perpetrator should be blamed; they chose to attack, murder, rape, assault, kidnap, etc.<\/p>\n Understanding why we blame the victim isn\u2019t meant to pardon this thought process but to explain it (just because something in the human thought process is explained doesn\u2019t mean that it is right and just).\u00a0Although this is a common response we should not blame the victim in order to satiate our fears. By understanding why humans do this, maybe we can stop ourselves when we start to blame the victim or when we see others do this. Being educated on why humans do certain things or think in a certain way can help us to be aware of our irrational thinking,\u00a0correct\u00a0it, as well as educating others on this matter.<\/p>\n Here are my thoughts:<\/strong><\/p>\n Not only do the perpetrators of crime, and their supporters, engage in victim blaming, but sometimes, unknowingly, law enforcement engage in it as well when investigating reports of stalking.<\/p>\n From the Oxford University Press – terminology:\u00a0Victim blaming<\/strong> I recently read this submission, by someone over the Internet, and thought she summed it up rather eloquently – so please read this, as I have not approved some comments that have tried to make it on to “MY” blog, … Continue reading
\nWays of thinking about the causes of criminal victimization which seek explanations from the individual victim\u2019s conduct and the victim\u2019s relationship with the offender, rather than looking for wider social factors which help to explain victimization. In the context of police investigations, victim blaming can take the form of disbelieving the victim\u2019s report of a crime being committed, or giving some types of incident lower priority on the grounds that the victim is less deserving than others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"