 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 4 5 ] Next Last |
" Victim blaming" is holding the victim of a crime to be in whole or in part responsible for what has happened to them. For example a motorist who leaves his/her car unlocked with the keys in the ignition may be held partly responsible if the car is stolen. A person who uses verbal abuse may be held partly responsible if they become a victim of a physical assault. In the context of rape, this concept refers to popular attitudes that behaviour such as flirting or wearing sexually provocative clothing may encourage rape: that they are analagous to leaving ones car with the keys in the ignition or provoking an assault by "winding up" the assailant. In extreme cases victims are accused of "asking for it" by not behaving demurely.
In most Western countries the defence of provocation is not accepted in mitigation of rape. Many commentators emphasise that victim blaming in rape cases justifies the restriction of women's freedoms and encourages the under reporting of the crime. However, Camile Paglia and some sociobiologists have argued that victim blaming should not be entirely dismissed. This is a very controversial view. In some countries victim blaming is believed to be more widely accepted; women who have been raped are deemed to have behaved improperly.
It has been proposed that one cause of victim blaming is the so-called " Just World Hypothesis". This hypothesis states that people who are inclined to believe the world is a just place cannot accept a situation in which a person is hurt badly and cannot be made well by any means. In order for the world to still be a just place the victim must have done something to deserve their fate.
Victim blame is believed by some to be responsible for many of the accusations regarding false reporting of sexual assault. Some people even attribute all incidents of false reporting, no matter how well-documented the falsity, to victim blaming. Clearly, this is an extreme position, to believe that men can regularly make the criminal decision to commit the act of rape, but that no woman could ever make a false accusation. A commonly held belief is that even entertaining the possibility that even the most suspicious accusations of rape could be false would be an automatic deterrent to the low reporting rate for sexual assault, which is believed by many to be far below the actual rate. There are no other crimes for which it is argued that the policy of investigating to determine the truth of the charges would result in fewer true reports being brought.
Research carried out by Cindy Struckman-Johnson and David Struckman-Johnson of the University of South Dakota has found that 22%–25% of male prisoners in the United States have been the victim of sexual assault, 10% have been the victim of rape, and 6% have been the victim of gang rape. Women prisoners are especially vulnerable to assault by guards and other staff members, and the incidence in the United States has been denounced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Male-on-male rape in western cultures is believed to occur primarily in coercive institutional settings, chiefly prisons and detention facilities, but presumably also occurs in same-sex relationships. Likelihood of incidents in non-western cultures are not available.
Prisoner Rape: Law, Policy and Science
Gang-rape (also known as "pack rape" or " gang bang") occurs when a group of people participates in the rape of a single victim, usually a gang of males against a female. It is considered even more psychologically damaging for the victim, and in some jurisdictions is punished more severely than rape by one person. "Gang bang" is also a slang term for consensual group sex.
According to Roy Hazelwood, a profiler of sexual crimes, "[Gang rape] involves three or more offenders and you always have a leader and a reluctant participant. Those are extremely violent, and what you find is that they're playing for each other's approval. It gets into a pack mentality and can be horrendous."
In countries where torture is tolerated or accepted as part of the normal behaviour of police or security, rape of both female and male detainees is a common occurrence. It is used often as a means to "soften" detainees for interrogation or to intimidate them into compliance. In societies with strong social taboos on sexuality, sexual torture is commonly used to destroy the credibility and influence of politically dissident individuals.
Rape under such circumstances often has even more profoundly negative psychological effects than under circumstances which sexual assaults usually happpen.
See also humiliation, Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|