Here's Why Rape Survivors Suffer 'Second Assault' (trigger warning)

[niyad]

Here's Why Rape Survivors Suffer 'Second Assault'


When we speak up about the crimes perpetrated upon us, people blame us for wearing the wrong clothes, ruining the attacker's career. I think we are punished by a cultural belief that the world is just and only bad people have bad things happen to them.




(WOMENSENEWS)-- What happens when the public and media re-victimize women or men who are sexually abused or raped? Well, and I know the answer personally, it says to the victim, "Welcome to the second worst nightmare of your life."

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When she turned to her commanding officers for help they threatened to charge her with adultery, telling her it must have been "consensual." In the military even if you are not married you can be charged with adultery if you sleep with a married soldier. So she backed off, but was soon transferred out of the unit, while the rapist eventually received his obligatory slap on the wrist. The rapist was assigned to 45 days extra duty and 45 days loss of pay. This was the only punitive action taken against him. Of the many "blame the victim" statements I heard during this episode, the one that stuck with me was when the commanding officer told another, "She is going to ruin his career. He's been in the army for a long time and is close to being able to retire, and this girl thinks she can just rob him of that?"
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Why do people turn on rape victims?

During the 1960s, Dr. Melvin Lerner, a renowned social psychologist, championed his Just World Theory, which suggests humans have a need to believe the world is a fair and just place, and we get what we deserve. For instance, if your house is blown away by a tornado you deserved it because you chose to live in a storm-prone location. Or, if you are a single mother who works at McDonald's making $9 an hour, you deserve it because poor people like you are lazy. Bad things only happen to bad people is another way to define Lerner's theory. Americans have a deeply ingrained belief that "you reap what you sow," and in such a sexually charged society, it's so easy to blame the female who was simply dressed for the summer weather. Lerner believed blaming the victim is not cultural, but instead an ingrained defense mechanism to cope with an unjust world when we want to believe so much that it is just.
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Rape puts the Just World Theory on its head. The predator was in control of his or her actions. Not the opposite way around. As much as Americans are conditioned to believe it, "she" didn't "ask for it."
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http://womensenews.org/story/rape/150818/heres-why-rape-survivors-suffer-second-assault

[HFRN]

1. 'the world is just and only bad people have bad things happen to them.'

that's a pretty awful reality and my feelings are split between hoping everyone can understand that, and hoping nobody understand it (because so far, there's only one way they ever do - and it's not just rape, it's any awful undeserved fate)

[niyad]

2. it is a pretty awful way of looking at the world, no matter how comforting to one's own little shell

all we have to do is look at the bfee to know that that world view is incorrect

[sub.theory]

3. Interesting read

The Just World hypothesis is one of the most vile, heartless, and empirically false beliefs imaginable. I've long wondered how anyone could believe such a thing when children are starving to death or being blown up in the world. What could those children have possibly done to deserve that? Basically, karma is bullshit. I hadn't considered it in terms of rape before, though, but it makes an awful lot of sense. Just another reason we have to proactively guard against such nonsense thinking. Thanks for sharing.

[niyad]

4. you are most welcome. now that I read your post, I remember actually hearing

somebody say that rape survivors had obviously done something in a past life that made them deserve the attack. it was difficult to restrain myself from applying the appropriate actions.