Many Rape Victims Share Blame, Students Say

Nearly two-thirds of college students presented with mock rape scenarios said they believed the victim was at least partly to blame for the crime, a study has found.

Eugenia Gerdes, a Bucknell University psychology professor, tested the opinions of 64 college students who were told to act as jurors in scenarios in which a college-age rapist attacks a fellow student walking alone at night.

“They clearly think he did something wrong. They also think the choice of a victim wasn’t random,” Gerdes said.

Forty-one of the students said the woman may have done something to promote the rape, she said.

Smiling, Flirtatious

Some students said the victim may have smiled at or flirted with the rapist, while others said she shouldn’t have been walking alone at night or may have been wearing provocative clothing, Gerdes said.

She also found that women taking part in the study last year tended to be more sympathetic with the victim and gave the rapist tougher prison sentences.

The 32 women in the study gave the rapist a 22-year prison sentence, on average, while the men averaged a 15-year sentence. They were told not to consider the possibility of parole, Gerdes said.

All the students in the study were given typed stories that they were told were realistic accounts from a college newspaper. Accompanying the articles were pictures of the purported rapist and victim.

Two Different Accounts

Gerdes gave each student one of two accounts of a rape. In one, the victim and rapist took a class together and she recognized him. In the other, the victim and rapist lived on different sides of campus and never took a class together.

In both cases, the rapist is caught in the act.

“Once people even think the rapist and the victim have been together anyplace before, people begin to think: What made him do it? What might she have done?” Gerdes said.

Twenty-three of the 32 students given the scenario in which the rapist and victim knew each other said she may have done something to promote the crime.

Even when presented with no evidence that the rapist and victim knew each other, students in the study suggested that they may have seen each other on campus.

Misunderstood Crime

“Just the fact that they are willing to suggest things the woman might have done to provoke the rape, even when the defendant is clearly guilty, shows that people still fail to understand rape as a violent crime. They try to make sense of a random act by viewing it as a sexual encounter,” Gerdes said.

Eighteen of the 32 students given the scenario in which the rapist and victim are strangers said they thought the woman may have done something to promote the rape.

Gerdes said she changed the pictures accompanying the scenarios to give different combinations of attractive and unattractive victims and rapists.

Students believed an unattractive victim who knew her assailant beforehand would be more likely than an attractive victim to have enticed the defendant, Gerdes said.

An unattractive victim was blamed less if attacked by a stranger, she added.

Students, especially women, rationalized that the victim was less to blame if the rapist was unattractive, saying a woman was unlikely to make sexual advances toward an unattractive man. An unattractive rapist was the only scenario in which students perceived the rapist as dangerous and antisocial.