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Contemporaneously, the crime of rape has experienced an increase in reporting. The majority of rape survivors continue to experience, however, extensive victimisation due to biased attitudes held by many people and organisations within the general population. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In a quantitative study with a sample of 176 participants, this research aimed to explore sexuality and religiosity as factors that affect attitudes towards survivors of rape.

Results indicated that negative attitudes towards rape survivors could be predicted by rape myth acceptance. While the sexuality of the victim affected attitudes towards rape survivors and negative attitudes towards survivors were also found to be predicted by high religiosity scores, analyses concluded that both males and females perceived gay male victims with more negative attitudes in comparison to lesbian rape survivors. Male participants demonstrated, overall, more negative attitudes towards rape survivors than their female counterparts. In sum, sexuality and religiosity were concluded to be crucial factors in explaining blame attributions.

This study indicates: (1) the effect of social correlates other than gender on rape myths; (2) the effect sexuality has on the perception of rape myths; and (3) the effect religiosity has on the perception of rape myths. This study also reveals implications for the reporting, prosecution and conviction of rape cases that may be subject to bias and discrimination due to victim characteristics other than gender.

Attitudes towards rape survivors based on social correlates other than gender have received little attention within existing literature and research. This paper adds to this discussion by considering the affects of sexuality and religiosity which have implications for the reporting of such a crime.

This study seeks to examine whether blame and fault assigned to victims and perpetrators in a hypothetical sexual violence case are distinct conceptually, and whether they are affected by gender of participant, perpetrator and victim.

Participants read an incident of either female or male rape, perpetrated by either a female or a male, and assigned attributions of blame and fault to both victims and perpetrators. Participants also completed Burt's Rape Myth Acceptance Scale.

Findings showed that none of the independent variables had any effect on victim attributions of blame and fault, only affecting blame and fault assigned to perpetrators. Perpetrators of male victim rape were assigned more blame than perpetrators of female victim rape. In terms of fault: male participants reduced the amount of fault that they attributed to female perpetrators relative to male perpetrators; and female participants increased the amount of fault that they attributed to female perpetrators relative to male perpetrators. In addition, greater endorsement of traditional sex‐role attitudes and rape myths was associated with higher rape victim blame.

Findings are discussed in relation to social norms, social categorisation theory and differential focus of specific rape victim vs rape victims in general.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether indicating victims of sexual attacks actively resisted their attacker or froze during their assault affected perceptions of victim blame, perpetrator blame and seriousness of the crime. We also tested whether victim and perpetrator gender or participants’ rape myth endorsement moderated the outcomes.

This study was a cross-sectional, vignette survey study with a 2 × 2 between-participants experimental design. Participants read a mock police report describing an alleged rape with a female or male victim who either resisted or froze, while perpetrator gender was adjusted heteronormatively.

Freezing and male victims were blamed more than resisting and female victims. Perpetrators were blamed more when the victim resisted, but male and female perpetrators were blamed equally. Seriousness of the crime was higher for male perpetrators and when the victim resisted. Female, but not male, rape myth acceptance moderated the relationship between victim behaviour and outcome variables.

This study highlights the influence of expectations about victim behaviour on perceptions of rape victims and the pervasive influence of rape myths when evaluating female rape victims. The data is drawn from the German border region of the Netherlands, which is an especially valuable population given the evolving legal definitions of rape in both countries.

This chapter critically evaluates the use of the so-called ‘rough sex defence’ in Australian rape cases. We argue that the ‘rough sex defence’ in this context is an example of ‘implied consent’, specifically in that it relies on evidence that the defendant and victim-survivor had engaged in (or had even simply discussed) ‘rough’ sexual activity on a previous occasion(s). This narrative of implied consent to rough sex is used to establish either of two things. The first is that the victim-survivor actually did consent to ‘rough’ sexual activity on the occasion in question. The second is that the defendant mistakenly believed in consent, since roughness had been a feature of previous sexual discussions or activities. We argue that the use of the rough sex defence in rape trials is problematic for at least two reasons. First, the defence allows defendants to rely upon false and harmful ‘rape myths’ to avoid accountability for their actions. Second, a reliance on the rough sex defence also contradicts moves to adopt an affirmative consent standard as part of Australian rape law. We conclude by recommending reforms to the legal framework that would help reduce the reliance on the argument that a rape allegation can be explained away as ‘rough sex gone wrong’.

On 20 March 2020, the four adult convicts of the 2012 Delhi rape case were executed after a long debate regarding the punishment for their crime. The Delhi rape case, unlike others, was also given to the fast track court because of the worldwide outrage India received in its aftermath. Otherwise, most rape survivors rarely speak out and if they do, their lives are often endangered and threatened, depending on the severity of the case itself and the perpetrator's rank in the society. Through the analysis of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's, 2016 film Pink, and Ajay Bahl's film Section 375 (2019), this chapter explores the different ways in which mainstream Hindi cinema deals with such questions, especially in its depictions of courts. Both these films foreground India's contemporary cultural systems of fear that silence the rape survivors. They also imply that in the court cases, unless the specific court case faces intense global publicity, as was the case of the Delhi gang rape, rape survivors will never want to speak out. Moreover, the rape survivors will also hesitate to file a First Information Report (FIR) – a document that records crimes by the police against their perpetrators – limiting any possibility for justice for them. The laws surrounding rape cases are obscure and complex and finding justice for a rape victim (unless it is on a global level) is not an easy venture in India. At the time of the #metoo movement, the rape laws in India are not designed in such a way to arguably encourage victim-survivors to speak up. Instead, if rape survivors do decide to confront their perpetrators, they not only face ostracisation from society but also the danger of losing loved ones and endanger their lives as well.

Rape culture, described as when “violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent” (Buchwald, Fletcher, & Roth, 1993, p. vii), exists online and offline (Henry & Powell, 2014). Much of the research on rape culture focuses on the experiences of heterosexual women, and few studies have explored rape culture in the context of dating apps. This chapter explores how men who have sex with men (MSM) understand and experience rape culture through their use of Grindr and similar dating apps. A thematic analysis of interviews with 25 MSM dating app users revealed problematic user behavior as well as unwanted sexual messages and images as common manifestations of rape culture on dating apps. Participants explained that rape culture extends beyond in-app interactions to in-person encounters, as evident by incidents of sexual violence that several participants had experienced and one participant had committed. Participants were unsure about the extent to which MSM dating apps facilitate rape culture but asserted that some apps enable rape culture more than others. This chapter demonstrates the importance of investigating sexual violence against people of diverse gender and sexual identities to ensure their experiences are not minimized, ignored, or rendered invisible.

In the 1988 film The Accused, a young woman named Sarah Tobias is gang raped on a pinball machine by three men while a crowded bar watches. The rapists cut a deal with the prosecutor. Sarah's outrage at the deal convinces the assistant district attorney to prosecute members of the crowd that cheered on and encouraged the rape. This film shows how Sarah Tobias, a woman with little means and less experience, intuits that according to the law rape victims are incredible witnesses to their own victimization. The film goes on to critique what the “right” kind of witness would be. The Accused, therefore, is also about the relationship between witnessing and testimony, between seeing and the representation of that which was seen. It is about the power and responsibility of being a witness in law – one who sees and credibly attests to the truth of their vision – as it is also about what it means to bear witness to film – what can we know from watching movies.