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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.

The purpose of this research is to examine the narratives of victims of abusive supervision. We explore the meaning or “lessons” victims derive from those experiences and how they shape the victims’ views of self, work and organization in relation to navigating their subsequent jobs.

We analyzed how appraisals of supervisory abuse transform victims’ narratives and their consequent work attitudes through sensemaking processes. Semi-structured interviews with the past victims of abusive supervision generated a four-stage model of how sensemaking shapes victims’ future work attitudes. Our interpretations were guided through narrative thematic analysis based on the constructionist approach.

Victims’ lessons learned are predominantly framed by their retrospective post-event appraisal of abuse (based on its severity) once individuals are no longer subject to abusive supervision. With greater distance from the abuse, victims can process the abuse and better understand the motivation of the abuser, enabling the process of causal attributions. These attributions further shape victims’ narratives and future work attitudes through a complex interplay of retrospective and prospective sensemaking mechanisms. The victims broadly reported proactive (with higher self-awareness and endurance) and reactive (self-protection, and emotional scars) lessons. A four-stage model was proposed based on our findings.

Abusive supervision remains a persistent issue experienced by many individuals at some point in their working life. However, little is known about how victims make sense of the event post-abuse and how this sense-making guides their future work behaviors. Understanding this phenomenon provides insight into how employees navigate through adversity and construct a more positive future. The contribution of this narrative inquiry is threefold. First, it explores how individual appraisals of supervisory abuse frame their (1) mechanisms of narrative construction; and (2) future work attitudes. Second, our findings demonstrate how narrative construction is a fluid process often informed by the process of retrospective and prospective sensemaking. Finally, our research suggests two broader categories of lessons that victims internalize and carry forward to their subsequent jobs.

This study aims to investigate the sexual preference effect in depicted male sexual assault. Consistent with Davies et al., the study seeks to predict that males are more blaming toward gay victims of male perpetrators and heterosexual victims of female perpetrators, while females would not blame the victim.

In total, 200 participants read a hypothetical scenario depicting a case of the non‐consensual touching of an adult male, and then completed a victim blame scale.

Analysis of variance confirmed predictions. Results are discussed in relation to gender beliefs and homophobia. Suggestions for future work are proposed.

This study confirms the existence of the sexual preference effect in attributions toward male victims of sexual assault utilising a scenario depicting non‐consensual touching. These findings extend current knowledge in this growing area.

In the latest in a series of profiles of organisations that provide services within the wider adult protection setting, Helen Reeves describes how Victim Support meets and helps people who have been abused. While not specifically established to assist vulnerable adults and their carers, Victim Support's services are readily available to this group and, as the case examples show, they can make a substantial difference at vital times.

This paper reports findings from a recent study of adult protection case conferences, focusing on how the victim's views may be represented or heard.

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.

An ideal victim is someone who is both weak and strong enough (Christie, 1986). To be seen as an ideal victim one should be vulnerable, weak and not to blame for the crime one has been subjected to. But, in order to be seen, heard and believed one must also be strong, resourceful and confident. This chapter discusses the conflicting perceptions between the weak and the strong victim in light of one particular group of victims, Nigerian women subjected to trafficking for prostitution. What types of expectations do these women meet when identified as victims of trafficking in Norway? Do the Nigerian women live up to the image of the ideal victim? Or do they have to adjust their behaviour in order to enter this role and be entitled to help and assistance? The answers to these questions tell us whether existing trafficking measures are based on the real needs of victims of trafficking, or an idealised image of their problems and needs.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the complex interplay between the media, school shootings and society from the perspective of mediatization of the victim. In mediatization of the victim, the media, in a crisis, plays a key role in connecting people, disseminating information, compiling a security-related picture and providing for potential new emergencies.

Design/approach – The chapter draws on Winfried Schulz's (2004) typology for the analysis of mediatization of the victim in the multidimensional manner. It examines how mediatization works in practice by applying Schulz's typology in the analysis of the two school shootings in Finland in Jokela in 2007 and in Kauhajoki in 2008. The empirical material consists of interviews with police, state and municipal officials and people from non-governmental organizations. Media materials (electronic and print) were collected from the major Finnish media houses and several state and community official web sites.

Findings – The chapter argues that the media shapes the construction of the victim in the process of mediatization and makes the role of victim and witness both central and ambiguous. The chapter concludes by drawing upon the work of French sociologist Luc Boltanski (1999) on morality, media and politics as it identifies the ways in which mediatization engages the affective potential of the spectator and evokes a specific disposition to act upon the suffering, thus, creating a moralizing effect on the spectator.

Originality/value – The chapter produces new theoretical and empirical knowledge on the complex interplay between the media, school shootings and society by discussing it from the perspective of the victim. Consequently, it contributes in deepening our understanding of the process of mediatization and the place of the victim in it in the case of violent crisis such as school shootings.