“Everyone knows that it is dangerous for a woman to travel alone in India. She should have either not gone in the first place, or be prepared herself for sexual assault.”
“A woman who went alone to India, the ‘rape paradise’, deserved it.”
“She voluntarily paid 100,000 won to participate in such a (religious) ritual. It’s her responsibility for whatever happened.”
“It was stupid choice for an elementary school girl to follow that old man. wasn’t it?”, “Why? Why did she seduce a man by wearing a short skirt? And she was filming it with a camera. That was clearly risk-taking”
“She didn’t do anything smart, drinking so much that she couldn’t even control herself at workplace.”
“It’s clear that the city councilman is crazy, but look at the message! The woman didn’t even stubbornly say no to that man. She even texted ‘Have a nice weekend’ to him!”
Surprisingly, all of these are comments on sex crime news reports.
Imagine that one day you were walking down the street and a complete stranger threw a rock at you and ran away. You will immediately think: ‘Isn’t that person completely out of mind?’ And when you tell your family, friends, and acquaintances about this, the reaction would be usually like this. “Isn’t he crazy?”
However, in the case of sexual crimes, people’s reactions are quite strange. People suddenly have very high moral standards when it comes to female victims of sex crimes committed by lovers, ex-partners, or total strangers. “Obviously the man’s act was wrong, but the woman was also careless,” or “Maybe that woman seduced him first.”
In fact, if you look at news coverage about sexual crime among the comments criticizing the male perpetrator, some people always find the cause of the crime in the female victim. Let’s look at the following examples.
“It wasn’t a wise decision for that woman to drink so much at work that she was unable to control herself.”
This is a comment made on an article released by Chosun Ilbo on an incident when an owner of a restaurant in Seoul sexually harassed a lady who worked there part-time. There were as many as nine individuals who liked the comment.
Finding such comments in other sex crime news articles wasn’t tough. This time, the article describes a sexual offense that happened to a ‘fully sober’ female victim.
This is a comment left on an article regarding an event where a stranger man in Taiwan sexually assaulted a female Korean Internet content creator.
“That woman should have to think twice before seducing a man sexually with her short skirt. And that woman was taking a video. That was risk-taking.”
The commenter blames the female victim for putting herself in danger by using her camera to film and sexually “provoking” a man by wearing a short skirt.
Some might believe this to be an odd response and a stupid claim made by unethical people. But “Victim Blaming,” which is placing the blame on the victim in a criminal case rather than the perpetrator, is more widespread than we realize and is a deeply embedded reaction strategy in people’s unconscious minds. Furthermore, it is more easy to find people who blame female victims in cases of sexual crimes. So why is the victim always held responsible? Why do we think in this way? The answer can be found in the “News” that we read every day.
Q1. What Is Victim Blaming ?
Victim Blaming is one of the primary topics in victimology. According to Karmen (2010), the term refers to holding the victim accountable for their decisions and actions at the time of the crime. This idea holds that individuals think there is a definite difference between those who have experienced crime and “us,” who have not been victims of crime.
The following three concepts are used in victimology to analyze the reasons behind victim blaming. They are Shared Responsibility, Just World Hypothesis, and Invulnerability Theory.
The idea of Shared Responsibility holds that both the perpetrator and the victim are somewhat to blame for their part in a crime. To minimize their chances of encountering crime, victims must stay away from harmful individuals or situations; therefore, if they fail to do so, they should take some of the blame for the crime together with the perpetrator. To put it simply, a woman who is in a state of insanity due to alcohol or drugs, or a child who follows an adult she does not know without hesitation, should not blame only the perpetrator but themselves.
Just World Hypothesis describes the belief that terrible things only happen to inherently bad people and that good people are rewarded for following the law. According to this hypothesis, damage from crime is unquestionably a form of ‘punishment’ that only occurs to people who have done bad things in the past. Therefore, scary things such as crimes cannot happen to ‘good’ people who strictly follow the laws and moral ethics of society.
Invulnerability theory explains that people tend to place the blame on victims to preserve their sense of safety and the belief that they are unlikely to become victims of crime. This hypothesis suggests that those who place the blame on the victim attempt to reassure themselves against the threat of crime by seeing themselves as entirely distinct from the victim.
Victim blaming is a form of self-defense in this sense. There exist countless justifications for why someone may blame the victim. Thus, the unconscious procedures we go through to develop these tendencies can be explained by victimology. What, then, triggers the idea of victim blaming in our minds, and how or why does it lead us to have this tendency? While there are a lot of answers possible here, the media—especially “news”—is to be the most accurate.
Q2. Why Do People Choose to Do That? – News Framing
Worldwide recognition of sexual crimes and female victims as significant societal issues and topics for legal discourse dates back to the 1970s. “Beaten Wife” was first used in 1974. Later, the phrase “sexual harassment” first surfaced in 1975, the expression “rape” first appeared in 1980, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that stalking was officially recognized as a crime (Belknap, 2001). In other words, before that, there did not even exist proper terms to define men’s sexual violence, abuse, and harassment against women. It is less than a century since society began talking about crimes against women and their victims—which happen daily—in the public eye.
Moreover, sexual crime is not something that most people face every day; instead, most people who live ordinary lives usually encounter sexual crimes through short articles in the society section of newspapers, TV news, or podcasts that cover scary mystery cases. In fact, according to a survey conducted in 2013 with the general population in South Korea, 84.6% of the female respondents learned about sexual violence from news sources such as newspapers or television (Kwon & Lee, 2013). As a result, the media plays an essential part in shaping the majority of the public’s view of reality and attitudes regarding sexual crime incidence, its offenders, and its victims. Put another way, the news “frames” our perception of sexual crimes just like it does any other issue.
According to the classic definition of Goffman (1986), a frame is a “schema of interpretation” that allows us to understand the meaning of information or events. Entman (1993) defined a frame serves to highlight and draw attention to one particular component of reality while also leading individuals to focus less on other aspects of it.
How then do news frames recreate our reality? As direct newsmakers, journalists and media outlets choose particular events from the countless happening around the globe and determine when, how, and with what words to cover them using their internalized professionalism, ideology, and attitudes. Through these news stories, the public decides how to perceive and evaluate the event and everything else in the world related to the event.
For example, let’s say that on this morning’s news, the anchor said, “Research has shown that people’s farts on the street are worsening air quality.” On your way to work today, you might think that you need to be careful not to fart by accident, and you might find yourself criticizing someone on the street who secretly farts.
The news frame functions as a kind of window that displays us the outside world in this manner. Therefore, rather than being simply the responsibility of certain journalists or media organizations, frames should be seen as an object of larger and epistemological discussion relating to concerns of societal values.
Consequently, we must be aware of how the media “frames” the sexual crime case itself, the female victim, and the perpetrator when we read or watch news on sexual crimes. We might end up unintentionally thinking that the victim bears the blame for what happened to them, because those ideas do not just appear in our heads.
Q3. How Does The News Lead People to Blame The Victim? What Are The Examples?
So how does the media tell people about sexual crime and the experiences of female victims? According to Meyers (1994), victim-blaming tactics in media coverage fall into two categories: “direct victim blaming tactics,” which include depicting the victim as an immoral individual, and “indirect victim blaming tactics,” which include making excuses for the perpetrator (loss through divorce, alcohol and drug use, or emotional collapse in control).
Furthermore, research from Taylor (2009) and Richards et al. (2011) indicated that direct victim blaming also involved relationships with other males, stressing the victim’s decision not to disclose previous occurrences, and using negative phrases about the victim in the article title. Indirect victim blaming included sympathetic descriptions of the perpetrator, emphasis on the perpetrator’s mental, physical, and financial problems, and mention of the victim’s mental and physical problems or alcohol and drug use.
Let’s take a specific case. Regarding the gang rape of women that happened on June 11, 2000, during the Puerto Rican Day parade in Central Park, New York, Carll (2003) noted that numerous news reports indicated that the victims did not contact 911 right away following the incident. He claimed that those news reports had downplayed the significance of the event and morally condemned the victims.
Additionally, the framing of the victims’ claims or behaviors as deviant psychological occurrences was another component of the news that was as common as moral judgment targeted at the victims. For example, the media reports pathologized Anita Hill as a woman with hypersexuality and an act of delusion resulting from a single woman’s repressed and unfulfilled sexual desires in the coverage of her case, in which she filed charges of sexual harassment against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (Fisk, 1996).
The same tendency for victim blaming in media coverage was obvious in the case of South Korea. When Yoo (1999) examined articles about rape, child sexual abuse, and sexual harassment that were published in four Korean newspapers between 1994 and 1996, she discovered that the news was more concerned with the behavior of the female victims than it was with the male perpetrators. Furthermore, it was discovered that the media blamed the female victims for the crime, characterizing them as “reckless” and “negligent.” Furthermore, Kim (2004) examined newspaper society sections for articles concerning sexual crimes where women are the victims. He discovered that Korean media directly quotes information from public sources like the police while excluding statements of women who have been harmed. Victim’s voices were found to frequently be left out.
Reports of sexual crimes in Korean news directly reflect and reproduce Korea’s patriarchal and gender-biased culture. Various news reporting methods from the male writer’s patriarchal perspective, such as perpetrator-centered narratives, marginalization and otherization of female victims, depictions of “lost sexual purity” and emphasis on women’s physical vulnerability and passivity, are also common in today’s news.
The news articles about Korean sexual offenses that were published in Chosun Ilbo and Hankyoreh 1throughout the previous three years, from 2021 to 2023, were examined in-depth by this writer. About half (48.61%, 35 cases) of the 72 news articles that were examined contained direct or indirect victim blaming. Let’s take a look at some examples.
- The two newspapers were chosen as representative media outlets among major Korean newspapers, with conservative and progressive tendencies, respectively. ↩︎
The most prevalent instance was a news article stating that the female victim was “drunk” when the crime was committed. The victim’s usage of drugs and alcohol was mentioned in 14 cases (38.9%) of the articles.
At the same time, the perpetrator’s use of alcohol was explained as the justification for the crime, saying that the perpetrator committed the crime impulsively while having difficulty making rational judgments.’
Imagine someone coming across these articles by chance. Words like “drunk,” “unconscious,” and “couldn’t control herself” lead readers to believe that if the victim had been more cautious or had left the scene after drinking just a little bit less, this regrettable tragedy would never have occurred. The same goes for the perpetrator. When the news ‘intentionally’ mentions that the perpetrator committed a sexual crime while drunk, it is no different from telling people that if the man had been sober and in a rational mindset, he would not have done such a bad thing.
So what about sex crime cases where alcohol is not involved? News reports still showed sympathy for the perpetrators and criticism of the victims.
However, the victim’s physical, emotional, and financial issues were cited as justifications for why they had no option but to become the object of sexual crimes.
These few cases reveal what ‘window’ news reports show sexual crimes and female victims to the public. Numerous reports portrayed the sexual crime as the result of the female victim’s behavior, consumption of alcohol, or mental or physical issues; yet, the same traits or actions of the perpetrator were cited as the explanation for the crime. While media coverage pretended to be objective, they presented sexual crimes from a male-centric viewpoint, suggesting that condemnation of female victims was acceptable. However, the majority of individuals (if they’re lucky enough) will learn about most sexual crimes and the experiences of women who have been victims of media coverage. What are the realistic options for the journalist then? Also, how should the media cover this issue in the future?
Q4. Then What Are the Options for Journalists?
First and foremost, journalists must identify and eliminate any victim blaming and sexist language from article titles and content.
The victim’s “drunkenness,” “severe depression,” or “inappropriate clothing” are not factors that should be taken into account when describing the start and progress of a sexual crime and the proper punishment for the perpetrator. Emphasizing the victim’s drug and alcohol abuse, irresponsible relationships with men, obsessive-compulsive personality, and deviant behavior might be used to suggest—even if the writer didn’t intend to do so—that the victim was deserving of the crime. Therefore, it is crucial to first ascertain whether the unfavorable or prejudiced representation of the victim in the article’s title and content is truly necessary to properly describe the case.
Second, news coverage must focus on the stories and voices of victims.
There is a need to put aside the perpetrator’s unfortunate past and pay attention to the wounds and pain suffered by the victim as a result of the crime. In other words, the central character of the story needs to shift from the perpetrator to the victim. The majority of people don’t care how the victim’s life has altered since the sexual crime; instead, they are more concerned with the punishment or additional penalties the perpetrator will face. This is a result of inadequate news reporting. The primary source of information for a large number of sex crime news stories is the report of police investigations. Police investigations typically go into great depth regarding the criminal’s motivation and purpose, leaving out any information regarding the victim’s physical or emotional suffering. This doesn’t diminish the necessity for the media to shed light on stories from the victim’s point of view. Not listening to victims’ voices not only makes it difficult for journalists to accurately understand sexual crime cases, but it also dulls awareness of the seriousness of sexual crimes among the public who consumes news, and further slows down public discussion about prevention and solutions.
Third, the perpetrator’s circumstances should not be included in the reporting if they have no direct bearing on the facts surrounding the sexual crime.
In addition to justifying sexual crimes and dehumanizing victims, revealing the offender’s motivation for the crime also shapes the public perception of the victim as someone who is a stranger. This prevailing social atmosphere fosters public pity for the perpetrator, holds the victim accountable for issues that call for community-based solutions, and deprives higher-level initiatives like sexual crime prevention laws and social system development of top priority. Therefore, the focus should be on fundamental concerns like the lack of a social safety net and a crime prevention system rather than the perpetrator’s sorrow or struggles like sexual desires.
Negative news portrayals of female crime victims are likely to have an impact on social policy as well as how the public views both victims and perpetrators. Thus, all journalists must comprehend that altering the method of news coverage of sexual crimes will be the initial move toward diminishing paternalistic discourse, lessening victim-blaming attitudes, and advancing gender equality in Korean society.
Written and Edited by Eunseo Hong
*All images and tales are created by the author.