Why victims of sexual assault are never to blame

In 2012, a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts did what so many college students do: She went on a study abroad program, this one in Puerto Rico. While abroad, this same student faced a situation unfortunately all too common for college women especially: She was raped.

And yet, when the victim then brought suit against the school for gross negligence in failing to protect her from a criminal act at the school, the university, through its insurance company, said that the young woman herself was partially to blame for her own assault because she had been drinking that night and voluntarily followed a stranger onto the rooftop where she was ultimately raped.

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The stranger in question, incidentally, was the security guard for her university-leased apartment building where she was boarding during her study abroad program.

In the wake of the Brock Turner case — and the narrative continually pushed by Turner, who was found guilty of rape, as well as his family, friends, and even the judge overseeing his case that he is not wholly to blame because the woman he violated had been drinking — the terms asserted by Worcester Polytechnic’s counsel and insurance company are especially disconcerting. It reinforces the tragic reality that Turner’s case is anything but a one-off. Systemic victim-blaming is alive and well when it comes to sexual assault and gender-based violence.

(Like Turner, the security guard, William Rodriguez, was found guilty by a jury of his crime. Unlike Turner, he is now serving a 20-year sentence for it.)

And while the Boston Globe reported that the university’s attorney asked the victim whether she was taught by her parents to not “take candy from strangers” and subjected her to other similarly offensive, victim-blaming lines of questioning, the school’s president, Laurie Leshin, PhD, took to Facebook last night to clarify that the school itself does not believe victims of sexual assault should ever be blamed for having been violently violated.

“When a lawsuit is filed, the university’s insurance carrier at the time of the incident takes responsibility for the case,” Leshin wrote on the school’s Facebook page. “Although we parted ways with that provider several years ago, they are litigating this case. Their legal approach and language have not been vetted or approved by the university. WPI has never and would never blame a victim for being raped. WPI strongly believes that the person responsible for this rape is the rapist. And he is in prison.”

According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), every 107 seconds, another American is sexually assaulted in the U.S. And in case you weren’t sure, none of them are to blame for their assaults. Ever.

In fact, RAINN makes a point to note that one of the very first things to say to a survivor of sexual assault is, “It’s not your fault.” This statement is especially important since survivors so often blame themselves in some way for their assault.

Candice Lopez is the director of the National Sexual Assault Hotline run by RAINN. She tells Yahoo Style that, unfortunately, “Sexual assault and rape are the only crimes where we put the blame on the victim of the crime. But the only person who is responsible is the person who committed the crime, the perpetrator. And it’s a dangerous situation when you start to put blame on a victim of sexual assault because it insinuates that she had some say in what happened.”

Lopez also notes that when narratives of victim-blaming are perpetuated in the media or in legal matters, it only reinforces the utterly false message that a victim holds some level of responsibility for her own assault.

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“We here at the National Hotline know that a victim is never to blame,” she says. “In no way can someone do something or say something that would insinuate that they would want someone to touch them or do something to them against their will,” she says. Lopez also notes that when we create a culture that tells victims that they can prevent their own assaults, we run the risk of silencing other survivors — and in turn, reinforcing this damaging culture that only further penalises victims.

Lopez adds, “Victims are very powerless in their interactions with their perpetrator, whether they know the perpetrator or not. There is not a lot they can do because they are not the active agent — only the perpetrator can be responsible for his own behavior. When a college doesn’t come out in support of a victim or a survivor, it sends a message to their students about where they stand on [blame assignation] in sexual assault, and it can impact how survivors come out in the future and seek out services.”