When a sexual offence case goes viral on social media, the public discourse almost instantly fractures into two opposing camps: those defending the survivor, and those siding with the accused. This phenomenon is deeply jarring. In ordinary criminal cases, victims are usually met with immediate public sympathy and protection. Yet, in cases of sexual violence, the response is starkly different; society routinely confronts the survivor with an gaze and a lexicon steeped in deep cynicism and suspicion.
Why is the public reaction so fundamentally altered? In part, this stems from the clandestine nature of sexual offences, which typically occur behind closed doors or within private spaces involving only two parties. Consequently, outsiders cannot definitively know whether the encounter was truly consensual, leaving a vacuum that people readily fill with their own personal prejudices, questioning whether the victim was, in fact, “complicit”.
When the threshold of consent becomes something arbitrated and interpreted through an outsider’s lens, society, and indeed, legal professionals, invariably fall back on evaluating the “image” and “credibility” of the parties involved. This fixation on arbitrary standards breeds a critical issue: those defending the accused weaponise derogatory rhetoric to castigate the survivor, uttering phrases like, “Girls these days are far from innocent,” or “Is she just out for blackmail?” This further breeds scepticism simply because the victim lacks a flawless image. She is not the #IdealVictim (or #PerfectVictim), and this reality is exploited to deflect blame and diminish what she has endured.
“Did they consent?” “They didn’t fight back.” “We didn’t force them.”
To claim that someone “did not fight back” is a fallacious piece of logic that distorts the very essence of consent. “Not fighting” does not equate to “agreeing”. Under conditions of extreme duress, the brain’s survival mechanism often triggers a freeze response, rendering a person completely immobile. Furthermore, when compounded by a severe power imbalance, be it due to social status, professional hierarchy, or age disparity, a person’s ability to express their true desires is frequently shackled by fear and sheer predicament.
Moreover, applying the yardstick of the “rational person”, that flawless standard so beloved by society and the law, to judge a survivor utterly disregards reality. Human beings do not operate solely on cold logic, particularly when their psychological safety is under imminent threat.
Therefore, silence is not permission; it is a state of unavoidable submission.
Society’s persistent expectation to see a shattered, weeping victim cowering in terror is nothing more than an attachment to the “myth of the perfect victim”. Time and again, this myth is weaponised to invalidate the profound pain of survivors.
In truth, the human response to sexual violence is infinitely more nuanced than these reductive stereotypes suggest.
It is undeniable that social mechanisms—from the family unit and healthcare systems to the criminal justice apparatus of the police and the courts, systematically oppress survivors of sexual violence by demanding they conform to this prescriptive definition of a “victim”. This expectation is forged within a cultural landscape that permits sexual violence to persist. It aligns seamlessly with the concept of the “Ideal Victim” posited by the Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie, who outlined the specific traits and surrounding contexts required to attain this status:
These characteristics of the ideal victim directly mirror the just-world fallacy—a cognitive bias that leads us to believe people always get what they deserve based on their behaviour. This belief fools society into viewing sexual violence as a direct consequence of the victim’s own actions (“you got what was coming to you”). If a survivor fails to fit society’s preferred mould, their trauma is callously dismissed as something they “brought upon themselves”.
This myth does more than merely stigmatise and re-traumatise survivors; it serves as a formidable barrier to accessing justice and equity.
Within the legal process, as well as in the public sphere, when a survivor of sexual violence finds the courage to speak out, their “sexual history” and “personal character” are routinely assassinated in an attempt to erase the violence they suffered. Wardrobe choices and lifestyles are weaponised to brand them as the architects of their own misfortune. This process does not just undermine the gravity of the assault; it unjustly shifts the entire burden of guilt onto the aggrieved party.
A stark example of this occurred in the Bill Cosby case , where the defence counsel attempted to dilute the severity of the drugging and sexual assault charges by launching a vitriolic attack on Janice Dickinson’s personal history, remarking, “It sounds like she’s slept with almost every man on the planet.” This comment epitomises a sordid defence strategy aimed at making victimhood seem impossible, relying on the insidious myth that “a woman with extensive sexual experience cannot be raped,” or that if it does happen, it is of no consequence.
Amidst these pervasive systemic failures, there are glimmers of progress. Jurisdictions such as Canada and New Zealand have recognised that personal history and sexual conduct are consistently used as tools to degrade and dismantle a survivor’s credibility. Consequently, they have enacted Rape Shield Laws to close these loopholes. Under these statutes, courts prohibit the digging up of past sexual activity to invalidate present violence. These laws uphold a vital principle: no past lifestyle can ever legitimise a violation. Although such legislation is not yet universally adopted, it represents a momentous leap forward in the evolution of law toward restoring genuine justice and dignity to survivors.
Nevertheless, no matter how robustly the law attempts to construct a shield, the court of public prejudice remains fiercely active. Media outlets and organisations frequently campaign using representations of conspicuous fragility and overt trauma, institutionalising a structural expectation that a victim must be inherently weak and helpless.
Ultimately, this cycle traps us in a perpetual loop. When a survivor refuses to perform the expected role or lacks the prescribed social status, they instantly become a target for attack—particularly when the accused is an individual of power or influence. Accusations of “extortion” or “blackmail” are regularly deployed to whitewash the perpetrator’s actions, effectively transmuting the survivor from a “victim” into a “villain” to be condemned by the public.
Such attitudes expose a deeply entrenched cognitive bias: that those of higher social standing are uniquely vulnerable to blackmail. This narrative is not only detached from reality, but it actively re-traumatises, stigmatises, and undermines the immense courage of survivors who step forward to demand accountability. Above all, accepting this rhetoric establishes a distorted societal norm. It makes the pursuit of truth exceptionally difficult and constructs a monumental barrier to justice for any future cases of sexual violence.
At the end of the day, we must return to the most foundational principle of human interaction: consent is consent. Silence is not agreement, and a person’s past, behaviour, or personal lifestyle is never a licence for anyone to violate their bodily autonomy based on the flawed assumption that “they did not resist”.
It is high time society looked past the myth of the “perfect victim” and began prioritising actual intent.
In a truly just world, the safety of any human being—regardless of gender—should never hinge on whether they appear sufficiently “pitiful”, or whether they project an image of a “good” or “proper” person in the eyes of others.
Because in this world, there is no such thing as a “perfect victim”—only rape culture and victim-blaming, perpetually reproduced to protect the guilty.
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