Secondary Victimization
A rape victim is especially stigmatized in cultures with strong customs and taboos regarding sex and sexuality. For example, society may view a rape victim (especially one who was previously a virgin) as "damaged". Victims in these cultures may suffer isolation, be disowned by friends and family, be prohibited from marrying, be divorced if already married, or even killed. This phenomenon is known as secondary victimization.
Secondary victimization is the re-traumatization of the sexual assault, abuse, or rape victim through the responses of individuals and institutions. Types of secondary victimization include victim blaming and inappropriate post-assault behavior or language by medical personnel or other organizations with which the victim has contact. Secondary victimization is especially common in cases of drug-facilitated, acquaintance, military sexual trauma and statutory rape.
Read more about this topic: Victim Blaming
Famous quotes containing the word secondary:
“Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman “other” or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)