Victim-Blaming and the Crisis of Representation in the Violence Prevention Field

Abstract

In this article, the authors apply response-based practice to highlight the ways in which victims are blamed in cases of violence. They problematize and explore the misrepresentation of violence across academic disciplines and institutional systems, including the social sciences, the helping professions, and the justice system. Fast and Richardson discuss the linguistic operations that serve to conceal violence and also to obscure the resistance of the victim, which tends to reflect the level and brutality of the violent acts. In order to demonstrate the processes of shifting blame and responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim, the authors also discuss particular Indigenous examples relating to the issue of attacks on and kidnappings of Indigenous women, and to the connections between violence, resource exploitation, and land dispossession.

Indigenous Women’s Experiences of Lateral Violence: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Initiatives supporting decolonization and the principles of reflexivity and restoration were recommended for Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities and organizations. Fast & Richardson (2019) have expressed a contrasting perspective of lateral violence. They have critiqued the concept and contend that all violence is unilateral and cannot be mutual.…”

Joseph Naytowhow: waniskâ “Wake up!” to Wholeness through nêhiyawîhtwâwin

“…Since he remembers his first experience of receiving love and affection, it serves as a prototype for future relationships, creating an act of not only personal healing, but also social repair. This deepens the perspective that there is still potential for healthy relationships within families that have experienced violence (Wade 1997;Wade 2008, 2010;Fast and Richardson 2019).…”

“…This also connects to challenging the notion of the failure to protect, in which Indigenous parents are viewed as ill fit to care for children (Nixon et al 2017;Miller 1996). Working outside of victim-blaming through honoring the responses of people experiencing violence reasserts dignity, which has been robbed through the continued process of colonialism (Richardson and Wade 2008;Strega et al 2012;Fast and Richardson 2019).…”

“…Specifically, Joseph's story reasserts hope for healing the inner child. Since Joseph and other survivors of government-instituted violence took an oath of restoring healing mechanisms, colonial narratives on passive victimhood can be disproved (Richardson and Wade 2008;Strega et al 2012;Fast and Richardson 2019). Joseph's active restoring of affection reveals the central core of healing, namely repairing what was taken away.…”

The dead and the abhorred: Mindhunter and the persistence of mother-blame

“…Two decades later, in their study of maternal blame in child sexual abuse cases (where the mother is the non-offender), Azzopardi et al (2018: 267–268) showed that while victim-blame (i.e. blaming the child) has significantly diminished in these cases, and despite clear empirical refutation, “CSA policies, practices and research continue to be heavily informed by antiquated gender biased theories,” which translate into professional protocols that “imply some level of maternal culpability” and which, together, “constitute a never-ending cycle of institutional structures and processes tinged with systemically entrenched mother-blame discourse.” While focused on the discourse of victim-blame, Fast and Richardson (2019: 7) contend that asking “who controls the dominant narrative” in violence prevention, offers a nuanced reading of the way that “misrepresentation is a main reason that violence in society remain[s] ubiquitous and problematic.” The authors also note that, at least in the case of white men, “perpetrators are excused for the harm they cause others because they were hurt as children” (Fast and Richardson, 2019: 15–16). We also note Jiwani’s assertion that offenders’ ability to present themselves as victims is itself predicated on systems of power, while “women who are victims of violence are often accused of playing the victim card.”…”