Researchers wrote in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence that sexual assault “survivors receive more silencing and stigmatizing” than victims of other crimes, such as theft, for example. Silencing and stigmatizing are signposts on the path of victim-blaming.

I have long contemplated victim-blaming following sexual assault. It’s a confounding, distressing phenomenon to witness. Why would the one who has suffered be the one who is blamed? Why would anyone say, “I’m glad you’re okay, but let’s be honest about the choices you made that led to this.” “By wearing that, you were asking for it." And anything in between.

Responses like these come from seeing tragic, complex events through the unfiltered, cloudy lens of the just-world fallacy—fallacy being the operative word. This phenomenon holds that people get what they deserve.

In a Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research journal paper, “Virtue

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