Abstract
Sexual assault is a prevalent issue in society with reports of up to 30% of college females being raped. More concerning is the number of victims who are blamed for their sexual assault. In order to increase understanding of victim blaming, 237 female undergraduate participants were recruited to examine the following hypotheses: observers who had a history of sexual assault would blame other victims of sexual assault equally or to a greater degree when compared to observers who have no history of sexual assault; level of empathy among participants would be negatively associated with blaming the victim of sexual assault; perceived similarity to the victim would be negatively associated with blaming the victim; unacknowledged victims in this study would blame other victims of sexual assault to a higher degree when compared to their counterparts (acknowledged victims); and the severity of the participant's previous sexual assault experience would be positively related to degree of blame given to a victim of sexual assault. The results supported the hypothesis that there would be no significant difference between victims and non-victims of sexual assault and their attribution of blame. Further, perceived similarity and empathy were negatively correlated with victim blaming. However, there were no significant differences among acknowledged and unacknowledged victims of sexual assault and the degree of blame attributed to other victims. Additionally, the observers' severity of past experience with sexual assault did not affect the degree of blame attributed to victims of sexual assault. These findings indicated increased awareness of sexual assault and victim blame is needed.