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  • Essay / Campus Sexual Assault and Limiting the Victim-Assaulter Relationship

    The Victim-Assaulter Relationship Typology is an in-depth analysis of how one can become a victim and the levels of responsibility a victim contributes to the crime imposed on him, which first saw the light of day by Benjamin Mendelson. There are six levels in this analysis: innocent victim, victim with minor guilt, guilty victim, guilty offender, guilty offender, guilty victim, guilty victim and imaginary victim. Setting aside the imaginary victim, each of the five listed increases the extent of responsibility the victim shares for the crime in chronological order. The imaginary victim is a good example of misrepresentation because an individual may knowingly pose as the victim, leading to confusion (Sanchez). The other five levels of this typology can easily be discerned using an example. The innocent victim is someone who suffered the consequences of the crime committed by another party when he had nothing to do with the imposing one, as in the case of mass shootings (Sánchez). The victim with minor culpability explains that an individual takes the risk of knowingly or unknowingly participating in the victimization process, such as entering a high crime area at night resulting in theft, which will be an important aspect of campus criminal cases academics. The guilty victim, the guilty offender explains someone who participates in the crime while also being a victim (Sanchez). The guilty offender, the guilty victim explains the situation as the victim initiated an attack on the offender and suffered the consequences of the offender's retaliation, such as when an offender attempts to steal but was countered by the original victim. The final level, the guilty victim is someone who started the conflict before being killed, such as women victims of sexual violence at the hands of their partners, who retaliate by murdering their abusive husbands. The major problem with this victim-offender model is that the social relationship between the victim and the offender is ignored, making it difficult to critically analyze each criminal case. When an individual faces the consequences of a crime, responsibility may be shared unequally between the offender and the victim, in the same way that an innocent victim may be treated as one with minor culpability simply due to situational evidence. This phenomenon often leads the university administrator to blame the victim, which does not advance the debate. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay One of the cases featured in the documentary, “The Hunting Ground,” reports the sexual assault of a Harvard student , Kamilah Willingham, and her friend. The two men went out drinking at a bar, where a companion repeatedly bought them drinks, and as they returned to their dormitory, both were sexually assaulted while unconscious (under the influence of alcohol). alcohol) (The Hunting Ground, 2015). Cases like this are often confusing when placed within a victim-perpetrator model, as some may view these women as innocent victims because they were simply going out with their friends and there was no reason for them to be harmed, while others may suggest that they could be classified as victims with minor culpability, when they decided to go drinking during the night, allowing someone else to continuing to buy them drinks, which caused them to lose consciousness, leaving them vulnerable to potential harm. To distinguish at what levelsituates this case, it may be effective to examine their social relationships in depth to ascertain whether the victim has suffered undue harm. Kamilah and her friend were young adult women, while the male companion was a large individual who could forcefully overwhelm them, especially when both women were influenced by alcohol. This clearly played a significant role in the crime, as the lack of strength to fight back allowed the man to take advantage of the situation. Although the situational evidence may suggest that the two women should not have gone to the club, the crime would not have occurred if the companion had actively offered them a large quantity of alcohol. Andrea Pino, from the University of North Carolina, was a victim of sexual assault. as she was dragged into a nightclub toilet with her head slammed against the wall (The Hunting Ground, 2015). Likewise, this situation may place her in the category of victim with minor guilt because she was attacked in a nightclub where people consume alcohol and in an environment where some may act uncontrollably and harm others, knowingly or unconsciously. However, given her social status as a young student on a university campus, it is possible that the criminal (often a man) could forcefully overpower her. These examples often allow administrators to be absolved of responsibility because, from their perspective, they might be participating in victim blaming and placing responsibility on students who took the risk of being harmed on college campuses. Therefore, simply viewing criminal cases through the lens of Benjamin Mendelson's victim-offender model would prevent the situation from being critically assessed. As can be seen, these simplified levels of victimization (referring to the victim-offender relationship) often create confusion on the part of the third party, making the process of attempting to resolve the conflict or rendering an accurate verdict difficult. The situation on the college campus and the countless student sexual assault victimizations represent this confusion, as the film suggests, there are differences of ideas between the student victims and the administration. The scale of the problem runs extremely deep as most campus rape cases go unreported, with the film showing the administration's lack of willingness to act on the problem, often discouraging victims. . The victims who appeared in the documentary expressed their concern or anger towards the administration by sharing their experience of the administration avoiding helping students or rather indirectly blaming the victims by asking questions such as "How would you act differently if it was a football match. ?" and "have you tried to retaliate against the attacker? This gap in understanding of the situation is evident since sexual assaults on campus are handled on a different scale between the administration and the victim. The victim clearly considered an innocent victim in the majority of cases, and rightly so. However, the administration may consider this to be a lower level of victim-aggressor as a victim with minor culpability. as she can claim that it was the student's choice to enter a club at midnight where an assault could occur Additionally, they can apply to other theories like Von Hentig's typology which presents how. certain demographics may be victimized Following Hentig's typology, victims of campus sexual assault (young women) could suffer from lack of maturity, lack of physical strength, and/.