Place the blame on her ........

I saw a post on Facebook about a rape incident and then started reading more ... this is what I surmise ...

Stamford Marriott Hotel and Carleton University - or more specifically their lawyers and administrators who are using victim-blaming in the court cases brought against them by women assaulted on their property.

Carleton University in Canada is being sued by an assault victim who says the school failed to have adequate security measures in the building where she was attacked.

In response, Carleton has said that the student didn't keep a "proper lookout" for her own safety and should have locked the door to the lab where she was working.

Similarly, a woman was raped in front of her children in the garage of the Stamford Marriot Hotel, and sued the hotel for a lack of security and failing to notice her attacker - who had been suspiciously hanging around the garage for days.

In response to her suit, the hotel's lawyers say that the woman is to blame and "failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities."

WHAT!!! It is their fault!! Because as we all know, if we just used our senses and facilities better, women would never get raped.

I know we're used to seeing victim-blaming in the media and in the courts - but the combination of these two cases coming out in the same week and having such similar narratives really just pissed me off.

How long will we have to wait until the blame for rape is placed where it belongs - with the rapist?

So, Carleton University administrators and Marriott hotel lawyers, for victim blaming and for being all around assholeness, FY.


(AFTER POST) ... new update ....
The Marriott hotel chain on Monday abandoned its legal claim that a Connecticut woman raped at gunpoint in a hotel parking garage, in front of her young children, had been careless and was partly at fault.
The withdrawal followed days of backlash against Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott International Inc., which had claimed in its defense of a lawsuit by the woman that she had "failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities." (Emphasis mine)
The statement given by the Marriott says they are "profoundly sorry that such a terrible thing happened to the victim of this violent crime" and that the lawsuit has "created a mistaken impression that Marriott lacks respect" for victims of violence. Blaming a rape survivor for her assault? That's no mistaken impression of disrespect, but a certainty.