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Sexual violence is perceived as a gendered crime of power. The law claims that rape is a crime. However, when rape cases are brought before the legal system, they are hit with the allegation of “rape myths” and the victim’s legitimacy is questioned and undermined by legal representatives and jurors; thus the public.
This has resulted in rape being the most under reported crime.

The aim of this paper is to examine the reasons why society blames the victims rather than the perpetrators and to explore why they commit sexual violence offences.

I will mainly draw on the piece of Young, which draws on transcripts to demonstrate the way in which lawyers deteriorate the victim’s legitimacy. Using other sources, I will attempt to explain how and why victims of rape are blamed for this crime.

Young examines using trial transcripts, observations and discussions with legal personnel whom have been involved in rape trials and analyses the way in which females are “figured in the law of rape”. This is relevant to showing how women’s stories are challenged before the law and how they remain unheard by the legal system.

This piece looks at “the linguistic mechanisms through which legal power is realized and reproduced”. Thus it focuses on the crime of sexual assault and the prosecution of sexual violence perpetrators. By attempting to understand why the victims of rape are revictimized by the legal system, it looks at the political and legal discourses, paying exclusive attention to power and domination. By doing so, it assists in explaining how rape is “an exercise of power” over the weak.

Chapter 7- the politics of law making, discusses the relationship that is present between power and the law. The power imbalances that...

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...nd Henderson, E. (2014). ‘Meanings of “Sex” and “Consent”: The Persistence of Rape Myths in Victorian Rape Law’, Griffith Law Review, 1-38.
Smart, C. ‘Law's Power, the Sexed Body, and Feminist Discourse’ (1990) Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 17, No. 2 pp. 194-210
Easteal, P. ‘Rape Prevention: Combatting the Myths’, Australian Institutes of Criminology.
Bryden, DP & Lengnick S 1997, ‘Rape in the criminal justice system’, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 1194-1212
Allen, A 2013, ‘Feminist perspectives on power’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Available from, .
Rape Myth Attitudes in Rural Kenya: Toward the Development of a Culturally Relevant Attitude Scale and ''Blame Index'', Paula Tavrow, Mellissa Withers, Albert Obbuyi, Vidalyne Omollo and Elizabeth Wu.

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