A recent story out of Elwood, Indiana once again underscores the pervasiveness of victim blaming in our culture. In Elwood, a 14-year-old girl faces relentless bullying and harassment, all because she was raped and impregnated by a 17 year old boy. “I can’t walk out the door without someone calling me a whore or slut,” she said. Locals have vandalized her family’s home, writing misogynistic slurs on their garage doors.

This story is a horrifying reminder of how often people in our society blame and re-victimize survivors of violence and abuse. But often victim blaming isn’t just perpetuated by individuals, but institutionalized, as in the US military. Lisa Wilken, who was raped in the US Air Force, told USA Today, “The damage that has been done to me hasn’t been by the act of the assault, it has been the treatment that I have received through the process.” Likewise, there have been many cases of prisoners being threatened and attacked by guards for reporting rapes.

And while victim blaming in sexual violence cases is particularly traumatizing, victim blaming is often applied to other forms of violence as well. For example, it permeates the justifications given for US bombings that kill civilians. The Obama administration claims that all military age males killed are “militants” until proven otherwise. Even 16-year old American citizen Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was initially branded a militant after a US drone strike killed him in Yemen, although as Glenn Greenwald points out “nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent.” ...