Conditional Recognition of Victimhood: Moral Judgments of Sex Worker Rape Victims

This study examined how a rape victim’s involvement in sex work shapes perceptions of sexual victimization in Israel, where the purchase of sexual services is prohibited while their sale is legal. Participants were 455 undergraduate students who read a vignette describing the rape of a young female student, depicted either as a sex worker or with no mention of sex work. Overall, perpetrator blame was high, victim blaming was low, and support for severe punishment of the perpetrator was strong across conditions. However, identifying the victim as a sex worker was associated with higher victim blame and shared blame, greater negative emotional responses, and greater support for lenient punishment of the perpetrator, particularly among male participants. Regression analyses indicated that negative emotional responses toward the victim were consistently associated with moral judgments of blame and perpetrator punishment, independent of the victim’s sex work status and participants’ sex. The findings demonstrate that stigma operates through both cognitive and affective pathways, producing conditional recognition of victimhood and moral exclusion of sex working victims. The results underscore the social and legal implications of stigmatization for victims of sexual violence and highlight the need for interventions that address emotional as well as cognitive dimensions of rape myth acceptance.